To Raid or not. HTPC/Plex Server build

[Manny_NotTheStig]

I had gathered some parts to build a FreeNas box. I decided to go a different direction and build a htpc/plex server instead. I have 3 x 3tb Seagate enterprise drives and wondering if I should leave the drives singled each (one for dvr, one for other videos and movies, and another for pictures and music) or put them and raid and just have folders. Since there are 3 drives my guess is raid5 or raid6, which I'm not familiar with and I don't know if my motherboard will support it. Again it's the space vs redundancy question. 

 

The rest of the system 

Intel E3-1230, Supermicro X9SCL, Kingston 2x8gb ecc, 2x Intel 40gb SSD (Raid0), Evga gtx 650ti, Corsair CX430, WinTV-2250.

 

Thanks for your replies 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What OS.

 

Id probably go raid 5.

[Manny_NotTheStig]

Sorry I forgot OS.

I got Windows 7 Ultimate be able to use Windows Media Center 

[b1uew01f]

On 27/07/2016 at 10:12 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

What OS.

 

Id probably go raid 5.

Never go Raid 5. You get 1 drive of redundancy but in all likelihood youll kill another HDD on the rebuild and lose all your data.

Raid 6, Mirror or combinations from there. Raid 5 is effectively deprecated. 

[Andster29]

Currently you can not do a raid5 or a raid6. You need a minimum of 4 drives to run raid5 or raid6. Currently you can only run a raid1 with two of the drives and keep the third as a spare. 

[kirashi]

I haven't yet dabbled with it, but couldn't he do ZFS if he were to throw in another 2x8GB ECC RAM for a total of 32GB?

Software RAID is better than hardware RAID in the event of a hardware RAID card failing.

[Manny_NotTheStig]

I ended up just picking up another 3tb drive with the intention of doing raid10 on windows. Couldn't get raid10 to work either in bios or in windows. So I just setup two Raid1 volumes and I'll just used one for videos and the other for everything else.

[dalekphalm]

On 2016-07-31 at 0:01 AM, Andster29 said:

Currently you can not do a raid5 or a raid6. You need a minimum of 4 drives to run raid5 or raid6. Currently you can only run a raid1 with two of the drives and keep the third as a spare. 

This is incorrect. RAID 5 only requires 3 drives (although yes, 4 drives is a typical starting point). You are correct about RAID 6, however.

[Mayaa]

On 2016-07-29 at 2:10 PM, b1uew01f said:

Never go Raid 5. You get 1 drive of redundancy but in all likelihood youll kill another HDD on the rebuild and lose all your data.

Raid 6, Mirror or combinations from there. Raid 5 is effectively deprecated. 

Im no expert when it comes to raid but i feel like people are way over exaggerating when they are talking about raid 5.

You guys make it sound like it has a 99% chance of failing the rebuild, geez.

 

Like i get it, you shouldnt be running huge arrays in raid 5, or even super large hard drives in smaller arrays. But this is a 3 drive array with 3TB on each drive. And besides, he's planning to use it for PLEX, so its not like the main usage is for storing super important backups or anything.

 

I dunno, just my 2 cents.

[Andster29]

On 8/23/2016 at 9:15 PM, dalekphalm said:

This is incorrect. RAID 5 only requires 3 drives (although yes, 4 drives is a typical starting point). You are correct about RAID 6, however.

Just doubled checked. Yes I am wrong. You only need 3 drives for RAID 5. I have just always used a minimum of 4 drives when setting up a RAID 5. 

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, Andster29 said:

Just doubled checked. Yes I am wrong. You only need 3 drives for RAID 5. I have just always used a minimum of 4 drives when setting up a RAID 5. 

It's pretty much standard practice to start RAID 5 with 4 disks, as the benefit vs the risk is better that way (With 3 disks, you might as well consider just buying 2 larger disks and doing a RAID 1 mirror, rather than 3 smaller disks over RAID 5 - the price will probably come out the same either way).

