Network Storage

[w hole]

Hello All

Good to see you are still here!

I need some advice -

I have a lot of data I would like to make accessible over my wireless network at home, and would also like to protect it with RAID [Probably 1].

Has anyone any experience of a good Storage Device which would hold 500GB x 2 for Raid - i.e. total of 1TB.

Have looked at a couple, but they seem to have such bad reviews that it is putting me off.

e.g. I looked at the Maxtor II 1 TB on EBuyer for £219.08 which seems to be great value, but on one site I found five or six people who had had a fault with it and even with replacement kits.

It also seems to not have an option for replacing bad Drives easily which seems a bit odd on a RAID device.

Is there a DIY route, or what else should I be considering.

Best

W.H.

Best for 2008 to all in S.H. - will post there soon I hope.

 

[Topper]

I have a lot of data I would like to make accessible over my wireless network at home, and would also like to protect it with RAID [Probably 1].

RAID stands for redundant array of inexpensive disks
What you are proposing hardly seems inexpensive.
I assume you have some very good security on your wireless network?
I would advise you to get some if you have not.

What kind of data is this, music videos etc or something else and why do you want to make it available over the network?

Has anyone any experience of a good Storage Device which would hold 500GB x 2 for Raid - i.e. total of 1TB.

Well no experience really I do have a pc at work which uses two drives arranged as an array with an Intel GR GA SATA raid controller but I inherited that from a collegue who left the company so I am unsure as to the benefits of such a system. I know that for network storage such arrays are used usually in blocks of three drives and they are usually hot swappable but with 2 drives I doubt they would be. To be honest I am out of date on storage solutions and probably always will be. I think the larger drives are still in their infancy I have a Maxtor 300Gb USB drive for backing up essentials every week at home but even that developed a fault after a couple of months and I now have to make sure the drive spins up by listening to it otherwise it sometimes fails to spin up.

Nice to see you on the forum again

 

[pgh13]

Further to what Topper said; there are diferent levels of RAID.....With 2 disks you have the choice of raid 0 or raid 1. Raid 0 means striping; i.e. the controller divides the data between the drives so that instead of writing, say, 50Meg to 1 disk, you write 25 to each disk. It has performance benefits but if 1 disk fails you have to reload from bachup.

The alternative for 2 disks is mirroring; raid 1. Like the name suggests you have the same data on 2 drives, so if one fails you replace it and the disk gets rebuilt from the other one.

Higher raid levels exist but they require a minimum of 3 drives and roughly speaking you lose the capacity of one of them because they each have to store sufficient information to be able to rebuild a replacement drive in the event that one fails. So 3 x 500GB drives in raid 5 would give you 1000GB storage. Also because there are tasks going on in the background to maintain the redundancy data, there is some reduction in performance.

Not usually a problem in business because you just throw more money at it; faster processor, more drives etc.

The other option is to configure them as JBOD; just a bunch of disks. That is arguably the most sensible way to do it for home use.