Raid and data safety

Snake3y3s · November 2, 2016

Ok, so i had a 3TB fail on me and lost quite a bit of data... now before you go and so I should have backed up and so on... yes, maybe I should have, but the data I lost was a mixture of media and training that I would like to keep, but that i constantly access. so its kind of data that I could get again, but would take time and lots of effort.

So I am now getting the data recovered and looking into some redundancy, apart from backing up. I dont have a huge budget so im trying to see what would be a GOOD and COST EFFECTIVE manner of doing all this.

I have a few thoughts/solutions but I would like to see what would be the best course of action.

My setup at the moment consists of a SSD for OS only, and WD Black 1TB for games installs. and then i have a old 1TB WD and a 800GB WD, that have a mixture of important files and pictures/movies/anime/ and a whole whack of random stuff.

So... im looking at setting up a RAID of some kind (raid 5 or raid 10 possibly so possibly around 5 drives eventually) so that I have some redundancy but should I go internal RAID or external raid??
I have a Asus formula VII Ranger motherboard, does it support some kind of intel RAID? or should I invest in a Raid controller?

otherwise, I was looking at buying the Lian LI ex-503 It's inexpensive for me in that it costs about the same as a 3TB WD red (that im planning on buying for the setup) but I hear that the J-micron chipset isn't all that reliable.

So... any thoughts/comments/suggestions?

Mira Yurizaki · November 2, 2016

Are you looking into getting a backup solution? Then you should really have it not in the computer.

With that in mind, regarding which RAID you want to use depends on what you think is best for you. RAID5 offers a compromise between performance and redundancy, but it can be a pain if one of the drives fails as performance drops heavily and rebuilding the contents of the lost disk can take a long time. RAID 10 is just RAID 1 + RAID 0, so you can't do 5 disks with it (it needs to be a multiple of 2 with at least 4 drives).

If you're really paranoid about your stuff, I'd use RAID1 and two drives. RAID1 is simple for any system to use and rebuilding a lost drive is easy.

Matt_98 · November 2, 2016

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

Are you looking into getting a backup solution? Then you should really have it not in the computer.

could get a 2 bay nas

Snake3y3s · November 2, 2016

7 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Are you looking into getting a backup solution? Then you should really have it not in the computer.

well, at the moment I am just looking for some redundancy, because its data that I constantly access, so loosing a drive I can atleast just replace and let it rebuild.

but saying that, I will still be implementing a backup of some kind (just need to be able to afford drives for it)

Basically... loosing a drive (which is inevitable) and in turn loosing all the data on it, costs alot, where as loosing one drive and repairing it by replacing the failed drive is a MUCH cheaper excersise

Mira Yurizaki · November 2, 2016

Just now, Snake3y3s said:

well, at the moment I am just looking for some redundancy, because its data that I constantly access, so loosing a drive I can atleast just replace and let it rebuild.

but saying that, I will still be implementing a backup of some kind (just need to be able to afford drives for it)

My impression of using RAID (except RAID0, but that's questionable now) on a client system is dubious at best. Instead focus on having a backup system. If it needs to be constantly accessed, get a NAS box.

And I'm sort of questioning why you need constant access to 3TB unless you're running a server. o3o

dalekphalm · November 5, 2016

On 2016-11-02 at 0:58 PM, Snake3y3s said:

well, at the moment I am just looking for some redundancy, because its data that I constantly access, so loosing a drive I can atleast just replace and let it rebuild.

but saying that, I will still be implementing a backup of some kind (just need to be able to afford drives for it)

Basically... loosing a drive (which is inevitable) and in turn loosing all the data on it, costs alot, where as loosing one drive and repairing it by replacing the failed drive is a MUCH cheaper excersise

If you're looking at the convenience factor, I would recommend this:

Keep your SSD OS drive as is.

Replace your 3 HDD's (2x 1TB HDD's and the 800GB HDD) with one large HDD that has all the capacity you need now, plus expansion room for the next few years - eg a 4TB HDD. Get two of them.

Run the 2x 4TB HDD's in RAID1 Mirrored array. Simple, easy solution that won't have any performance hits (except during a rebuild, if it supports live rebuilding).

Then, when you can afford to, get a simple 2-Bay NAS, with 2x larger HDD's (I'd recommend 6TB at least). This allows you to have a proper backup schedule, with multiple copies of data. Depending on your backup solution, you won't use much extra data (For example, using Incremental backup saves a ton of data, as it only backs up new files or files that have changed). If you can get a backup software that also supports Deduplication - or if the NAS itself does, that'll save WAYYY more space as well (Deduplication basically just looks over all files on the entire disk, and only stores a single copy of that file, then just uses pointers for all other copies of that file). Using that in conjunction with RAID 1 on the NAS will mean you've got good data redundancy (on 2 drives in a mirror), without sacrificing a lot of HDD space.

Now with that in mind, Deduplication is generally an enterprise feature, so I'm not really expecting you to be able to find a NAS that supports it for a reasonable price.