[nycbug-talk] Advice on setting up a RAID array

[Pete Wright]

Jonathan wrote:

> Hello all,
>     I'm thinking about setting up a RAID array for my computer for a 
> few reasons:
> 1.  I'm really bad about backups and I have too much information that 
> is reorganized too often to try to backup on CDs
> 2.  I'd like to have more hard drive space for future use
> 3.  I have some money to spend :) and I have not spent any on 
> computers for over 6 months :(
>
hey those are all execellent reasons, especially #3 ;)

>     The main things I am looking for with the RAID array are (not 
> necessarily in priority order):
> 1.  Size, I'd like to go 500GB+
> 2.  Redundancy, the main requirement I'm planning to try and mitigate 
> any crashes considering I have no backups (I do know hard drive 
> crashes are not the only thing that can destroy data but hard drive 
> crashes are my main concern)
> 3.  Preferably Hardware RAID so it is more compatible across OSes and 
> performs better.
> 4.  SATA, I don't know if this is even an option yet but SATA would be 
> very nice esp. considering 18in IDE cables can't reach anywhere near 
> the top of my case where I would need to put the drives.
> 5.  Compatibility, I don't doubt whatever I get would work under 
> windows but I also want to be sure it will work under the BSDs 
> (FreeBSD-current won't boot right now but I want to try  NetBSD one of 
> these days (5.2.1-release does work for some reason))



i've had pretty good luck with the 3Ware Raid controllers.  They are 
relativly cheap, and are supported quite well with FreeBSD.  I use the 
"Escalade 7506 Series",* *they are IDE controllers.  They do offer SATA 
cards as well, but have not used them.  I have one server here that's 
using a 7506-12 card, serving up about 1.3 Ter. of data with no 
problems.  The only drawback I can think about these guys is the onboard 
cache is very small.  If you are trying to do any highspeed striping 
(i.e. a Raid 0 or 1) performance will not be that great when compared to 
a SCSI RAID card with a proper amount of cache.  But it seems like your 
are shooting for a RAID 5 config so you should be OK.


-p

-- 
~~~oO00Oo~~~
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
www.nomadlogic.org/~pete