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Need Help to Convert this Windows Machine to a Media backup server RAID 5

Wesley
By Wesley
in Storage Devices
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So my wife now has my hand me down computer as i upgraded my rig and i am in need of a good cheap storage solution for it. I want a RAID 5 or 6 solution as i believe it will suit my needs as i want redundancy and it must run Windows so it lets her use the computer so no Linux solutions. I have not figured out yet if i want it to be all 1TB or 2TB drives all my movies and tv and all other data combined is about 2.5 TB right now. Below is a list of the hardware in the system and this MB appears to not be able to run anything but RAID 1 & 0 so i will need a raid card for the system it appears. Any thoughts on how i can do this on the cheap would be appreciated. Please note that there is a total of 6 drive bays available i plan on mounting the SSD on the chassis itself.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965

MB: MSI 870-G45

Case: Coolermaster Haf 912

GPU: Gigabyte Radeon HD 6870 Windforce

Mem: Mushkin Enhanced Silverline Stiletto 8GB

OS HDD: Intel 120GB SSD

Intel 4790k • Asus Z97-A • Gigabyte GTX 970 Windforce • G.Skill 1866 4GBx2 • Corsair HX850W PSU • Noctua NH-D15 Air Cooler • Intel 530 120GB SSD(OS) • 1TB HDD(Games) • Cooler Master HAF 912 • Logitech G15 Key • Razer Abyssus Mouse • Asus 24in 144hz VG248QE

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My first thoughts where to buy a Motherboard that does have the ability to do RAID 5 but i have no hands on experience with RAID so thats why i'm here to POST in the forums for input.

Intel 4790k • Asus Z97-A • Gigabyte GTX 970 Windforce • G.Skill 1866 4GBx2 • Corsair HX850W PSU • Noctua NH-D15 Air Cooler • Intel 530 120GB SSD(OS) • 1TB HDD(Games) • Cooler Master HAF 912 • Logitech G15 Key • Razer Abyssus Mouse • Asus 24in 144hz VG248QE

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Software raid would be a good choice here and you have more than enough cpu power for it. Which OS is on that PC? AFAIK windows7 does not support in striped parity (raid5/6) sets but windows 8 does. Otherwise you could use flexraid to implement a pseudo raid system with single or sual parity which runs ontop of the filesystem instead of below like other raids. This doesn't utilise all of you drives the same way as conventional raid as the data isn't striped, so the performance is more or less the same as a single drive but very adequate for media storage.

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Hey thanks for the reply i looked up the windows 8 raid looks very interesting. Any idea if using this feature as well as the wife using her computer would cause her to notice performance issues. The biggest thing she does with the machine is play world of warcraft. Thanks

Intel 4790k • Asus Z97-A • Gigabyte GTX 970 Windforce • G.Skill 1866 4GBx2 • Corsair HX850W PSU • Noctua NH-D15 Air Cooler • Intel 530 120GB SSD(OS) • 1TB HDD(Games) • Cooler Master HAF 912 • Logitech G15 Key • Razer Abyssus Mouse • Asus 24in 144hz VG248QE

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