Silent Plex/Backup Server

[newtekie1]

And yet again, like everyone else I will keep stressing on backup. Don't learn the hard way like the rest of us.

Exactly this. I'll spend money on a backup long before I spend money on fancy RAID controller and a bunch of smaller drivers.

I use the highpoint 642L, connected to two 5-bay external enclosures. I upgraded to that from a Highpoint 2300. And before that I didn't use RAID at all.

But to the point, I just want to share a little story to show why backup is important. When I was back running just 3 400GB hard drives, not in RAID. I had one 400GB drive completely full of movies. I was young, and of course had no backup. I had just finished ripping and encoding some new DVDs I got, and I went to delete the temporary folders I created for the ripped files. But I had two explorer Windows open, one with the temp folders highlighted, and the other with my movies folder highlighted. The wrong window had focus, I hit Shift+Del and clicked yes. And right when I clicked yes, I realized what I did, and my heart skipped a beat. I just deleted almost 400GB of movies...with no backup. Of course I had all the original DVDs, but it took so much time to re-rip and re-encode all those movies! Saddly, some of the DVDs were damaged and I couldn't re-rip them.

 

[taz420nj]

I believe this is a hold over from a long time ago. Rebuild times are not as long as they used to be. Heck, when 2TB drives first came out, I built a RAID5 array with them, and rebuild time was over a day. Now, I just built an array with 6TB drives, and the rebuild time was just under 24 hours. So it took the same amount of time to rebuilt an array with 6TB drive today as it did to rebuilt with 2TB drives several years ago. The controllers are faster, the computer CPUs are faster(in the case where the controller is using the CPU for calculations), and the drives have gotten faster(particularly write speeds). This all changes with SMR, because the write speed suffers greatly on those drives, so those would be the only type of drive I would recommend avoiding in a RAID5 array.

Plus, having more disks means way more points of failure. You are a lot more likely to have a drive fail if you have 20 drives than if you have 4.

Finally, I'm pretty sure it has been mentioned, but RAID is not a replacement for backups. Your RAID array should be backed up. Even if it is backed up to something not redundant. The money you're talking about spending on a dedicated RAID card, and extra drives would be better spent on a couple extra 6TB drives to perform back-ups to.

This is my current server. F is my main RAID5 array, G is another non-redundant array that F gets backed up nightly to. Adding a backup is more important than RAID6.
http://tpuminecraft.servebeer.com/pictures/raid.png

First of all it's not a holdover from a long time ago. It's something that we were warned about when larger drives started coming out. In fact, the same warning has been raised that in a couple years we will be in the same position with RAID6 vs large drives, necessitating the creation of a triple parity RAID level.

Drives have NOT gotten significantly faster in their classes either. At the end of the day it's still a 5400RPM consumer grade SATA drive that only has a max read/write of 150MB/s, not a 15k SAS enterprise drive. Real world sustained transfer over a long period of time (as would be the case during a rebuild) isn't going to be anywhere near that - especially as the drives fill up.

Your examples of array "rebuild" times make no sense. You "just built" an array with 6TB drives and already had to do a rebuild? What did you use, Seagates? And you do realize the size of the array isn't what determines the rebuild time, it's the amount of data on it. So if your array of 2TB drives and your array of 6TB drives both had the same amount of data on them then yeah they'd take generally the same amount of time to rebuild.

As far as "RAID isn't a backup" yeah I know. It's a compromise that gives you a reasonable margin of safety for huge amounts of non-critical data without having to do 1:1 backup. Remember most of us are using it for video and music - all of which is already compressed, so a backup will be the same size as the array. When you get into the tens of terabytes it's an expensive waste of hardware to have 1:1 backup on a home media server - for the OP's 16TB array that's another $800 in drives. Yeah it'll suck if your luck is that bad and you smoke three drives and the array dies but it won't be the end of the world.

