Making disk raid array as fast as SSDs

[TheNuzziNuzz]

I'm looking for some combination of disks and raid controler/s to build a redundant, but reliable home/small home business storage. Not backup, that will be elsewhere.

 

Basically, what are the ways I can use Raid and hard drives to achieve 500mbps read and write, essentially performance similar to a good SSD.

 

I have no experience with raid. Budget is important, but I would rather see all my options price is not a big concern.

 

Most importantly outside from reliability is expandability. I only need 2-4tb right now but expect to need significantly more in the future.

 

So what are my options, and what kind of drives, other hardware do I need to make this happen?

Thank you all for the help!

[Br3tt96]

I'm rather sure you'd need tons of mech drives to semi get close to 500mbps

[TheNuzziNuzz]

Just now, Br3tt96 said:

I'm rather sure you'd need tons of mech drives to semi get close to 500mbps

Are you sure? Most 7200rpm hard disks i've used get around 100?

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

You could make a f**king huge RAID 10

[TheNuzziNuzz]

1 minute ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

You could make a f**king huge RAID 10

Thats what I was thinking, if one drive is 100mbps, would I want 10 drives in raid 10?

[Mira Yurizaki]

The fastest I've seen a single hard drive perform is my 6TB Seagate Barracuda that topped out at 200MB/sec. A review of a 12TB hard drive I found got up to 260MB/sec while maintaining 200MB/sec on average in benchmarks.

 

However here's the thing: even if you combine these, they'll still be slower than an SSD. The seek times of hard drives are still orders of magnitude slower than SSDs and no amount of RAIDing is going to fix that.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Just now, TheNuzziNuzz said:

Thats what I was thinking, if one drive is 100mbps, would I want 10 drives in raid 10?

How many drives should you have? How many can you afford? That's how many. But 10 at least, yeah

[TheKDub]

11 minutes ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

I'm looking for some combination of disks and raid controler/s to build a redundant, but reliable home/small home business storage. Not backup, that will be elsewhere.

 

Basically, what are the ways I can use Raid and hard drives to achieve 500mbps read and write, essentially performance similar to a good SSD.

 

I have no experience with raid. Budget is important, but I would rather see all my options price is not a big concern.

 

Most importantly outside from reliability is expandability. I only need 2-4tb right now but expect to need significantly more in the future.

 

So what are my options, and what kind of drives, other hardware do I need to make this happen?

Thank you all for the help!

I've seen some 7200RPM HDDs get upwards of 200MB/s.

If you want it to be reliable, you're going to wanty RAID 10. Although this has high costs equipment wise.
 

 

3x1TB WD Blues in RAID 0 seems to have similar performance to an SSD. You'd likely want to throw a 4th in there for the extra speed boost. Though that'd also need you'd need 4 more for RAID 10, so you're looking at 8 drives, roughly $50 USD each (after tax), so that'd be $400. For that much, you could just get a 2TB SSD and call it at that. You also wouldn't need a RAID controller or a case capable of holding 8 drives either.

 

Not to mention the hard drives will never be quite as fast as SSDs due to how they operate. (latencies will always be higher.)

[TheNuzziNuzz]

1 minute ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

How many drives should you have? How many can you afford? That's how many. But 10 at least, yeah

As many as I need

[TheNuzziNuzz]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The fastest I've seen a single hard drive perform is my 6TB Seagate Barracuda that topped out at 200MB/sec. A review of a 12TB hard drive I found got up to 260MB/sec while maintaining 200MB/sec on average in benchmarks.

 

However here's the thing: even if you combine these, they'll still be slower than an SSD. The seek times of hard drives are still orders of magnitude slower than SSDs and no amount of RAIDing is going to fix that.

Yes I understand that, I want ssd like performance, I understand its not the same as having SSDs. I would also have an SSD cache

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

I'm looking for some combination of disks and raid controler/s to build a redundant, but reliable home/small home business storage. Not backup, that will be elsewhere.

 

Basically, what are the ways I can use Raid and hard drives to achieve 500mbps read and write, essentially performance similar to a good SSD.

 

I have no experience with raid. Budget is important, but I would rather see all my options price is not a big concern.

 

Most importantly outside from reliability is expandability. I only need 2-4tb right now but expect to need significantly more in the future.

