I'm paranoid, need redundancy on the cheap

R

rek981

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 6, 2004
Messages
130
Hey all,

I'm a grad student and computer enthusiast who is getting older and wiser. I am reliezing that I have some VERY important files on my HD, and I would die if I lost any of these. I think I need some redundancy, but I need some advice on how I should go about this. Besides my documents for school and business, I have about 60 gigs of mp3z , and probably another 80 gigs of movies, ISOs, etc. I am getting paranoid about losing all this stuff. Also, I want more space for future expansion. I am planning on getting possible getting rid of the IDE drive, and adding at least 300 gb of more space. However, even more space would be ideal (~600 gb). Lastly, since I am student, I do not have that much money to spend.

Right now, I have a pretty "old" system. I do not really want to change my mb/cpu because, for right now, this system still runs games pretty well. I really want to wait for Vista to come out before I make my next major upgrade:

Asus p4c800 deluxe
Socket 478 P4 3.2e
1 gig ram
6800 GT
Soundblaster Audigy 2
1 120 GB IDE HD with SATA bridge
1 250 GB SATA drive
Win XP Pro

Ideally, I would like to run Raid 3 or 5, because the loss of storage using Raid 1 just seems tragic. Also, I would be storing mostly media, so super-fast speed is not needed. Here are some options I thought of.

1) Add a PCI Netcell card w/ Raid 3 and 3 250-300gb HDs.

2) Use the onboard Raid 1 promise controller. This option is tempting because it is the easiest and cheapest. Like I said before though, I do not like Raid 0. Also, I do not think there is a good upgrade path from here.

3) Is there another good PCI raid card?

4) Build a Linux NAS running software raid5. However, while I have been working with computers for as long as I can remember, I have no Linux experience. So I have no idea what I need or how much it will cost.

5) Upgrade now to an Nforce board and run software Raid 5 on that. However, this is really an option I do not like for many reasons. Price, satisfied with my current system, want to wait for vista.

- Any more ideas or suggestions?

To sum it up. Looking for redundancy using the cheapest route possible. Actually, cheapest is a bad word, I want something cost effective. When I do something, I like to do it right, not half-ass it, even if I need to spend a little more to do it.

Ross
 
Start by determining how often your important data changes - daily, weekly, monthly?

Daily - RAID (level dependant upon how much storage you need, if you plan to expand it, etc)

Weekly or Monthly - determine how much of this data is extremely important to you. If this is under 5GB, you might try burning a DVD. Then backup everything that isnt extremely important but still necessary onto an external Firewire drive (1394 > USB 2.0).

Try to always keep data on three mediums: Original, Secondary, Tertiary-portable if at all possible. You never know when you'll need to take it somewhere in a hurry.
 
Buy two 320GB SATA drives (Best $/GB ratio right now). Set them up in a RAID-1 configuration. Copy all important information to the new 320GB RAID array. When you're done, unplug one of the 320GB drives, and plop it in a closet. "Restore" the array once a week or so. Total cost is about $250 for an additional 298GB (NTFS) space, and a backup plan. It has the added advantage of expanding your current amount of space - Just put anything "essential" on the 320GB drive, and put the pr0n you might get rid of on another drive. Like you said, there's not much of an upgrade path here. If you've gotta have another 500+GB of space sometime in the future, I'd recommend a RAID-5 array with online capacity expansion.

It's the cheapest route I see. If you REALLY want RAID-3 or 5, you'd need a controller card (About $100 for a cheap decent one) and a minimum of two more drives (250GB drives are about $90 each, and I'm assuming you don't want another pair of 120GB IDE drives.)

Of course, another way of doing things is the NAS setup you described. A single 300GB drive in an old P3 box running linux (google SAMBA) would be adequate. It's slower to backup over a 100Mbit ethernet connection than it is to copy from drive to drive, but it has the added advantage of not worrying should your power supply fail while backing up. (Or a lightning strike, etc)... I'd estimate about $50 for a PC and $100-120 for a drive. Assuming you own either a crossover cable or a hub and a pair of patch cables. But these days, who doesn't?

(PS - Not trying to be rude, as it's probably just a typo, but NAT is Network Adress Translation - Normally associated with gateways and routing. I think what you were looking for is NAS - Network attached storage.)
 