 

[Kursah]

I run a super cheap Dell Perc 6i w/bbu, a sata adapter cable and right now 4x2TB drives in a 5.5TB RAID5 array, not the best performance...but solid for what it is, doing Plex library files, and hosting 6-8 running VM's with a wider variety of tasks, and I have 0 issues. As said above a BBU is critical if getting a RAID card. In my experience with my home RAID...the battery became discharged and the array went from write back to write through mode...and struggled to write more than 4-5MBs. It was horrendous. Resolved the issue with a few firmware and BBU freshly charged, I do plan to go to a 6 or 8-drive RAID6 in the future.

I considered 4TB drives until I did some more research and finally had to fix a large array that another IT company had sold a school we recently gained. Didn't help the school was non-stop accessing but it took the better part of a week to actually successfully rebuild the array. Guess what happened a couple weeks after that??? Yep...another drive failed. Thankfully we had talked them into a NAS backup system with a RAID6 array and are now rebuilding their server array this summer. Ticking time bomb until then though... 4+ TB drives in an array are for those who are patient and have really really good backups and possibly a failover data store/server to keep them alive during the long rebuilds that will happen.

Honestly I get some of the white label enterprise 2TB HDD's off of fleabay, or a seller that also sells there rather and keep a couple extra on hand because they are cheap enough. The array rebuild took around 6 hours when I had one drive fail. But I gotta keep a tight budget and so far I can't complain with the performance of these drives. The one that failed came with the 4 I bought off of a fellow TPU-er that had used them for years so I expected a failure and the price was fair that I had no complaints in cheaply replacing one.

I do run a backup with a Server 2012 R2 Storage Space (testing purposes more than serious deployment...) setup using 2X2TB and 1X1.5TB...not in any kind of redundancy mode (so damn slow...)..and I needed the space to allow for incremental backups which I didn't have with redundancy. It works well enough, I get SMART report notifications through Event Logs so I'm not worried...but I also sysadmin my site and network

Not saying my setup is the best, but in a home lab situation the old-ass cheap-ass Perc 6i's + white label 2TB enterprise drives in a RAID 5/6 is a good way to go in my experience. I was able to buy a spare Perc 6i for around $15-20 shipped...and sure it's old tech, long replaced by H700's and beyond...most folks won't notice what they're missing unless they went with SSD array's or SAS drives in the first place...and then you're not in the cheap-ass budget price point anymore anyways.

I agree, even with an array one should backup...but with an array with redundancy and parity hopefully the backup is a "rather have it and not need it" kind of situation. And at least if a drive (5) or two (6) fail in the array, keeping a couple spares on hand...shit can be fixed in a night, day or two. It is all good experience...if someone is truly serious about their data...then being cheap isn't going to solve anything. If I lost all my data I'd be pissed...but I also plan to increase the array, change to a 6 and I'm building up a secondary storage array for backup purposes. We shall see. To each their own.

My core server, my VM's including the one that runs Plex, Teamspeak, RDGateway, etc. etc., runs great with this array. I run the core OS on an old Samsung 840 120GB SSD...everything else on the array, and the backup on the Storage Spaces combined volume. So far works great, super stable. I guess it depends on what direction you want to take...mine is kind of overcomplicated for what it needs to be...but I'm gaining experience on stuff I need to support professionally, and am able to make things work in my budget which is a win-win for me!

 

[newtekie1]

First of all it's not a holdover from a long time ago. It's something that we were warned about when larger drives started coming out. In fact, the same warning has been raised that in a couple years we will be in the same position with RAID6 vs large drives, necessitating the creation of a triple parity RAID level.

Yes, it is a hold over from a long time ago. The controllers have gotten faster at rebuilding, because the processors calculating parity have gotten way faster. That is the same reason that everyone used to warn about RAID5/6 being extremely slow writing, but they actually aren't that slow anymore. The drastic increase in drive write speed, as well as the large increase in CPU power that can be used to calculate the rebuild, lead to much faster rebuilt time.