 

So what are my options, and what kind of drives, other hardware do I need to make this happen?

Thank you all for the help!

Problem is what makes a hdd is isn't that 500mB/s its the random io and there is no way a hdd is going to get near that.

 

If you want a raid array, Id probably just setup software raid array in your os of choice. 

 

Whats you budget? For that small of storage, id personally just get a ssd, but you can also get about 6hdds

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

1 minute ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

As many as I need

Well then however many your server can fit

[TheNuzziNuzz]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Problem is what makes a hdd is isn't that 500mB/s its the random io and there is no way a hdd is going to get near that.

 

If you want a raid array, Id probably just setup software raid array in your os of choice. 

 

Whats you budget? For that small of storage, id personally just get a ssd, but you can also get about 6hdds

Its mainly going to store large media files so sequential is really all I care about for this specific array of drives. I want the cheapness of hard disks because I need more storage but I don't want to sacrifice speed compared to an SSD. In addition to this array I will havea smaller SSD setup.

[Br3tt96]

If raid 0 is an option wouldn't they degrade like crazy?

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

Yes I understand that, I want ssd like performance, I understand its not the same as having SSDs. I would also have an SSD cache

Alright. Assuming your workload is mostly reads, I would recommend at the bare minimum a RAID5 setup with three disks known to approach 180MB/sec or so (If you need a starting point: https://www.storagereview.com/reviews/consumer/hdd)

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

Its mainly going to store large media files so sequential is really all I care about for this specific array of drives. I want the cheapness of hard disks because I need more storage but I don't want to sacrifice speed compared to an SSD. In addition to this array I will havea smaller SSD setup.

What OS?

 

If you want thses on your desktop, just add like 4 hdds, then make them a array in storage spaces in windows. That also lets you have a ssd tier, so add a few ssds. 

 

You cant get ssd speeds at hdd prices, but this is about as close as you will get. 

[TheNuzziNuzz]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What OS?

 

If you want thses on your desktop, just add like 4 hdds, then make them a array in storage spaces in windows. That also lets you have a ssd tier, so add a few ssds. 

 

You cant get ssd speeds at hdd prices, but this is about as close as you will get. 

I have a windows server. At the moment my plan is to put 4 180mbps HDDs in software raid 10, share it as network drive.

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

I have a windows server. At the moment my plan is to put 4 180mbps HDDs in software raid 10, share it as network drive.

What version?

 

Use storage spaces for that it will work fine. Add a ssd if you want. Make sure to set columns right.

 

Also what is your network speed? 

[TheNuzziNuzz]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What version?

 

Use storage spaces for that it will work fine. Add a ssd if you want. Make sure to set columns right.

 

Also what is your network speed? 

I have Cat5e throughout my house, I have a 10gig switch and network cards.

[potoooooooo]

Really not all that difficult.

 

I have 6 slow old 1TB drives in Raid 5 and it saturates a gigabit connection

 

Edit: JK, 100MB/s is already Gigabit

[TheNuzziNuzz]

1 minute ago, potoooooooo said:

Really not all that difficult.

 

I have 6 slow old 1TB drives in Raid 5 and it saturates a gigabit connection

Gigabit is only 125mbps, I am looking for 500

[potoooooooo]

1 minute ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

Gigabit is only 125mbps, I am looking for 500

I realized that as soon as i hit submit.

 

Still it's not at all difficult. If you're using 100MB/s as a baseline per drive, Then a 7 drive RAID 6 or 6 Drive RAID 5 should be able to do it pretty easily

[TheNuzziNuzz]

Just now, potoooooooo said:

I realized that as soon as i hit submit.

 

Still it's not at all difficult. If you're using 100MB/s as a baseline per drive, Then a 7 drive RAID 6 or 6 Drive RAID 5 should be able to do it pretty easily

I am planning to do a raid 10

[potoooooooo]

3 minutes ago, TheNuzziNuzz said:

I am planning to do a raid 10

If you want expandability, that's not the way to do it. Raid 5/6 is more economical as well.

[TheNuzziNuzz]

Just now, potoooooooo said:

If you want expandability, that's not the way to do it. Raid 5/6 is more economical as well.

Okay. How will that effect reliability?