Building a computer for GIS friend. Need storage advice?

[noobtastic88]

Hi all
I am building a computer for a GIS friend.
I know what I need for RAM, cpu, etc, requirements but I am a bit stuck on what to get him for storage
Was thinking a RAID 1 pair of SSDs for boot drive and another pair of RAID 1 SATA 2 TB drives for data. But I am a bit concerned about read/write speeds with his GIS work and I dont want those hard drives to be the bottleneck.
Wondering if it is a better approach to buy some 600 GB 10k SAS drives and put all 4 of them in RAID 5 to get me up to the storage requirement amount. Mind you I only have 4 drive slots to work with and that would create one big physical volume
Anyone have some suggestions on which approach would be better? Thanks much

 

[kanewolf]

I don't recommend RAID1 for boot drive. The extra complexity isn't justified by any extra security. Drive failure is a low probability. There are too many other ways that your OS drive can get messed up that RAID doesn't protect. Get good backup software, and create a restore image.
This system sounds like a commercial use system. Backup strategies are important if you use the HW to make money. You have to ensure client data is protected for long term.

 

[Nuckles_56]

From my experience with GIS software, they love fast storage, so I would suggest something like a 250GB SSD for a boot disk, another 250GB SSD (ideally m.2) as the work space and then 2 2TB disks in RAID 1 for the final data output and storage of past projects etc. This way you get as fast a system for GIS as possible.

I also agree with Kanewolf, you want to make sure that the data is being backed up as well

 

[Morad Tamer]

I think the best solution is to put 2 SSDs in RAID 0 OR gat an M.2 SSD (Recommended)
and get another 2 large storage hard disks and put them in RAID 1
(Preferably WD [Black for the extra reliabilty] OR [Blue to save the extra money])