Need Help choose a Storage Solution

[djboy6480]

Hello,

I need a little bit of help. I want to build a new system for me and I am tired of dataloss and workflow interruption because of hardware failure. So I want to build a RAID5 with 4 x 3TB WD Red´s. Now is the question Hardware or Software Raid, of cause HW Raid would be my preference but I have trouble choosing a RAID controller (I am on a Budget). My thought was the "Adaptec ASR-5805Z". Dose anyone can give my some tipps or have a better or cheaper controller in mind.
 

thx for the help in advance

[deleted_member_030719]

1 minute ago, djboy6480 said:

Hello,

I need a little bit of help. I want to build a new system for me and I am tired of dataloss and workflow interruption because of hardware failure. So I want to build a RAID5 with 4 x 3TB WD Red´s. Now is the question Hardware or Software Raid, of cause HW Raid would be my preference but I have trouble choosing a RAID controller (I am on a Budget). My thought was the "Adaptec ASR-5805Z". Dose anyone can give my some tipps or have a better or cheaper controller in mind.
 

thx for the help in advance

Software RAID is commonly hated upon by reviewers that I subscribe to. Hardware RAID would be the best option, imo.

[djboy6480]

Dose anyone know a good and affordable raid controller? 1x SAS or 4x SATA is enough (4x 3TB WD Red).

[Captain_WD]

On 10.10.2016 г. at 10:50 AM, djboy6480 said:

~snip~

Hello Welcome to the community! 

 

A couple of questions: 

- Why did you decide on RAID5 specifically?

- How much usable storage space do you need?

- What redundancy level would you prefer?

- What types of usages are you going to do and what OS are you going to be using? 

 

Being on a budget makes it rather hard for you to get a good hardware controller. There's nothing wrong with software RAID, especially for home purposes as it is cheaper to implement, migrate and recover in case something bad happens. Hardware is more secure and stable and it does not put any load on your system. 

 

Captain_WD. 

[djboy6480]

18 hours ago, Captain_WD said:

Hello Welcome to the community! 

 

A couple of questions: 

- Why did you decide on RAID5 specifically?

- How much usable storage space do you need?

- What redundancy level would you prefer?

- What types of usages are you going to do and what OS are you going to be using? 

 

Being on a budget makes it rather hard for you to get a good hardware controller. There's nothing wrong with software RAID, especially for home purposes as it is cheaper to implement, migrate and recover in case something bad happens. Hardware is more secure and stable and it does not put any load on your system. 

 

Captain_WD. 

1. Because I want a reliable solution for my data storage. If a drive dies just swap it out done. no workflow interruption.
2. 8 to 10 TB (currently 6TB)

3. I need 1 spare drive and of cause i have a ded. backup : )
4. Win 10, little bit video editing and gaming, and storage for data, movies, games, ect.

[Captain_WD]

3 hours ago, djboy6480 said:

~snip~

Mind that RAID5 has a particularly long rebuild period and if another drive happens to encounter a problem you would lose everything during the process on the whole array. I would recommend to consider either RAID10 or RAID6 which would give you double parity or have a separate location which will have backups of everything important that's on the main array. 

 

4x3TB in RAID5 would give you roughly 9TB of usable storage space. Depending on your budget, I would recommend to either do 4x5TB in RAID10 or RAID6, or have more drives of lower capacities on a RAID6 configuration (something like 5x4TB in RAID6). 

 

Having one spare drives is good but I would strongly recommend to consider the chances of another drive failing during the rebuild process. A simple 4x3TB array in a RAID5 configuration could easily take more than 20 hours to rebuild and if something happens during that time you would lose everything. 

 

For those types of usages you don't really need an expensive hardware controller card and you could easily go for software-based RAID and with the saved funds from the card you could get a backup solution such as a NAS or an External drive. Remember, RAID isn't a replacement for backups and only provides redundancy. 

 

Captain_WD. 

[djboy6480]

I think that would be overkill for me and you have to keep in mind if I use more than 4 dirves I need a RAID-Controller with more than 1 SAS port = more cost or at least less selection.
Like I said I have a backup, if somthing happens in the small time frame between rebuilding the RAID.

My thought was to use only 4, 3TB drives  (because of cost) and have the about 400MB/s seq. Read and use a spare SSD (128GB) as a SSD cache for the RAID.

I Hope to get better loading time in games and can store all my steam games on the RAID.

To make it simple:

 

I need Speed (Read)
I need it Cheap (about: 500€ for Drives and 150€ RAID controller)
I need it to be save but not bulletproof

 

Greetings from Germany from djboy6480.

PS: Thank you Captain_WD for taking the time for writing
 

[Captain_WD]

3 hours ago, djboy6480 said:

~snip~

You are most welcome. 

 

If it's pure gaming that you are after you may be better off ditching one of the drives, using a larger SSD solely for the games and use the other 3 (or narrow them down to two) drives in a RAID config for massive storage with redundancy. Using a 500GB SSD for the most demanding games where the loading time will be improved and two 4TB drives in RAID1 for the less demanding games and massive data is also a good option which may come cheaper and with less chances of complication as it is more simple to implement. 

 

Captain_WD.