Quick Home Server Raid Question..

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zaccaglin

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S i have a quick question about rebuilding two of my trusty home servers of the past 6 years into one unit.. Pretty much i currently have a Windows Box that runs any applications i need 24/7(Torrents, Serviio, Camera DVR Viewer for remote monitor, Media player for backyard audio, Dyndns, etc) and a FreeNAS box. Well both machines are due for an upgrade.. The FreeNAS box is getting full and the Windows box could use a new processor and a copy of Win7. So instead of paying to upgrade both I'm thinking of just building a new rig, installing Win7 Pro, and adding a raid card with some new 3tb drives.

When it comes to the raid, I'm thinking a raid 5 array with four 3tb WD Red drives that way i have some redundancy. This should give me around 9tb of space for all my ripped media, photos, and backups. Can i do this raid in software on windows 7? I was thinking of getting this SATA card for the drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816129087 If not can yall recommend a different 4 port Sata III card for under 150$? Used is fine. Or even any other insight on how i can make all this work. Heck even two Raid 1 arrays would be fine by me if i have to settle for that.

Sorry if i sound like a noob here, I'm a network cabling backbone installer not really a raid guy. The OS will be installed on a separate drive btw.
 
How many SATA ports do you need? There's Intel boards that support 8x SAS/SATA drives on one RAID controller + 2x SATAIII and 4x SATAII on another RAID controller.

There are other MOBOs out there with 6x SATA on one RAID controller...

"I'm thinking a raid 5 array with four 3tb WD Red drives that way i have some redundancy" so 4x drives? Pretty much any modern motherboard can handle that...

If you don't like or are not comfortable with Mobo RAID for some reason you could try Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces...purely a software solution but it's good if you don't use parity.
 
Not 100% sure on that Highpoint controller, but I suspect it's a "fakeraid" controller. That is, basically software RAID without the portability of more standard software RAID implementations.

IIRC, Windows 7 Pro can do software RAID 5. No real experience with Windows software RAID, but I've heard it's not terribly performant. Probably still fine for bulk storage, though.

Depending on form factor/planned expansion, a board with 5+ SATA ports would be fine for your needs as MysticRyuujin stated. You could use Intel RAID or Windows software raid with the onboard ports. I'm personally wary of RAID 5 with large disks and would go with 10 or 6 for 4 disks. Risk vs capacity decision for you to make.
 
MysticRyuujin said:
How many SATA ports do you need? There's Intel boards that support 8x SAS/SATA drives on one RAID controller + 2x SATAIII and 4x SATAII on another RAID controller.

There are other MOBOs out there with 6x SATA on one RAID controller...

"I'm thinking a raid 5 array with four 3tb WD Red drives that way i have some redundancy" so 4x drives? Pretty much any modern motherboard can handle that...

If you don't like or are not comfortable with Mobo RAID for some reason you could try Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces...purely a software solution but it's good if you don't use parity.
Click to expand...

The mother board I think I'm gonna use is one that I had in my short lived media center PC project. It's an AMD board with six sata II 3gb Ports. Its a MSI 740GM-P25 with an AMD x4 CPU. Just don't know of the Sata II will be fast enough for the demand tho? Plus once I add a DVD and a boot drive I'll be out of Sata ports. Not that that should matter.
 
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fantabulous said:
Not 100% sure on that Highpoint controller, but I suspect it's a "fakeraid" controller. That is, basically software RAID without the portability of more standard software RAID implementations.

IIRC, Windows 7 Pro can do software RAID 5. No real experience with Windows software RAID, but I've heard it's not terribly performant. Probably still fine for bulk storage, though.

Depending on form factor/planned expansion, a board with 5+ SATA ports would be fine for your needs as MysticRyuujin stated. You could use Intel RAID or Windows software raid with the onboard ports. I'm personally wary of RAID 5 with large disks and would go with 10 or 6 for 4 disks. Risk vs capacity decision for you to make.
Click to expand...

RAID ten is just two mirrored pairs correct? I've thought about that as we'll and am comfortable with that. Also hardware or motherboard raid doesn't bother me neither does software. Just want something that works and will continue to work is all.
 
No HDD is currently bottlenecked by SATA II. Period. SATA II supports up to 300MB/s. A single HDD pushes less than half of that.

SSDs on the other hand are pushing SATA III to its limits already.
 
MysticRyuujin said:
No HDD is currently bottlenecked by SATA II. Period. SATA II supports up to 300MB/s. A single HDD pushes less than half of that.

SSDs on the other hand are pushing SATA III to its limits already.
Click to expand...

Okay so it sounds like I won't need a raid or Sata card then. Now just to find out of my board can do any form of raid or if I'll be stuck with software. I guess I could always just have all four drives installed and boot into windows as normal and use rsync to mirror them If all else fails but I would like a real time mirror (raid) of some type.
 
