Most reliable Hard drives and PSU for 24/7 use? Which RAID?

[newtekie1]

Ohhh, so I guess RAID 5 is good then. Am I right by saying, using 1TB HDDs, that 3 Drives = 2TB, 4 drives = 3TB, 5 drives = 4TB and 6 drives = 5TB? So 10 drives = 9TB? If one drive dies, no data loss or down time at all? I just order a new HDD, hope none die while it arrives, and plug the thing in? (I don't care about a reboot, as long as it doesn't take more than a few hours)

Exactly. No down time with RAID 5, expect maybe a reboot to replace the drive. Older controllers required that you not use the array while it was rebuilding, but AFAIK no modern controller requires this, so you can rebuild on the fly while still accessing and writing to the array.

The link states Windows XP 32-bit should support 3TB (look at Gigabyte link). What it does is it makes Virtual volumes IIRC

Ah, I didn't know about those. Do these work with RAID Volumes though, or only single disks? The pages talk like they are for single drives, but I would hope they would work with RAID volumes.

 

[n-ster]

Exactly. No down time with RAID 5, expect maybe a reboot to replace the drive. Older controllers required that you not use the array while it was rebuilding, but AFAIK no modern controller requires this, so you can rebuild on the fly while still accessing and writing to the array.



Ah, I didn't know about those. Do these work with RAID Volumes though, or only single disks? The pages talk like they are for single drives, but I would hope they would work with RAID volumes.

A RAID array is supposed to be seen as one big HDD, so this should work IMO.

So the more drives, the more efficient RAID 5 is... @ 10 disks it is incredible! But for my needs, 5 disks is plenty (4TB) and 4 is enough. I think I will be going XFX 750W and 5x 1TB F3R in RAID 5 then Thanks everyone!

 

[AsRock]

Exactly. No down time with RAID 5, expect maybe a reboot to replace the drive. Older controllers required that you not use the array while it was rebuilding, but AFAIK no modern controller requires this, so you can rebuild on the fly while still accessing and writing to the array.



Ah, I didn't know about those. Do these work with RAID Volumes though, or only single disks? The pages talk like they are for single drives, but I would hope they would work with RAID volumes.

All though a rebuild takes freaking for ever like hours but yes you can still use it.. And like i said in one of my other posts you should be getting the performance of one while it's rebuilding.

Maybe the highpoint cards are better when this time happens ?.. don't know my self never checked or tried it due to cost of those cards.

 

[Steevo]

I have had a drive fail on a Highpoint card in the server at work, it took 12 hours to rebuild 3TB of data, but that was online with a 30% performance penalty for file serving.

 

[newtekie1]

I have had a drive fail on a Highpoint card in the server at work, it took 12 hours to rebuild 3TB of data, but that was online with a 30% performance penalty for file serving.

I've had to do rebuilds on both my highpoint cards. For 3TB of data it took about 3 hours to rebuild on my main rig, that was online but with little to no usage of the array during the rebuilt(obviously accessing and writting to the array can greatly increase rebuild times). For 4TB of data it took about 4 hours, again with little to no read/write activity.

In his situation with the cameras still constantly writing to the array I could see a rebuild taking 12+ hours.

 

[n-ster]

I don't mind, as long as it works during the rebuilding

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I really love my LZP 550. I got a nice idle power load drop vs my 850HX not just from the platinum rating but also by having a unit that's much closer to my actual power requirements. I wouldn't sweat the fan. This thing likes being hot. The efficiency is actually higher in a hotbox.

Drive wise I love my 3 TB Seagate XTs for both speed and noise and I'd avoid the Samsung 2 TB F4 more than anything else right now. It's got a firmware bug and the fix for it doesn't change the firmware number so you don't know if you have the bad one or not and it oddly had a bunch of compatibility issues with my P8P67 board which is just bizarre given how common it is.

 

[n-ster]

I don't think the LZP 550 is worth the 179$ shipped it would cost me though I love it, but it's just too much

 

[ShiBDiB]

I have 0 experience building cctv camera systems, but plenty of experience operating them. Theirs gonna be no need to OC beyond wanting to heat up the already hot and dusty room it will be probably be in. Ramdisks sound like an unnecessary headache for this build. Hell that build sounds overpowered for the task your performing, if he's serious about this system then you should be looking at lower end server setups that produce a whole lot less heat.

Basically use server drives, setup the raid to mirror. Find out how many camera's + the res. they record at and how long you wanna be able to backtrack the footage. This will let you know how much space your gonna need. I know we only backup 48 hours worth of camera footage per camera, but this is with over 30 decent resolution NV cameras running 24/7 (Gotta love military budgets).

