Raid controller

Brano11

Brano11

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So I am possibly building a new pc over the next month or so. I am looking into possibly doing a raid configuration to maximize my performace/storage.

My question, I have always heard hardware raid controllers are much better then the software type. But how do the hardware ones work, just plug it in, download the software for that card and set up through that or what?
 
For home builds, your new motherboard might already have an onboard raid controller. If you're looking for pure performance, just do a raid 0. But honestly with SSD's today, the benefit on a raid 0 for playing games and typical use is negligible.

What do you need the raid configuration for?
 
RAID 0 for life! Instead of a thug life tattoo on my stomach, i have a RAID 0 Life one.

No but srsly, the new m2/m3 drives are so stupid fast. its awesome. my desktop is an m2 drive. my ssd is never the bottleneck at this point.
 
I'd be using a raid setup for storage on my PC. So it will not be ssd, my main drive will be an ssd, but not the rest lol. I was looking at doing a raid 5 config
 
Raid 5 will make your drives about 50% as fast with spinners and you need 4 drives. If you're looking for redundancy, I would look at an NAS solution so you can have hotswappable drives if you're planning on using a lot of storage. You can have it anywhere connected to your network that way you don't have to listen to 4 drives spinning all the time.
 
Pretty much any motherboard you purchase is going to have an onboard raid controller. If you're buying an SSD I wouldn't worry about a RAID configuration. You won't get the same significant performance improvement running a RAID 0 configuration on SSD's as you would over magnetic storage.

Also, do understand that losing a disk in your raid array with a RAID0 configuration means you'll lose all your data. Make sure if you're using your desktop for anything important that you're keeping backups of your important data somewhere.
 
Yea I knew raid 0 you lose all the data if 1 drive fails.

On raid 5, I did not know you lose that much performance. I have vaguely looked at NAS storage, but is that possible of I convert my old PC into my server?

EDIT: What about a raid 1+0?
 
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I used to use an extra PC for that, nice intel raid controller on the motherboard, all the drives in a tower case. I got tired of maintaining it that way, as well as when one had a smart failure, opening it and swapping it out. I ended up going the route of a raid enclosure, that has 8 bays, of 4 TB wd red drives, in a raid 10 config (I didn't want raid 5 due to performance hit, i.e. the overhead). The enclosure itself has been extremely reliable IMO, and I can just hotswap in a drive if one ever fails, and it will do a rebuild for me. It is USB3 or ESATA.

Even if you pick something else, after dealing with both options (internal and enclosure) for a long time, my 2c would be to go with an enclosure.

Oh, and again, really... don't bother with raid 5, if you don't want to mirror (1), go with 10. :)

htw
 
Awesome thanks HTW I will have to look into enclosure's.
 
htw said:
I used to use an extra PC for that, nice intel raid controller on the motherboard, all the drives in a tower case. I got tired of maintaining it that way, as well as when one had a smart failure, opening it and swapping it out. I ended up going the route of a raid enclosure, that has 8 bays, of 4 TB wd red drives, in a raid 10 config (I didn't want raid 5 due to performance hit, i.e. the overhead). The enclosure itself has been extremely reliable IMO, and I can just hotswap in a drive if one ever fails, and it will do a rebuild for me. It is USB3 or ESATA.

Even if you pick something else, after dealing with both options (internal and enclosure) for a long time, my 2c would be to go with an enclosure.

Oh, and again, really... don't bother with raid 5, if you don't want to mirror (1), go with 10. :)

htw
Click to expand...

Hmm so after seeing a little information on the enclosure's, is it as simple as connecting the HDD's in the enclosure, and then connecting the enclosure to your "server" via USB 2.0/3.0? That seems like it would be to easy, usually things can't be that easy!!!

When you had your enclosure in your PC, did you just remove the drive bay cage's that came with the case and put the enclosure in its place lol?
 
As someone else pointed out if you go M.2 SSD you aren't likely to FEEL much of a difference unless you do a LOT of heavy file work load. This is what I plan to do on my next computer build. SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V5P512BW - Newegg.com

I've had a lot of hard drives and raid arrays go bad. When its a simple flat drive its very simple. The more complex the raid array the harder it is to identify which drive has gone bad and the more likely the whole thing gets wonky.

Raid arrays often give people a false sense of security. It only protects against disk failure. There are still a ton of other things can wipe out your data. Make sure you plan to back the data up if it is important.

