Disclaimer: I am very much a RAID noob, so be gentle... :roll: And to make this post as easy to read (and respond to) as possible, all my questions are in blue!
The Objective:
To have a cheap, reliable and (relatively) fast way to backup and store video, music, pictures, and basically anything else that you don’t want to lose. Also it would be nice, but not required, to be able to capture video directly to the system as well. This will be connected to a W2K SP4 machine.
The Plan:
I’ve been looking for an enclosure to put in (4) SATA II, 250 – 300 GB drives. What I’d like to do is set this up as RAID 0+1. I have a lot of family pictures and video, as well as my music collection that need to be securely backed up. I also do a lot of video editing, so I’m hoping to use a part of this as a working drive as well. Because of past HD failures and loss of data, I’m paranoid of losing any other data. And from what I’ve researched, a RAID 0+1 would be my best option. Agree, disagree? How would I go about setting something like this up on a W2K machine? I’ve setup a simple 2 drive RAID 0 before, but never attempted a setup like this. Any tutorials out there?
The Questions:
In my research, eSATA seems to be the way to go. If so, I would need to get a controller card for my system. It would have to be PCI, as my board’s PCI-E slots are currently occupied with a SLI setup. Will I be missing out on speed because of the PCI?
As far as the actual enclosure, I’m looking at this storage tower solution from Addonics. The one that caught my eye was their ST5X1PM model because it includes a Port Multiplier? This totally seems to be the way to go. If I can connect these 4 drives up by a single cable, I’d be a very happy person. But the question is, is there a loss on performance? Anyone else have experience with a PM?
I was looking at this for my host controller. It’s PCI, SATA II Compliant, but in this article it doesn’t say it works with a RAID 0+1 configuration. However, on the multiplier link (above) it says “Drives can be configured as RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 or JBOD when connect to one of the Addonics RAID5 controllers with PM support”….and it shows this controller as one of those. What am I missing? Can anyone confirm if this is going to work for me?
What enclosures have you heard about or are using yourself? Why would this Addonics system be a bad choice? What would be a better choice?
Any other aspects I should be concerned about?
Thanks in advance for your help guys. I'm new posting here but I have used this site as a reference guide, countless times in the past. I know this is where the experts live.
The Objective:
To have a cheap, reliable and (relatively) fast way to backup and store video, music, pictures, and basically anything else that you don’t want to lose. Also it would be nice, but not required, to be able to capture video directly to the system as well. This will be connected to a W2K SP4 machine.
The Plan:
I’ve been looking for an enclosure to put in (4) SATA II, 250 – 300 GB drives. What I’d like to do is set this up as RAID 0+1. I have a lot of family pictures and video, as well as my music collection that need to be securely backed up. I also do a lot of video editing, so I’m hoping to use a part of this as a working drive as well. Because of past HD failures and loss of data, I’m paranoid of losing any other data. And from what I’ve researched, a RAID 0+1 would be my best option. Agree, disagree? How would I go about setting something like this up on a W2K machine? I’ve setup a simple 2 drive RAID 0 before, but never attempted a setup like this. Any tutorials out there?
The Questions:
In my research, eSATA seems to be the way to go. If so, I would need to get a controller card for my system. It would have to be PCI, as my board’s PCI-E slots are currently occupied with a SLI setup. Will I be missing out on speed because of the PCI?
As far as the actual enclosure, I’m looking at this storage tower solution from Addonics. The one that caught my eye was their ST5X1PM model because it includes a Port Multiplier? This totally seems to be the way to go. If I can connect these 4 drives up by a single cable, I’d be a very happy person. But the question is, is there a loss on performance? Anyone else have experience with a PM?
I was looking at this for my host controller. It’s PCI, SATA II Compliant, but in this article it doesn’t say it works with a RAID 0+1 configuration. However, on the multiplier link (above) it says “Drives can be configured as RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 or JBOD when connect to one of the Addonics RAID5 controllers with PM support”….and it shows this controller as one of those. What am I missing? Can anyone confirm if this is going to work for me?
What enclosures have you heard about or are using yourself? Why would this Addonics system be a bad choice? What would be a better choice?
Any other aspects I should be concerned about?
Thanks in advance for your help guys. I'm new posting here but I have used this site as a reference guide, countless times in the past. I know this is where the experts live.