Which raid 50 config to use?

[FAQBytes]

Whelp, it's that time of the year again, new tech!

 

Alright, so I've settled on raid 50 as the RAID config to use, and I have 12 x 500 GB drives, which gives me the following configs.

 

2x6 Drive Stripes (5 TB)

Pros

-Largest Space

Cons

-Slowest

-Lowest Parity

 

 

3x4 Drive Stripes (4.5 TB)

Mix between the two

 

4X3 Drive Stripes (4 TB)

Pros

-Fastest

-Highest Redundancy

Cons-

Sacrifice most amount of space.

 

Alright, thanks for your input in advance!

[HPWebcamAble]

What will you be storing? How how much space do you think you need?

[FAQBytes]

Just now, HPWebcamAble said:

What will you be storing? How how much space do you think you need?

I'm transplanting my current system into a rack-mount system I got and then using it as a main computer once I quiet it down a bit and get a cabinet for it. For the amount, I'm not quite sure yet for certain. I could probably get away with 4TB  as Solidworks and Solidedge files aren't too bad. Other than that, games and other stuff. 

[HPWebcamAble]

1 minute ago, FAQBytes said:

I'm transplanting my current system into a rack-mount system I got and then using it as a main computer once I quiet it down a bit and get a cabinet for it. For the amount, I'm not quite sure yet for certain. I could probably get away with 4TB  as Solidworks and Solidedge files aren't too bad. Other than that, games and other stuff. 

I'd go with the fastest one, 4 TB is a lot of space anyway.

[FAQBytes]

1 minute ago, HPWebcamAble said:

I'd go with the fastest one, 4 TB is a lot of space anyway.

I was leaning towards that, but I like the nice round number of 5 TB. I like better speed better anyways though. I'll be getting ~500MB/second+/-100MB/s write speeds which is nothing to scoff at with hard drives, assuming I see something similar to what this says. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-caviar,2261-3.html

[Captain_WD]

11 hours ago, FAQBytes said:

~snip~

Hey there FAQBytes,

 

What are the drives' specific models? 12 500GB drives are quite a lot and may be a bit old. Have you considered replacing them with simply two 4TB drives in RAID1 for redundancy? 

 

It would really depend if you need more speed or prefer to have better redundancy of your data. I doubt that the speed difference would be crucial unless you are doing something specific. Gaming doesn't really depend on the storage's speed for anything else but the loading times.

 

If you are reusing the drives I would strongly recommend checking their health with a tool from the manufacturer before trusting your data to them! 

 

Captain_WD.

[KuJoe]

11 hours ago, FAQBytes said:

4X3 Drive Stripes (4 TB)

Pros

-Fastest

-Highest Redundancy

Cons-

Sacrifice most amount of space.

What kind of RAID card will you be using? Calculating the parity bit for 4 RAID5 configurations instead of 2 will take longer and rebuilding could also take longer depending on which drives you lose. Ideally this isn't a huge issue with RAID cards with dedicated processing for parity-based RAID.

[FAQBytes]

10 hours ago, Captain_WD said:

-Snippo-

I bought a 2008 Cisco server with 12 Seagate Barricuda 500 GB drives. I checked all their health and the're basically new. (The only drive at 98% health was the 320 GB that I put in as a boot disk. There was less than 100 hours on the server, and there was still absolutely NO dust in there somehow. Even in the PSUs.

 

I got the whole thing for $215, which is the same cost as 2 x 4 TB drives alone. I may upgrade in the future, but it will work for me for now. In addition, even when not fully initialized, I'm still getting 400/300MB/s read-write speeds,which I expect to improve once fully initialized. 

 

10 hours ago, KuJoe said:

What kind of RAID card will you be using? Calculating the parity bit for 4 RAID5 configurations instead of 2 will take longer and rebuilding could also take longer depending on which drives you lose. Ideally this isn't a huge issue with RAID cards with dedicated processing for parity-based RAID.

It is a dedicated 3ware card. It is older (9550sx), but will be replaced once I put the replacement components inside it. It's working fine, and I don't expect these drives to be failing too quickly. I am getting decent read-write speeds as well considered that these are hard drives.

[Captain_WD]

9 hours ago, FAQBytes said:

~snip~

In that case you should be good to go.

 

The only thing left to do is decide how to manage your pool. Again, it would really depend if you prefer better redundancy or better speed. I'd go for maximum availability of the storage space since this won't hold anything vital. Backups are also recommended!

 

Captain_WD.