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Cheapest raid setup options

Jeremy_Sawatzky

Jeremy_Sawatzky

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I dont wana sound like a cheap skate here but the reality is i dont have alot of cash to blow on a raid setup.

Right now on my editing rig i havent got a proper backup going yet. im running 3 7200rpm drives and one ssd for the os. windows 7. I want a 4tb raid setup thats going to be fast enough to handle red scarlet footage. the reason i want 4tb in raid is because i have over 2tb of data i must have backup for and the other 2 tb to load and ofload footage to work on in premiere.

i was looking at a drobo 4 bay setup but i dont know about firewire 800. is that going to be fast enough? is it possible for me to buy 4 2tb drives, put them in my computer with a raid card and then run them in a raid to give me fast performance with full backup of 4tb?

I would like to start from scratch with this raid setup and format my rig, and use all new drives. i have a 750gb, 1000 and 1.5tb drives in my comp right now along with the ssd, these drives are old and i dont trust them anymore. could i have a 4tb raid setup in my comp with full backup up and running for $600? i know each drive is about 110cad. and i want 4. i assume my motherboard cant handle that much in raid. thats why i need a raid card.

is it a better option for me to raid 4 1tb cards in my comp for more speed then have an external 2x2tb drives for backup?

srry for the long post. this might be the wrong place to ask about prosumer raid setups, im just not in the financial state yet to afford a real setup.
 
Yes you will want to buy brand new drives, make sure each drive is exactly the same model # and made in the same country, make sure to check the serial printout of the drives to confirm this, you can get a performance loss if you do not setup a raid correctly.

As for selecting drives I would "NOT" recommend using SSD drives (till 3rd gen is out), look into the Samsung 1TB RAID class drives or Seagate 1TB~2TB drives.

I'd recommend the following Raid card.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...etail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=341-3742

They can be bought off Ebay quite readily, be ready to remove some of the pins on the card (5 & 6 if I remember correctly) to remove the power saving feature as its only compatible with a dell workstation but you will want to test it out on your machine first because it does work with some Intel & AMD chipsets, you will need a after-market heatsink for the chipset because the workstation it is meant to be used in has forced air, so thermal glue and a aluminum chipset heatsink and maybe a fan will take care of that and a pair of SAS cables. You can even change the firmware to the OEM instead of Dell firmware.

After purchasing the above I'd recommend to move your mainboard, cpu, harddrives to a rackmount 4U+ case and when selecting a rackmount case make sure you get a case with the drives in the correct operational position (horizontal) or if you go with a rackmount case that mounts drives in a vertical positioning you will risk losing a drives lifespan due to the additional forces applied.

Why is it that you think you require a RAID for RED/SCARLET footage anyhow? Red files are tiny.
 
ya... i definitly cant afford a 700$ raid card. and thers gotta be a solution that doesnt require such drastic mods. can my motherboard handle raid at all? its specs state it can handle 6 drives @ 6gbs. in raid 0,1,5,10 why wouldnt i do that?
 
The card is around $100 on Ebay.

What is your model # on your motherboard?
 
check out the mercury qx2, 4 bay raid 5. I own two of them. Works off esata so you don't have to spend to money on a SAS card. I average 200 mb/sec read, and write with it, using samsung spinpoint f3 1 tb drivse. Equals to 3 tb of hd space exactly on raid 5, not the fastest, but a great workhorse, and good price for the redundancy and speed you get. A shy over 600 bux if you just get the unit and throw in drives yourself.
 
Sounds like you've got a Sata III mobo so, I'm quite sure your setup could natively handle onboard RAID or if not, latest Windows versions allow for setting up a software RAID. I personally use a RAID 0 as my system drive and another RAID 0 as my backup internal D drive. Then, a single lane PCIe card that allows an external RAID 0 setup. But it sounds like you are interested in a RAID 5 or something, so I would guess that you could do as you suggest and just start filling slots with 2 TB HDDs and configure it with Windows.