Drives have NOT gotten significantly faster in their classes either. At the end of the day it's still a 5400RPM consumer grade SATA drive that only has a max read/write of 150MB/s, not a 15k SAS enterprise drive. Real world sustained transfer over a long period of time (as would be the case during a rebuild) isn't going to be anywhere near that - especially as the drives fill up.

Very untrue. It may only be 5400RPM, but it's sequential write averages 125MB/s. Just to put that into a little perspective, a WD Velociraptor, the 10,000 RPM fastest consumer drive you could get back in 2008 only had an average sequential write speed of around 100MB/s. The first 2TB drives that came out were in the sub-80MB/s average write area.

Your examples of array "rebuild" times make no sense. You "just built" an array with 6TB drives and already had to do a rebuild? What did you use, Seagates? And you do realize the size of the array isn't what determines the rebuild time, it's the amount of data on it. So if your array of 2TB drives and your array of 6TB drives both had the same amount of data on them then yeah they'd take generally the same amount of time to rebuild.

1.) Seagate are currently the most reliable drives on the market.
2.) Every array I build, I fill about 60% full with data, then pull a drive and rebuild it to see how long it takes.
3.) If the time to rebuild is the same, regardless of if you are using 2TB drives or 6TB, and it is only determined by how much data you have stored. What is the point of using 2TB drives over 6TB drives? The rebuild time will be the same. You're arguing against 6TB drives because you say it takes too long to rebuild, but then just said the rebuild time depends on the amount of data on the array, not the size of the drives. THAT makes no sense.

As far as "RAID isn't a backup" yeah I know. It's a compromise that gives you a reasonable margin of safety for huge amounts of non-critical data without having to do 1:1 backup. Remember most of us are using it for video and music - all of which is already compressed, so a backup will be the same size as the array. When you get into the tens of terabytes it's an expensive waste of hardware to have 1:1 backup on a home media server - for the OP's 16TB array that's another $800 in drives. Yeah it'll suck if your luck is that bad and you smoke three drives and the array dies but it won't be the end of the world.

That is largely what I use my home server for, and I have a 1:1 backup. It definitely ins't an expensive waste of hardware. Once you accidentally delete your entire movie folder, you'll know it wasn't a waste at all.

Of course, in the OP's case, he doesn't need an exact 1:1, since a good portion of the data stored on the server will already be backup data from his desktops. So he really only has to backup the unique data on the array. The OP could probably get away with a 8TB external as a backup right now, thats about $200. Once that starts to get filled up, either get another, or by that time there will probably be even bigger externals he can just replace the 8TB with. Something tells me the OP doesn't plan to fill the array with data right away, and is building it with a lot of future storage space in mind, so 8TB of backup space should be enough for a while.

 

[taz420nj]

Yes, it is a hold over from a long time ago. The controllers have gotten faster at rebuilding, because the processors calculating parity have gotten way faster. That is the same reason that everyone used to warn about RAID5/6 being extremely slow writing, but they actually aren't that slow anymore. The drastic increase in drive write speed, as well as the large increase in CPU power that can be used to calculate the rebuild, lead to much faster rebuilt time.

Hey McFly, the speed of the parity calculation is moot when the drive's write speed is the bottleneck on a rebuild.

Very untrue. It may only be 5400RPM, but it's sequential write averages 125MB/s. Just to put that into a little perspective, a WD Velociraptor, the 10,000 RPM fastest consumer drive you could get back in 2008 only had an average sequential write speed of around 100MB/s. The first 2TB drives that came out were in the sub-80MB/s average write area.

No. They weren't. The WD20EADS (the very first 2TB on the market in case you were wondering) was 100MB/s - and that was one of those lame 5,200RPM "Green" drives. The first Caviar Blue 5,400 2TB was 130MB/s. Not too long after that though the green and blue drives stopped being usable in RAID because of the TLER issue in newer models. Oh and by the way in 2008, Veloceraptor drives were in the 140-150MB/s range. So I don't know where you're getting your wrong numbers from but mine are coming right from the spec sheets.

