i'm building a NAS right now and still working out what RAID/OS... i want to go with atm. I'm wondering with the RAID (i'm looking at 1 or 5), what happen when i want to move the data HDDs out of that rig into another? .. can i still have the same data on the HDDs or do i need to move the data out before touching the RAID? Also, same question for software raid 5. Thanks.
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NAS HDDs
- Thread starter csnv
- Start date
Questions a little confusing, what are the details of the scenario?
In a raid configuration, you need all the drives together for it to work properly with the exception of degraded redundancy.
You can migrate a raid card and drives and keep a raid together if you don't change the raid settings when rebuilding, or at least this is true with a perc5/i raid controller as I have done this from several systems.
In a raid configuration, you need all the drives together for it to work properly with the exception of degraded redundancy.
You can migrate a raid card and drives and keep a raid together if you don't change the raid settings when rebuilding, or at least this is true with a perc5/i raid controller as I have done this from several systems.
jay2472000
Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2008
- Messages
- 590
Ok, gonna give it a shot. My personal theory on raid and moving arrays, etc is ASSUME if you do anything to the raid, youve lost it all. ( I also run dual WHS cause Im a stickler for backups and whatnot, so I may be a tad more paranoid than some, but I havent lost any data in a long long time)
In theory, if youre using software raid, and its the same software raid, same card, same drives, it should work. But theres just way too much that can happen that would make it not work. Same with hardware raid. Its just too risky with a lot of data you dont want to lose to try moving arrays.
The optimal ( safest ) way is to 1)backup your array, 2)move it, 3)see if it works, if it does, great, if not, 4)then rebuild the array, etc and 5)restore from your backup.
As far as the raid 1 versus raid 5, heres a place to read, and make an informed decision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Also know, from what I understand, in RAID you pretty much get what you pay for, barring the Perc5 card. So if you go software raid 5, its gonna be slow. If you go with an El Cheapo raid card its gonna be slow. Now also remember slow is a relative term. I have a super cheap non raid sata controller card in my WHS and it transfers at about 60 Mb/s. I should get closer to around 80 or better considering the whole setup, but trust me, going from 13 to 60 was enough of a performance jump for me to be happy..
As for OS selection, I use WHS, as I am very very comfortable in a Windows environment, I tried Freenas, and loved some of it, and hated other things, and just plain couldnt figure out parts of it so I gave up. Had I had more experience with BSD os I may have left Windows for Freenas, but finally decided the time investment to learn it wasnt worth it for me.
In theory, if youre using software raid, and its the same software raid, same card, same drives, it should work. But theres just way too much that can happen that would make it not work. Same with hardware raid. Its just too risky with a lot of data you dont want to lose to try moving arrays.
The optimal ( safest ) way is to 1)backup your array, 2)move it, 3)see if it works, if it does, great, if not, 4)then rebuild the array, etc and 5)restore from your backup.
As far as the raid 1 versus raid 5, heres a place to read, and make an informed decision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Also know, from what I understand, in RAID you pretty much get what you pay for, barring the Perc5 card. So if you go software raid 5, its gonna be slow. If you go with an El Cheapo raid card its gonna be slow. Now also remember slow is a relative term. I have a super cheap non raid sata controller card in my WHS and it transfers at about 60 Mb/s. I should get closer to around 80 or better considering the whole setup, but trust me, going from 13 to 60 was enough of a performance jump for me to be happy..
As for OS selection, I use WHS, as I am very very comfortable in a Windows environment, I tried Freenas, and loved some of it, and hated other things, and just plain couldnt figure out parts of it so I gave up. Had I had more experience with BSD os I may have left Windows for Freenas, but finally decided the time investment to learn it wasnt worth it for me.
ok let's face.. the following scenario:
- you are using the raid ports from mobo (or any card)
- that card company is gone from planet earth
- your computer crashed and burned everything in it .. except the hdds were untouched
- so now you have the hdds and a new server
is there a way to port this raid to a different raid controller on that new server? to recover the data?
i thought the data on the raids have been standardized and should be the same acrossed all controllers and even software? ..or is that a big no-no assumption?
Software RAID works a little different as far as I understand. If you used something Linux based for instance, like FreeNAS, as long as the drives themselves weren't damaged, you could mount those drives as a softraid on any linux computer that could see the individual drives (ie any linux computer with a recent kernel, supported SATA controller and necessary packages installed). In this sense, software based arrays are pretty portable.
Dustin
Dustin
jay2472000
Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2008
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- 590
Ahh I forgot about the Linux softraid, it is much more forgiving if I am understanding it correctly. BUT, lets say you do have something happen and need to migrate it. you grab all the HD out of the old machine, walk comfortably across the carpet, touch the door, feel a shock and poof, one of your drives wont work anymore........you accidentally fried it with that teeny little bit of static electricity. I know its a tad far fetched, but very well could happen. Personally, just keeping good backups eliminates 99% of the problem right there.