Don't know if you would gain much at present using SATA III drives over SATA II models since you are primarily going for redundancy and not performance. Guess SATA III drives will soon be just as inexpensive as the SATA IIs.

FOLLOW-UP: After reading this thread I pulled out a PC build I work on occasionally. Tried to do the OS software RAID 0 in Windows 7 and was unable to get it to install as OEM since the 2 drives had not been configured as a RAID. Installed on drive of another future RAID 0 D: drive, then set-up the C: Drive as a software RAID volume. I then imaged to the new RAID, turned off the computer and unplugged the single drive with the OS installed. Restarted the computer but was unable to access the image on the RAID drive. So, I'm guessing that a system drive using a software RAID is probably not doable. However, the Original Poster said he is using an SSD drive as his OS install, so the rest of his drives should RAID in some form or another in Windows, or using some third party software that probably works better.
 
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Cheapest raid setup options: !compromise!

Cheapest raid setup options: !compromise!

8 x 2tb drives - $1,039.92
1 x raid card - $ 299.99
1 x SAS enclosure - $ 399.99
shipping $ 10.00
labor $ 0.00
Grand Total $1,745.89


if you can wait, i would recommend areca arc-1880x $799.00
The above grand total would change to $2248.91 and you
would [in my opinion] the best raid setup that will
allow you to upgrade and expand as your budget does.

Benchmarks (16 drive setup) : http://arecaraid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14

$2,300 for a 16TB raid (0,5,6,50 or 60) to me is a steal considering
other solutions similar to calDigits hdPro2 or hdOne
 
Charles Angus said:
Just to be clear, RAID is not backup.
Click to expand...

Well there is not real, ultimate infallible, everlasting (and forever accessible) backup hardware/software.

There are only data backup strategies, which can be implemented with varying levels of protection, cost, accessibility, etc...


J. Bernard Vallon said:
true, raid is not backup. the box can still fall into the ocean, or walk out the door in the middle of the night.
Click to expand...
RAID can be a backup. On its own it is a poor solution for a complete backup strategy, but even superior archiving technology like LTO can suffer from oceanic damage or unauthorized midnight drive strolling.
 
Jeremy_Sawatzky said:
ya... i definitly cant afford a 700$ raid card. and thers gotta be a solution that doesnt require such drastic mods. can my motherboard handle raid at all? its specs state it can handle 6 drives @ 6gbs. in raid 0,1,5,10 why wouldnt i do that?
Click to expand...

Ummm... I'm not really seeing any specifics for your system here. But if your motherboard claims to have RAID support like that and if you have a few bays in which to install a few drives and enough power to run them, go for it.

I would look at the faster performing 1TB drives. 2TB drives are slower due to cramming more platters into the drive housings and not having the room to fit more read/write heads. Among a few other technical issues. They're not much slower, but enough to matter, and more expensive. But I guess you should ask yourself what is more important -- capacity, or speed?

What motherboard do you have? Many motherboards have onboard RAID controllers that offer RAID-5, but some of these onboard controllers are not very good and should only be used for RAID 0 or 1 or 1+0 (10).

6 drives in a system, using 5 in a RAID-5 and the 6th as a hot-spare, is a good solution. But I think I would consider your backup methodology or strategy and know what you will do in the situation that the RAID fails. You may do best to lump 4 fast 1TB drives into a RAID-0 and then maintain some form of backup of sorts. Maybe the 4x1TB for your RAID / primary workspace and then 2x2TB in one or two external units to use for backup or at least some partial security.

You say $600... That is a really small budget when you're talking RAID.
 
Here's what I do:

That's $590 for an external 6 TB raid 5 that can be easily plugged into any computer with an eSATA port (and compatible software). But software raid definitely isn't for everyone.