Also, have you worked with camera's before? If your installing professional grade camera's and expect to hardwire multiple feed's to your computer then I fully encourage you to turn this job over to a professional. If your just gonna use some of the cheaper "Home/Small business" wifi camera's you find on newegg then ya it should be doable, but those are headaches in themselves as they tend to only work with their shitty programs.

 

[n-ster]

I have 0 experience building cctv camera systems, but plenty of experience operating them. Theirs gonna be no need to OC beyond wanting to heat up the already hot and dusty room it will be probably be in. Ramdisks sound like an unnecessary headache for this build. Hell that build sounds overpowered for the task your performing, if he's serious about this system then you should be looking at lower end server setups that produce a whole lot less heat.

Basically use server drives, setup the raid to mirror. Find out how many camera's + the res. they record at and how long you wanna be able to backtrack the footage. This will let you know how much space your gonna need. I know we only backup 48 hours worth of camera footage per camera, but this is with over 30 decent resolution NV cameras running 24/7 (Gotta love military budgets).

Also, have you worked with camera's before? If your installing professional grade camera's and expect to hardwire multiple feed's to your computer then I fully encourage you to turn this job over to a professional. If your just gonna use some of the cheaper "Home/Small business" wifi camera's you find on newegg then ya it should be doable, but those are headaches in themselves as they tend to only work with their shitty programs.

No worries, I have 6 years experience with theses cameras. Theses are professional grade cameras, but they are already in place. The RAMDisk takes literally 10 mins to set up, I've done it numerous times. It will be in an ACed office.

The Overclocking is for the video converting, as the system uses it's own video type file that can only be viewed through that program, and it converts to AVI using the CPU. THIS IS THE MAIN REASON FOR THE UPGRADE:

Spoiler: A little explanation of why this build is being built

TL;DR version:
Employee sued us, we saw the proof that he was BSing but needed the video. The CCTV system was to slow to convert the video, the USB was too slow to get RAW files out. Took the Hard Drives, took the raw video files, cracked the DRM and converted it with my PC. What we learned:
- We needed more days backed-up
- We needed a faster CPU to be able to convert
- We needed eSata and USB 2 or 3
- Needed a wireless card to be able to print to the wireless printer

Normal use of the CCTV:
It was basically to catch shoplifters. The videos needed varied between 5~6 mins max of 320x240 (a 5 min long video or up to 3 cameras of 2 mins ea). To convert this much to AVI took maybe half an hour to 45, and then a few minutes still transferring the video through USB 1.1 to a USB Key, as well has taking a few snapshots that took a few seconds. Then we would transfer the USB key to another computer for the video safe keeping and the pictures, while also printing the pictures. However, I was called in to work one day saying it was urgent

The urgent matter:
Well, an employee decided to go after us, claiming he sprained his back very badly, so bad, in fact, that he was having acute depression (funny, we saw him dance the day after the "injury"). The date of this back sprain was supposedly ~16 days ago, so we needed the videos of about 20 days back until 12 days back, and for many hours each day. Our system could only do 17~18 days with the current 600 GB, so a couple of days we didn't have because of lack of space... No bid deal as long as the most important part was there though. PROBLEM though. The 18th and 17th day were very important to have as that is where everything started. We needed the CCTV functionality the next morning so I had to work fast. If I were to try to take more than half an hour of video, the system would hang, and half an hour of video took around 4 hours. It would not work. I ended up having to take the Hard Drives (IDE) out of the Computer (transferring 20+GB would be too slow through USB 1.1) and connect it to their other computer in order to get the RAW video files (they were split into files of 5~10 MB ea) as the conversion, as I said, was impossible. The size of it ended being over 20GB (under 35GB) after filtering what we needed. We then put them back into the CCTV system and took a few minutes here and there that might help, but now I could enjoy my Saturday morning sleep after that all-nighter... The files actually had DRM and I couldn't convert them, even with the CCTV program, but by studying the DRM and it's patterns, I was able to crack the DRM (DAMN I was proud that day) and successfully converted the files with my computer at home (because even their Athlon x4 didn't cut it).

 

[Mussels]

OCing still isnt a good idea whatsoever, because imagine how you'd feel if you lost footage because of system instability. you should know that 99% stability is all you get from most overclocks, and that remaining 1% would really, really screw you over if that situation happened again.


just remember that if you deal with H264 as a codec, its multi threaded. you'll get better performance out of that anyway.

 

[n-ster]

I'm pretty sure it is single-threaded unfortunately.

I know the risks of OCing, but most likely, the worst that is going to happen is a BSOD or a crash. That isn't a big deal, they know how to reboot a PC AFAIK, you rarely lose data because of CPU OCing (except for maybe a few minutes worth right before the crash). TBH, if that is the risk, I'll take it.