1.) Seagate are currently the most reliable drives on the market.

Maybe on your planet but not here on Earth. HGST is still king. I wouldn't even use a Seagate drive as a doorstop.

2.) Every array I build, I fill about 60% full with data, then pull a drive and rebuild it to see how long it takes.

Intentionally shortening the life of the drives "just to see how long a rebuild takes" is one of the dumbest things I've heard in a while. Thanks for the laugh.

3.) If the time to rebuild is the same, regardless of if you are using 2TB drives or 6TB, and it is only determined by how much data you have stored. What is the point of using 2TB drives over 6TB drives? The rebuild time will be the same. You're arguing against 6TB drives because you say it takes too long to rebuild, but then just said the rebuild time depends on the amount of data on the array, not the size of the drives. THAT makes no sense.

Once again McFly, you are comparing apples to bongo drums. The likely scenario is you're comparing the time it took to rebuild a full or nearly full array of 2TB drives with the time it took to rebuild a mostly empty array of 6TB drives - because you won't convince me for a second that the two arrays were of the same capacity (since wasting 6TB of parity space on an array smaller than 24TB is moronic), nor is there any way in hell that given that fact if they were both 60% full that they took anywhere near the same amount of time to rebuild.

That is largely what I use my home server for, and I have a 1:1 backup. It definitely ins't an expensive waste of hardware. Once you accidentally delete your entire movie folder, you'll know it wasn't a waste at all.

Yeah because everyone is as careless as you are.

Of course, in the OP's case, he doesn't need an exact 1:1, since a good portion of the data stored on the server will already be backup data from his desktops. So he really only has to backup the unique data on the array. The OP could probably get away with a 8TB external as a backup right now, thats about $200. Once that starts to get filled up, either get another, or by that time there will probably be even bigger externals he can just replace the 8TB with. Something tells me the OP doesn't plan to fill the array with data right away, and is building it with a lot of future storage space in mind, so 8TB of backup space should be enough for a while.

So what, you have Seagate stock or something? Their drives are garbage. They always have been and always will be. That's the reason they're cheap. And on top of that you think putting said garbage into an external enclosure where it can get knocked around is a swell idea??

 

[Shou Miko]

Maybe on your planet but not here on Earth. HGST is still king. I wouldn't even use a Seagate drive as a doorstop.

HGST is a really good brand, personally i got with WD Enterprise harddrives or RED.

As far as for Seagate not a brand i trust a lot even read they will be suited in the US for a lot of unreliable drives, bcs customers receive new/repaired drives from RMA and they die in like 24hours after running.

 

[N-Gen]

The only issues with Seagate are certain batches on release. In my case, I was one of the unlucky people to buy into the first 3TB disks on the market, the infamous ST3000DM drives. In a 4 disk array I've replaced 7 disks, one failed after less than a month of 24/7 use. I now have 2 ST3000DM from a late batch and 2 SV35 disks in the same 4 disk array without a single hiccup for the last year 24/7.

 

[newtekie1]

Hey McFly, the speed of the parity calculation is moot when the drive's write speed is the bottleneck on a rebuild.

When the bottleneck varies, it does matter. In the past, when it was recommended to not use more than a 2TB drive, we had RAID controllers that were slow as well as slow write speeds on the drives. At the time it was a two fold problem. Today, both problems have been greatly reduced. How is this hard to understand?

No. They weren't. The WD20EADS (the very first 2TB on the market in case you were wondering) was 100MB/s - and that was one of those lame 5,200RPM "Green" drives. The first Caviar Blue 5,400 2TB was 130MB/s. Not too long after that though the green and blue drives stopped being usable in RAID because of the TLER issue in newer models. Oh and by the way the first Veloceraptor drives were in the 140-150MB/s range. So I don't know where you're getting your wrong numbers from but mine are coming right from the spec sheets.