Usually you need to boot into the BIOS and look for the AHCI/RAID/SATA config and change it to RAID.

It's been a while since I've seen a board that didn't support some kind of RAID.
 
MysticRyuujin said:
Usually you need to boot into the BIOS and look for the AHCI/RAID/SATA config and change it to RAID.

It's been a while since I've seen a board that didn't support some kind of RAID.
Click to expand...

Okay looks like the board can do 0/1/0+1/JBOD raid on the board itself. Ill try and dig it out of storage this week to play with it and see what i can get it to do.
 
If you use Intel RST, you can enable write-back which will use system memory as a buffer. It drastically increases raid performance on the cheap.

I wouldn't buy a high end raid card unless you're using the server for something that completely hammers it. For most home uses, even for large capacity drives, software or fake raid is fine.
 
zaccaglin said:
The mother board I think I'm gonna use is one that I had in my short lived media center PC project. It's an AMD board with six sata II 3gb Ports. Its a MSI 740GM-P25 with an AMD x4 CPU. Just don't know of the Sata II will be fast enough for the demand tho? Plus once I add a DVD and a boot drive I'll be out of Sata ports. Not that that should matter.
Click to expand...

bigdogchris said:
If you use Intel RST, you can enable write-back which will use system memory as a buffer. It drastically increases raid performance on the cheap.
Click to expand...
The bit you either missed or way-off the mark with.

OP, move to Win 8 Pro and do all that you are currently doing but now will be able to run Storage Spaces that will do what you want. Otherwise, time for hardware upgrade.
Avoid the LowPoint cards, Google HighPoint issues if you are unsure.
 
Lost-Benji said:
The bit you either missed or way-off the mark with.

OP, move to Win 8 Pro and do all that you are currently doing but now will be able to run Storage Spaces that will do what you want. Otherwise, time for hardware upgrade.
Avoid the LowPoint cards, Google HighPoint issues if you are unsure.
Click to expand...

I have tried windows 8 and I'm not a fan of it to even run it on any of my main rigs, so buying a copy for the server wouldn't interest me. I have a copy of Win7 pro that I'm no longer using so that's what i plan to use. As for the Motherboard and processor, i think it should be fine for my needs. With it being a Quad Core and 6gbs its easily better than my current Windows Box and FreeNAS box combined (there only running core2 duo's and 2gb each..)
 
zaccaglin said:
S i have a quick question about rebuilding two of my trusty home servers of the past 6 years into one unit.. Pretty much i currently have a Windows Box that runs any applications i need 24/7(Torrents, Serviio, Camera DVR Viewer for remote monitor, Media player for backyard audio, Dyndns, etc) and a FreeNAS box. Well both machines are due for an upgrade.. The FreeNAS box is getting full and the Windows box could use a new processor and a copy of Win7. So instead of paying to upgrade both I'm thinking of just building a new rig, installing Win7 Pro, and adding a raid card with some new 3tb drives.
Click to expand...
Go from this to.....v
zaccaglin said:
I have tried windows 8 and I'm not a fan of it to even run it on any of my main rigs, so buying a copy for the server wouldn't interest me. I have a copy of Win7 pro that I'm no longer using so that's what i plan to use. As for the Motherboard and processor, i think it should be fine for my needs. With it being a Quad Core and 6gbs its easily better than my current Windows Box and FreeNAS box combined (there only running core2 duo's and 2gb each..)
Click to expand...
6Gbps??????? No SATA-III on any of the hardware you have mentioned yet.

As for the Win8 whine, within about 3 minutes, you can have it running just the same as Windows 7 (A working start menu that you don't need to pay for or put up with XP looking start menus) and all other feature you are used to be there. Take the time.
The hardware you have is already many generations old and as you seem hell bent on keeping it (new or S/H can be had cheap) then there isn't much else to say.

You have narrowed your own options.
 
Lost-Benji said:
Go from this to.....v

6Gbps??????? No SATA-III on any of the hardware you have mentioned yet.

As for the Win8 whine, within about 3 minutes, you can have it running just the same as Windows 7 (A working start menu that you don't need to pay for or put up with XP looking start menus) and all other feature you are used to be there. Take the time.
The hardware you have is already many generations old and as you seem hell bent on keeping it (new or S/H can be had cheap) then there isn't much else to say.

You have narrowed your own options.
Click to expand...

I was referring to 6gbs of ram not Sata 3. Yes the hardware is old but I have it and I'm not doing anything with it and it's just sitting in my storage. I'm not trying to narrow my options but I just don't have 800$ to drop on a new server right now. I'm already sinking over 500$ into new drives. Just working to build a new file server that will handle my demands and not put a big tear in my pocket. I'm not trying to be difficult.
 
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