I personally have never used one of the NAS units but I've heard good things about Drobo and Synology. They are basically dedicated computers so you're going to drop $400-$800 + the cost of the drives.

I generally just throw some drives in my old computer and leave it running in the basement and anything I really want to have fast access to I have on the local SSD.
 
Ahh ok thanks for the info Dewey. I work at Best Buy, so most of the stuff I will be ordering, I will get my employee discount on.

Also, keep in mind this will NOT be my main PC, so the absolute ONLY thing I will have running on this "server" is my OS (Windows 10) on a solid state drive. EVERYTHING else I want to use all of my storage for (IE the reason for a raid enclosure). For my new gaming PC I WILL be using the m.2 port for my hard drive, but I will not be using my new PC as my server.

On another note, after doing some reading on Plex Software, since it runs on windows 10 I will more then likely just completely wipe the solid state (obviously after backing everything up). Then I will just use the external backup drive to transfer things I need over to my new PC.
 
Brano11, yes, the raid enclosures do it for you. Think of it like a SOC that deals with the raid controller/drives/etc., and interfaces each array as "drives" via USB, ESATA, or FW.

In the case of the one I have, I just slapped the drives in the enclosure, and powered it on and used the buttons per instructions to select raid type for each array, and then initialize them. The LED indicators on the front showed status for each one. Once initialized, and it showed as ready, I plugged it into a PC that runs windows 10 on SSD, and that's all it really does (well, does my torrents, but that's a different subject!).

They PNP'd as a disk for each array, which then I partitioned/formatted as normal via windows.

At that point, they just get used there, for sharing data, and backing it up (I share the drives on my local net). If I wanted to, I can simply unplug the usb3 cable (the interface I chose to use), and plug it in anywhere else, and again they look like external drives, but are raid (which is hidden from the OS, at least as far as data - however, you can check individual hdd smart status, as the enclosure does pass that info).

The time I had a flaky drive, it was smattering about a potential fail, and was under warranty, so I had a spare I kept in case of failure. The enclosure is hotplug, so I just opened the front (a door on the front), and pulled the drive it was bitching about (didn't have to guess, it told me which one), then popped in the new one, observed the LEDs on the front, it showed a rebuild started. Later on I checked in on it, all was back to normal. Sent in the failing HDD for warranty, got it back, and it's back to lying in a box as a swap in replacement.

I didn't choose to use a spare, or I could have done it that way. Either way though, the system did what I needed, and I didn't lose terrabytes of shit I had, which is what happened to me some years back, and is why I went the route I did.

Keep in mind it is a raid enclosure, so that's not quite the same as a NAS, such as synology. Those run their little software that makes it a mini-system so to speak, and then lets you set shit up (usually) like shares, or ftp, http, nfs, etc. A raid enclosure will do the hardware raid for you, but then needs a system to interface with, can't just sit on the network.

htw
 
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Htw, is it possible for you to link which enclosure you have?
 
Of course, keep in mind, you can do whatever cheapie drives you want. The best bet is just to keep in mind to have a spare, say, e.g. you use black or green drives, or w/e is on sale. And 2tb or even 3tb are going to scale way better for price. Depends on how soon you may want to be at issue with space.

htw
 
dewey2461 said:
Htw - Why didn't you go with one of the full up NAS units? Seems that enclosure is damn close spec wise.
Click to expand...
I wanted full control of my server, OS, services, etc. NAS devices are OK IMO, but I had the hardware lying around. I was also working on overall heat control for both raid and system at the time.

htw
 
htw said:
Of course, keep in mind, you can do whatever cheapie drives you want. The best bet is just to keep in mind to have a spare, say, e.g. you use black or green drives, or w/e is on sale. And 2tb or even 3tb are going to scale way better for price. Depends on how soon you may want to be at issue with space.

htw
Click to expand...

Awesome thanks htw! Yea I can get hard drives pretty dang cheap since I work at Best Buy. We have some employee purchase programs that make them pretty dang cheap lol.

I will have to continue to do some research, I am still about 2-3 weeks out from starting this project!

EDIT: I was looking at this enclosure (I do not need one with 8 slots lol, that is overkill for me). Mediasonic HFR2-SU3S2 PRORAID Box 4 Bay Raid 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure with USB 3.0 & eSATA - Newegg.com
 
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