DIY your own Raid:)!

[Zhang Ming]

Although a outside RAID will be more convinent when you want to take the medias to different place, an internal RAID is much cheaper and faster. I made my raid inside my computer with 18* Seagate ES.2(SATA version, not SAS for cheaper price) 3T HD Raid5, using a LSI 9270(8i) and a LSI raid expander(24i+8o), used it for nearly two weeks, and it always satisfy me. 2.2GByte/S read or write, CPU usage when file read or write at the max speed is almost zero. Just remember to use an large SSD for system since the random I/O is quite common. And the total price is about 33000RMB, about 5K USD, which is less than two small slow outside Raid...Just a recommendation, remmember without expander and 8 HD only will cost just about 15000RMB, 2.4K USD, and you can still get about 1.2G speed. BTW Do not use custom level HD in hardware raid, according to my experience, raid card will always think those disk got failed because they handle errors too slow.

 

[Richard Tran]

What case do you use to have it inside your computer?

 

[Zhang Ming]

What case do you use to have it inside your computer?

CosmosII with a 3->5CD bay HD case gives you 18 HD position. I actually put system SSD on the upside inside the box with screws instead of putting it in to a HD positon. Remember to buy a larger power, I chose a 1500W.