Oh you believe the spec sheets, how cute... Go look at some actual benchmarks. Too lazy to do that, no problem, I already did, because I actually inform myself before posting, here are some:

2008 - Fastest Drive Tested is the 10,000RPM WD Velociraptor - 101MB/s
WD20EADS - You claim 100MB/s - Reality = 78MB/s (Hey, didn't I say under 80MB/s?)
6TB WD RED - 175MB/s

You still want to say drives haven't gotten significantly faster over time? Do you not consider almost 100MB/s, over double the speed, significant? Because I do.

Maybe on your planet but not here on Earth. HGST is still king. I wouldn't even use a Seagate drive as a doorstop.

No according to what I've read here. Waits for BS Backblaze link...

Intentionally shortening the life of the drives "just to see how long a rebuild takes" is one of the dumbest things I've heard in a while. Thanks for the laugh.

Drives are meant to be used, and the life span is not greatly affected by a rebuild. Also, hard drives don't have a limited number of reads/writes, so no, I'm not shortening the lifespan.

Once again McFly, you are comparing apples to bongo drums. The likely scenario is you're comparing the time it took to rebuild a full or nearly full array of 2TB drives with the time it took to rebuild a mostly empty array of 6TB drives - because you won't convince me for a second that the two arrays were of the same capacity (since wasting 6TB of parity space on an array smaller than 24TB is moronic), nor is there any way in hell that given that fact if they were both 60% full that they took anywhere near the same amount of time to rebuild.

They did. It is amazing what several years of increased hard drive write speeds and more powerful RAID controllers can do. Again, I've already told you, both arrays were about 60% full. I never said the two arrays were of the same capacity, the array of 2TB drives was significantly smaller. Both were 3 drive arrays.

Yeah because everyone is as careless as you are.

I guess you're perfect? You're telling me you've never accidentally deleted something? Ever? I call complete bullshit on that.

So what, you have Seagate stock or something? Their drives are garbage. They always have been and always will be. That's the reason they're cheap. And on top of that you think putting said garbage into an external enclosure where it can get knocked around is a swell idea??

Now I know you are just a troll. So I'm done here.

 

[bermel72]

What did I start by asking this question. This thread is amazing. Haha. I still think the 1 to 1 ratio is the best solution, let me ask this would 6x6Tb drive be good for this 18tb backed up on 18tb?

 

[newtekie1]

What did I start by asking this question. This thread is amazing. Haha. I still think the 1 to 1 ratio is the best solution, let me ask this would 6x6Tb drive be good for this 18tb backed up on 18tb?

Yes, assuming you mean two 3x6TB RAID5 arrays. Of course, in the end that will give you about 10TB of actual usable space.

You'll also need an add-on RAID controller for sure to do this. You can find Intel boards with 6 SATA ports wired to the Intel controller(they all have to wired to the Intel controller if you want to use the motherboard's RAID), but then you won't have a port for the SSD for your OS.

 

[bermel72]

Yes, assuming you mean two 3x6TB RAID5 arrays. Of course, in the end that will give you about 10TB of actual usable space.

You'll also need an add-on RAID controller for sure to do this. You can find Intel boards with 6 SATA ports wired to the Intel controller(they all have to wired to the Intel controller if you want to use the motherboard's RAID), but then you won't have a port for the SSD for your OS.

So a motherboard with 7 or 8 SATA 3 ports wouldn't work for software raid?

 

[newtekie1]

So a motherboard with 7 or 8 SATA 3 ports wouldn't work for software raid?

If you are going to use Software RAID, that will be fine. But I recommend against it.

 

[bermel72]

If you are going to use Software RAID, that will be fine. But I recommend against it.

Any reason as to why?

 

[newtekie1]

Any reason as to why?

Basically, the speed just isn't there. Software RAID is slow.

 

[bermel72]

Basically, the speed just isn't there. Software RAID is slow.

Ah. Well a good raid card is like $500, by the time I get this all figured out it'll be like 2 grand, which is a little much for me. I was looking at the $1000 to $1500 range.