Would expanding the array in the future be a concern? If so, you should seriously look into a Highpoint 2220 or 2320 card at about $250. Otherwise, my suggestion would be a Sil3114-based or Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 card for 4 or 8 ports respectively, and software raid under Linux. Almost any machine you can find will be able to handle the raid 5 calcs fast enough to keep up with 100 mbit ethernet. Dig around and see what you can find in the way of cheap boxen on eBay. Dual p3 boards are plenty of overkill, and you can get a board+processors+memory for ~$150. Add a decent new case and power supply (check the PSU forums before you buy!) and disks to taste for $150 + the cost of disks. A sil3114 is probably around $40, and the AOC is $130.

Also, you might want to get two arrays - a raid 1 for the *really* important stuff, and a raid 5 for the bulk storage. But most really important stuff (thesis, etc) is small enough that you can just spread it around - mail it to yourself, thumb drive, etc., so another array might not be necessary. Something to consider, though.

TJH: My machine does NAS and NAT ;) If he's using it as a gateway for his network connection, NAT would indeed be the correct term.

 
Remember RAID is not backup.

They have different uses.

RAID is to maintain uptime when a hardware failure occures, but does not cover the most common sources of data loss. (accidental deletion, viruses, data corruption, etc.)

Backup is to recover from any of the above. (including hardware failures) But is time delayed and doesn't maintain uptime in the event of a failure.

So make sure you are doing the right thing for the right reason.

A backup will not be connected to your system except for the period of time that the data is getting transfered to it.

Both is best, but for home use backup is more important.

==>Lazn
 
Thanks for the great suggestions so far.

As far as my needs, this is why I thought about RAID. I am constantly writing papers and updating my work, and for me backing up once a week is not enough. I do research, so my data is very important. However, the data I need backed up so often is quite small (words docs, excel docs, etc.). I thought that if I had a raid array, I would not have to think about backing up my files every day, they would just constantly be mirrored. My main fear is hardware failure as opposed to viruses, accidental deletion etc., but certainly those are fears as well.

I think for me, the best option is to just get two more drives and use the Raid 1 interface built into my motherboard. I have some questions, though. If I want to upgrade at a later time to Raid 5 or whatever, can a Raid1 array be rebuilt into a Raid5 array without needing to be formated?

In response to TeeJay, for me , keeping 1/2 of the array in the closet could be a big liability, no? If I have a drive failure at the end of the week, I could lose a week of data.

I think I will still get 2 320GB drives for a Raid 1 array, but keep them live. I will convert by 120gb ide to an external USB drive, and use that for weekly backups as well.

How does that sound? (I am planning on getting a new case soon, so a NAS is still an option).

Ross

PS I also back up to an remote FTP server weekly ;-)
 
If you get the Highpoint now and make the raid array on it, it'll deal with expanding a raid 1 into a raid 5. Otherwise you'll have to re-format and re-create.

But if you're not too worried about that (and I wouldn't be - since you've got weekly backups, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to do that) I'd say 2 320s in raid 1 is a good plan.

 
Just remember if you are truly paranoid that RAID is *NOT* a backup solution. If the data become corrupt on the RAID array you are still screwed. If you are serious about very important backup you may want to also checkout a tape drive on ebay or something.
 
eth00 said:
Just remember if you are truly paranoid that RAID is *NOT* a backup solution. If the data become corrupt on the RAID array you are still screwed. If you are serious about very important backup you may want to also checkout a tape drive on ebay or something.
Click to expand...

Or at very least a cheap system running another raid that keeps the files on it. I would recomend a tape drive or rev drive or something to keep the most imporant stuff on(docs and pics)
 
rek981 said:
PS I also back up to an remote FTP server weekly ;-)
Click to expand...
Thank you both for reading the thread and posting relevant suggestions.

 
unhappy_mage said:
Thank you both for reading the thread and posting relevant suggestions.

Click to expand...

Ah great did not see that :) I work with way too many clients that think just because they get this nice RAID setup there data is completely safe. Glad to see you already have accounted for that!
 
use an old crappy computer and have a batch file to copy over the files.. this way, if your main mahcine starts on fire, your still good
 
Some great advice. Depending on how anal you want to get, you should take the removable storage off site. Otherwise damage to the physical location could destroy all of your data. Say you lived in New Orleans last summer....
 
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