I have about 16 TB in this type of configuration. Over the port replicator I top out around 100 MB/s, but with direct connection I can hit around 360 MB/s reads and 80 MB/s writes with software RAID-5.

I've done software RAID-5 in Windows XP before (haven't tried Win7 SW RAID), but it wasn't reliable (rebuilds required after every BSOD -- which I guess wouldn't be a problem if you never had a BSOD).
 
Charles Angus said:
Just to be clear, RAID is not backup.

No matter what type of RAID.
Click to expand...
Good point... it can be an intermediary "backup" however. Personally, I use a RAID 0 for a system drive, then a RAID 0 for an onboard easy and fast access storage system. My app works off my system drive and the secondary RAID allows the app to retrieve the data quickly. Anything precious to me I store redundantly on a bare drive in an eSATA docking station.
 
Use a real RAID card with a processor, ram, write-cache, remote login driver and BBU you will NOT be sorry.

Use a Faker-raid and you WILL be sorry, it uses your CPU power/ram and offers no BBU whatsoever. Write-cache, Forget it.
 
The Original Poster did point out that money is an object and he is looking for solutions that fit within his budget.
 
And with that budget, he's really limited to buying a few drives, maybe an enclosure or two, and working with what he has.

Software RAID is fine in some situations -- RAID-0 and RAID-1 work fine with software, the overhead is so minimal it's really a non issue. In an ideal world, everyone would have a really nice RAID controller as Andrew J suggests. But it's not possible to buy one of the top RAID controllers on this guy's budget, let alone attach drives to it...

There are some entry-level eSATA RAID cards that may be an option here though. I've seen some of the cheap ones, that are still good, from Areca, Adaptec, etc.. go for around $100 on eBay or from discount vendors at times. buy an external box that holds 4 to 6 drives and start with 4 drives in it. Could be do-able for around $600.

Next step up from here would be to go to a RAID kit or even some build it yourself solutions. The CalDigit HD-Element w/RAID Card bundle is a great entry-level RAID solution that is also expandable. (shameless plug, but I have one for sale with 4x2TB HDDs). However, even a 2TB configuration using 500GB HDDs, would still start out at about $1200...

A $600 budget is difficult to work with for something like this.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
A $600 budget is difficult to work with for something like this.
Click to expand...
That is probably the salient point of this whole discussion. So....

@ Jeremy.

Are you just interested in a backup for your data or are you set on a RAID backup? Consider using the primary 2 drive RAID for editing footage, but offloading for archive through an eSATA port to an eSATA docking station gives you the speed you need for editing and the backup you need for safety. This gets you there cheaper and quite honestly, with more flexibility than a secondary RAID. More flexible because you can unplug the docking station and plug it right in to another computer like it were a 2 TB thumb drive.

And in many cases I have called up R3D footage from the eSATA docking station and played it back on my computer in REDCINE X or PPr CS5 at the same speed it plays from my onboard RAID. This is SATA II so with your board having SATA III (you did say 6Gbs didn't you?), if you can wait awhile there will be Docking Stations that are SATA III as well, so your Scarlet footage should run o.k., I would think.
 
Jim Perry said:
8 x 2tb drives - $1,039.92
1 x raid card - $ 299.99
1 x SAS enclosure - $ 399.99
shipping $ 10.00
labor $ 0.00
Grand Total $1,745.89


if you can wait, i would recommend areca arc-1880x $799.00
The above grand total would change to $2248.91 and you
would [in my opinion] the best raid setup that will
allow you to upgrade and expand as your budget does.

Benchmarks (16 drive setup) : http://arecaraid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14

$2,300 for a 16TB raid (0,5,6,50 or 60) to me is a steal considering
other solutions similar to calDigits hdPro2 or hdOne
Click to expand...

Slightly off topic ,but the prices for Caldigits hdPro2 and hdOne listed as examples above are 9k and 7k yet for around 2.3k using the recipe above i could assemble my own?..am i missing something?..
 
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