 

[newtekie1]

Ah. Well a good raid card is like $500, by the time I get this all figured out it'll be like 2 grand, which is a little much for me. I was looking at the $1000 to $1500 range.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115096

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115064

The Highpoint 2680 is a good starter RAID card that won't break the bank. Add a couple SFF-8087 to SATA cables, and you've got a decent setup that will handle up to 8 drives in RAID for about $120. You use that just for the data drives, and connect your OS SSD to the motherboard.

This will allow you to start with your 6 data drives, and still give you some room to expand in the future by adding 2 more drives. And the 2680 supports OCE(Online Capacity Expansion), so you can just attached another 6TB drive in the future, and use the Highpoint GUI to add it to an array to expand the size of that array. It goes through a rebuild process to add the extra drive, and once that is done, the space is available.

 

[bermel72]

Hmmm...what's a good processor and motherboard for a decent raid setup, and how much ram would you recommend, I'll show you what I have so far.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($149.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X41 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($94.59 @ NZXT)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($107.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.77 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Video Card ($104.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ NCIX US)
Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $811.27
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-16 22:17 EDT-0400

 

[taz420nj]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115096

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115064

The Highpoint 2680 is a good starter RAID card that won't break the bank. Add a couple SFF-8087 to SATA cables, and you've got a decent setup that will handle up to 8 drives in RAID for about $120. You use that just for the data drives, and connect your OS SSD to the motherboard.

This will allow you to start with your 6 data drives, and still give you some room to expand in the future by adding 2 more drives. And the 2680 supports OCE(Online Capacity Expansion), so you can just attached another 6TB drive in the future, and use the Highpoint GUI to add it to an array to expand the size of that array. It goes through a rebuild process to add the extra drive, and once that is done, the space is available.

LOL Highpoint cards are junk. They're called "fakeRAID" cards for a reason. They don't have an onboard RPU/XOR engine, they are basically just HBAs that offload all of the RAID operations to the CPU - and that's why they're dirt cheap new. They are no better than software RAID performance wise.

@bermel72 I already told you that there's nothing wrong with getting a used/decommissioned card off ebay. On the last page I linked to a good one that'll cost you $60 including cables.. These are cards that cost $500 new a few years ago.

 

[newtekie1]

Hmmm...what's a good processor and motherboard for a decent raid setup, and how much ram would you recommend, I'll show you what I have so far.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($149.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X41 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($94.59 @ NZXT)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($107.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.77 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Video Card ($104.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ NCIX US)
Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $811.27
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-16 22:17 EDT-0400

Ditch the AMD. This is better and cheaper:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($233.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X41 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($94.59 @ NZXT)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($87.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($32.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.77 @ OutletPC)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ NCIX US)
Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $754.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-16 22:31 EDT-0400

 

[bermel72]

LOL Highpoint cards are junk. They're called "fakeRAID" cards for a reason. They don't have an onboard RPU/XOR engine, they are basically just HBAs that offload all of the RAID operations to the CPU - and that's why they're dirt cheap new. They are no better than software RAID performance wise.

@bermel72 I already told you that there's nothing wrong with getting a used/decommissioned card off ebay. On the last page I linked to a good one that'll cost you $60 including cables.. These are cards that cost $500 new a few years ago.

And I didn't say you were wrong I just like to hear different options and see what suits my needs better. Currently tho I don't have an eBay account and why I wouldn't be against making an account I'm weird about buying new things. Like I said tho I'm not against it.

 

[bermel72]

Ditch the AMD. This is better and cheaper:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($233.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X41 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($94.59 @ NZXT)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($87.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($32.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.77 @ OutletPC)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ NCIX US)
Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter ($27.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm Fan ($11.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $754.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-16 22:31 EDT-0400

Awesome! I wanted an Intel but I must have completely looked over that board. Nice. Now I'll have a 5820k, 6700k, and a 6600k going for a whole family of Intel's I think.

