How much storage space is enough?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by hemicuda

kind of OT, but has the write cycle limitation of static memory been improved enough to handle being the OS drive?

Like a Solid State Drive? Yes most promise 5+ years worth of use.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Bizarroterl

If you're looking at a NAS only solution that is expandable look into unraid. I'm using it and I've added drives twice, added a controller, upgraded several times, replaced the CPU with a slower one, and moved everything into another chassis. All of this was done and no data had to be moved.

How much CPU do you need for an unRAID box? I have a i-7 950 quad-core 3.06 gig with 3 gigs of 1333 meg RAM that has a mainboard that supports 10 sata drives and 2 IDE drives. Maybe I could downgrade the CPU and use the fast quad in a different computer. I am thinking of putting the parity drive on hardware RAID 1 until unRAID comes out with the P+Q version that allows up to any two drives to fail. I really like the expandability of unRAID, the relative low cost for the 20 drive pro version, and containing the operating system on a USB flash drive. My drives are in RAID 1 pairs now, so it would significantly increase my storage space. Later, if I needed more space, I could add one or two additional controller cards to add more drives. I have a 850 watt power supply that I would use for the unRAID computer.

I plan to setup my SageTV computer with a 2 TB RAID 1 recording drive and move the recorded files to the unRAID box with SJQ. I have dual 1 gig eithernet connections on both computers I would use for the SageTV computer and the unRAID computer. I plan to connect the SageTV and unRAID computers together with a cross-over cable to remove the traffic from my LAN.

I already made a bootable USB flash drive for the free 3 drive unRAID version, but haven't setup the test unRAID computer yet. I plan to test it within about a week. If it works out for HD playback, I will deploy the unRAID computer.

Dave

[Fuzzy]

UnRAID, while yes, it does use some CPU, would probably work just fine on an Atom330... so anything you can put in that i-7 board will work fine. Though, honestly, If you've got that CPU in there already, you could probably use it as your sage server, and virtuilize UnRAID on the same machine. Cut down on the networking needs, and cut down on the hardware count in general.

of course, you'd also have to think about what you are wanting the UnRAID for in the first place. For most UnRAID uses, it is looking more and more like FlexRAID will fit the bill... it's free, and can run right on your windows host. It'll provide the parity system for recovery of your media, and not require any 'transfer' (you could just record directly to the FlexRAID protected folders).

[davephan]

Do you have any review links for FlexRAID? I saw a review of unRAID on the Category5 podcast.

Dave

[Bizarroterl]

I'm running a low power Celeron LGA775 CPU. Unraid doesn't need a lot of CPU power.

[davephan]

I checked out WHS, FlexRAID and unRAID. The unRAID file server was the best choice for me. I really like the idea of the unRAID system software all contain on a bootable USB flash drive. I am currently moving files over to the three drive unRAID server. I ordered the 20 drive pro USB jump drive pair, and am waiting for them while I am moving the files over. The unRAID sever has an i-7 950 3.06 gig quad core, which I may downgrade in the future.

I do not like the storage inefficiency of WHS, the never ending Microsoft patching, and the lack of a bare metal restoration, other than a scratch rebuild. Maybe I did not check out FlexRAID enough before making the decision. I will continue to compare unRAID to other alternatives, in case I decide to switch to something else in the future.

UnRAID will be coming out with P+Q parity, possibly in the next release, which will allow any two drives to fail without data loss. The throughput of unRAID is slower than RAID, but fast enough for HD playback. I plan to record with a RAID 1 drive set on the SageTV computer. The files will be moved later to the unRAID server, probably with SJQ.

The unRAID server will solve my storage problems for now. The unRAID server could grow to about 18 TB with the drives I already have now. The unRAID server could expand to about 34 TB with all 2 TB drives. I don't think that will happen. Eventually, I will need to start deleting more files, but deleting files is sometimes hard to do if you are a file collector.

Dave