STORAGE SERVER CONFIGS?

[Phil Jennings]

Hi Guys

I have recently been given eight 250GB SATA MaxLine Plus II hard drives. I
was wondering if anyone could recommend any storage server configurations
for use as a file/storage server on my LAN? Possibly RAID etc?

Many thanks

Phil

 

[Rod Speed]

I have recently been given eight 250GB SATA MaxLine Plus II hard drives. I
was wondering if anyone could recommend any storage server configurations
for use as a file/storage server on my LAN? Possibly RAID etc?

Bit hard if you dont say if you are prepared to spend anything on extra hardware.

The lowest cost approach would be to use XP etc and just
mirror them at the OS level if you want any redundancy.

Bit hard to justify spending significant money on say RAID5 in a home lan situation,

 

[Phil Jennings]

I haver tried mirroring the drives at the OS Level as said, but i can't seem
to find this function in XP Pro. I have taken a look around the computer
management section in Admin Tools through the Control Panel. Can you give
some more advice please?

Phil

 

[Peter]

Start Recovery Console
diskpart
select disk 1
create volume simple size=40000
add disk 2

You have just created mirrored 40GB volume on disks 1 and 2.

Or just use My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management
Create two dynamic disks, then make mirrored volume.

 

[Toshi1873]

Hi Guys

I have recently been given eight 250GB SATA MaxLine Plus II hard drives. I
was wondering if anyone could recommend any storage server configurations
for use as a file/storage server on my LAN? Possibly RAID etc?

3Ware Escalade cards can handle up to 8 SATA disks.
Stick them in a *good* server case (SuperMicro?) and
hook them up to a server-class motherboard (one of the
Tyan boards) with 64bit PCI slots. Figure $400-$500 for
the RAID card, $300 for a good server motherboard and
$300-$500 for a good case that can support 8 drives.

8 disks in a RAID5 configuration with a hot spare drive
will net you roughly 1350GB of storage. (A 250GB, 250*
1000*1000*1000, drive really only nets out to roughly
225GB, 225*1024*1024*1024.) So 6 drives of data, 1
drive of parity, 1 hot spare.

For a less-expensive solution, you could go with the 4-
port 3Ware cards and use two file servers to spread the
load.