 

[newtekie1]

And I didn't say you were wrong I just like to hear different options and see what suits my needs better. Currently tho I don't have an eBay account and why I wouldn't be against making an account I'm weird about buying new things. Like I said tho I'm not against it.

There is a reason the card he linked to is only $30. I'll give you a hint, try to find the product page on the manufacturer's website.

 

[bermel72]

Hmmm based on this video I think I will go with a raid 6.

 

[taz420nj]

When the bottleneck varies, it does matter. In the past, when it was recommended to not use more than a 2TB drive, we had RAID controllers that were slow as well as slow write speeds on the drives. At the time it was a two fold problem. Today, both problems have been greatly reduced. How is this hard to understand?

Except once again, the write speeds are NOT increasing anywhere near fast enough to make a rebuild operation significantly faster to a degree that the array is not in danger.

Oh you believe the spec sheets, how cute... Go look at some actual benchmarks. Too lazy to do that, no problem, I already did, because I actually inform myself before posting, here are some:

2008 - Fastest Drive Tested is the 10,000RPM WD Velociraptor - 101MB/s
WD20EADS - You claim 100MB/s - Reality = 78MB/s (Hey, didn't I say under 80MB/s?)
6TB WD RED - 175MB/s

While we're talking about "actual" benchmarks, what, you didn't think I'd notice your link to the 6TB Red is for a 7200RPM "Red Pro" drive that costs over $120 more each than the Red 5400 that you want the OP to buy?

Hmmmm... Looks like the 5400's writes average out to 123.4MB/s. Quite a bit short of your claim.

You still want to say drives haven't gotten significantly faster over time? Do you not consider almost 100MB/s, over double the speed, significant? Because I do.

Yeah I just blew that argument out of the water.

No according to what I've read here. Waits for BS Backblaze link...

Oh how cute, you had to go to some obscure French site to find someone who claims Seagate has "less returns". Pardonnez-moi if I believe Backblaze, since they have tens of thousands of these drives in operation and know the rate at which they fail.

Drives are meant to be used, and the life span is not greatly affected by a rebuild. Also, hard drives don't have a limited number of reads/writes, so no, I'm not shortening the lifespan.

Every single operation the drive performs gets it closer to encountering an unrecoverable bit error (the entire basis of the problem with large drives in RAID5). The second drive doesn't actually have to "fail" completely. All that has to happen is that an unrecoverable bit error is encountered during the reverse parity computation and the rebuild will crash - destroying the array.

They did. It is amazing what several years of increased hard drive write speeds and more powerful RAID controllers can do. Again, I've already told you, both arrays were about 60% full. I never said the two arrays were of the same capacity, the array of 2TB drives was significantly smaller. Both were 3 drive arrays.

Wow. Amazing. So you are running with literally 80% overhead loss (30% in RAID parity loss plus 50% for 1:1 backup) to store your movies?? LOL good to know you can afford to piss money away like that on such a pointless setup. Why not simply put it in RAID1? Or don't use RAID at all, just copy it to two sets of drives? At least that way you're only running with 50% overhead.

And sorry, but there's no way in hell or on Earth that it took the same amount of time to rebuild 2.5TB worth of data as it did to rebuild 8TB of data. Even if the 75% increase in real world write speed (which last I checked isn't "over double") you're claiming is true (which it's not), it's not the 300% increase that would be required to accomplish such a feat. Care to check your math?

I guess you're perfect? You're telling me you've never accidentally deleted something? Ever? I call complete bullshit on that.

Of course I have. But my storage folders on the array have permissions in force that don't allow deletion. To delete anything from there requires me to log into the server directly using a specific account.

Now I know you are just a troll. So I'm done here.

But at least I know what I'm talking about....

 

[taz420nj]

There is a reason the card he linked to is only $30. I'll give you a hint, try to find the product page on the manufacturer's website.

Uhh duh, it's an old card. Of course it won't be on their site. But it'll still do what he needs for a fraction of what a new card costs. This is a f'n media server, not an enterprise setup.