[Manny_NotTheStig]

Should I then consider moving from my current setup to raid5 (with 4 discs)? I was shooting for raid10, but I couldn't get it to work on my motherboard  

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Manny_NotTheStig said:

Should I then consider moving from my current setup to raid5 (with 4 discs)? I was shooting for raid10, but I couldn't get it to work on my motherboard  

If you can easily get ahold of another of the "3TB Seagate Enterprise" drives you mention in the OP, then yeah, doing a 4x3TB RAID 5 array is fine - though if you're going with FreeNAS, DO NOT USE MOTHERBOARD RAID!

 

Use ZFS RAIDZ (The ZFS equivalent of RAID5), at the OS level.

 

ZFS can also do a RAID 10 mirroring equivalent as well, so both options are available, but I would recommend 4 drives in either scenario.

[leadeater]

20 hours ago, Mayaa said:

Im no expert when it comes to raid but i feel like people are way over exaggerating when they are talking about raid 5.

You guys make it sound like it has a 99% chance of failing the rebuild, geez.

 

Like i get it, you shouldnt be running huge arrays in raid 5, or even super large hard drives in smaller arrays. But this is a 3 drive array with 3TB on each drive. And besides, he's planning to use it for PLEX, so its not like the main usage is for storing super important backups or anything.

 

I dunno, just my 2 cents.

Yes, I also have the same frustration. RAID 5 is no where near as bad as people make it out to be and is perfect for small arrays. I've had 24 1TB disk arrays survive for years through multiple disk replacements with no issue, patrol reads/scrubbing exist for a reason and is not unique to ZFS. ZFS does have data integrity and errors only effect at the file level not the whole array which is much safer and is why it is better than traditional RAID.

 

Key point is don't waste all your money on redundancy, use the RAID level that is most appropriate for your disk count and array size. If half your disks and storage is going in to parity then you are doing it wrong.

 

Also for bulk data storage don't use RAID 10, same reason as above. Parity arrays are for general file storage and are very space efficient while also being very resilient. RAID 10 is used when you need very low latency writes, think databases etc.

[Manny_NotTheStig]

Bottom line, you guys suggest doing raid5 with my 4x 3tb, right? 

I'm not doing FreeNas anymore and I don't think I can just do raidz with my motherboard or windows 10.

[bobhays]

16 minutes ago, Manny_NotTheStig said:

Bottom line, you guys suggest doing raid5 with my 4x 3tb, right? 

I'm not doing FreeNas anymore and I don't think I can just do raidz with my motherboard or windows 10.

In Windows 10 you can make a raid 10 easily. Just stripe two drives and then mirror them in disk management. Raid 5 is also an option. The difference is 10 has better performance and redundancy, 5 has more storage space.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Manny_NotTheStig said:

Bottom line, you guys suggest doing raid5 with my 4x 3tb, right? 

I'm not doing FreeNas anymore and I don't think I can just do raidz with my motherboard or windows 10.

Windows 10 supports Storage Spaces which is actually very good, use it myself. The down side right now is for parity configurations, RAID 5/6 equiv, the write speed is only around 60MB/s-100MB/s. You can speed this up greatly if you use an SSD as a journal disk to cache writes. You can also do something similar to RAID 10, 2-way mirror, which is very fast but has the down side of only having 50% usable space.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, bobhays said:

In Windows 10 you can make a raid 10 easily. Just stripe two drives and then mirror them in disk management. Raid 5 is also an option. The difference is 10 has better performance and redundancy, 5 has more storage space.

Disk Management software RAID configuration is very much depreciated now and anything new should use Storage Spaces. Don't be surprised if Windows classic software RAID is removed at some point, won't be any time soon like 2+ years just a fyi plan for it to not be around.

[bobhays]

15 hours ago, leadeater said:

Disk Management software RAID configuration is very much depreciated now and anything new should use Storage Spaces. Don't be surprised if Windows classic software RAID is removed at some point, won't be any time soon like 2+ years just a fyi plan for it to not be around.

My bad I was gonna mention storage spaces but I thought any raid done through windows automatically became a storage space