Home server with no more hard drive slots?

[ideaman924]

Hi,

I was replacing and swapping out hard drives in our ancient home server. It's been running for a while now, but yesterday I saw a server failing drastically and I didn't want that situation in my lap.

So, going with LinusTechTips, I decided to make a RAID array. More specifically, a RAID 5 array, because it would let me use 75% of the total hard drive(s) space and still keep functioning even if some of the drives die out. (correct me if I'm wrong, but if I have four drives, I could have two drives failing and my RAID would still function, right?)

Here's the real bummer - I wanted 4x2TB drives in my home server, but there is only two slots where I could put 3.5 inch hard drives. Yes. Only two. There is absolutely no 2.5 inch slot, there is one 5.5 inch but it's currently occupied with a DVD burner that I plan to use later on with HandBrake.

[strike]So, I was wondering if it was okay to use DUCT TAPE, to secure the hard drives to the bottom of the case. [/strike]But people told me duct tape could cause hard drives to wear out quicker because they don't stick properly and hard drives may start to rattle around my self-made enclosure, thus wearing out the hard drive.. Scrapped.

So, now I'm wondering what case I should use. Currently, I have a Micro-ATX board. I have no intention of changing to ITX or whatever because I'm on limited budget. The case should have at least four drive slots (preferably hot-swappable) or more (is better). I don't care about 2.5 inch or 5.5 inch, whatever. I just need four or more 3.5 inch slots (preferably hot-swappable, again)

The case should have plenty of room for a PCI-e RAID card, should I decide to buy one. If I do, do you guys have any recommendations (for a RAID card, suitable for home server use?) Again, I'm on limited budget (sorry, folks) so cheaper is better as well.

Any recommendations, please? Thanks in advance!

 

[kanewolf]

With RAID5 you can have a single drive fail. A double failure would require either RAID10 or RAID6. RAID10 would give you 50% space. RAID6 is probably not supported by your controller.

 

[hang-the-9]

Try this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111203 You would want to add in either a USB3 or an eSata card to the server if it does not have any.

 

[ideaman924]

With RAID5 you can have a single drive fail. A double failure would require either RAID10 or RAID6. RAID10 would give you 50% space. RAID6 is probably not supported by your controller.

Why, thanks. I thought two drives was rather a lot. So I can have one drive fail on me, then I can swap that out for a new drive and still keep running my server..Good.

 

[ideaman924]

Try this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111203 You would want to add in either a USB3 or an eSata card to the server if it does not have any.

USB3 and eSATA are not a must for me because I use the network to stream files to my devices.

The things I would splurge on is a RAID card. Gigabit network is supported by the motherboard, out of the box. And that's fine, because I'm only getting 4~5 megs a second currently with my Ubuntu Server. (pro tip to myself: don't use Ubuntu for any servers..use FreeNAS or Windows 2012 Server)

 

[kanewolf]

Try this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111203 You would want to add in either a USB3 or an eSata card to the server if it does not have any.

USB3 and eSATA are not a must for me because I use the network to stream files to my devices.

The things I would splurge on is a RAID card. Gigabit network is supported by the motherboard, out of the box. And that's fine, because I'm only getting 4~5 megs a second currently with my Ubuntu Server. (pro tip to myself: don't use Ubuntu for any servers..use FreeNAS or Windows 2012 Server)

I believe the eSATA/USB3 was a second-hand way to say that RAID is not backup. You should always do conventional backups even with RAID. If you can't afford to lose data RAID is not enough.

I will also say that the most likely time to lose data is when doing a rebuild from a failed disk. Usually it is because of operator error (pulling the wrong drive, etc) or low end RAID controllers that don't have a well documented process for doing a rebuild.

 

[ideaman924]

Try this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111203 You would want to add in either a USB3 or an eSata card to the server if it does not have any.

USB3 and eSATA are not a must for me because I use the network to stream files to my devices.

The things I would splurge on is a RAID card. Gigabit network is supported by the motherboard, out of the box. And that's fine, because I'm only getting 4~5 megs a second currently with my Ubuntu Server. (pro tip to myself: don't use Ubuntu for any servers..use FreeNAS or Windows 2012 Server)

I believe the eSATA/USB3 was a second-hand way to say that RAID is not backup. You should always do conventional backups even with RAID. If you can't afford to lose data RAID is not enough.

I will also say that the most likely time to lose data is when doing a rebuild from a failed disk. Usually it is because of operator error (pulling the wrong drive, etc) or low end RAID controllers that don't have a well documented process for doing a rebuild.

Thanks for the clarification. I still need backups on top of RAID...hmm.

I've been centralizing data in the server, other PCs in our setup can't handle the gigabytes (for now).

Since my server is shaky right now, I copied everything to another drive, then copied everything to my laptop's 500GB hard drive. (it was painfully slow, but I managed). Now I'm going to rebuild the server and slim down the movies (it's all in mkv and it sometimes contains gibberish subtitles that I wouldn't even need anyway)

EDIT: One more quick question. If I buy four of 2TB drives, stick them all in, then make TWO pools, then use one (two drives) as primary and use other (two other drives) as secondary (if primary decides to die out), would that be a (kinda) backup as well? I would set it up so that secondary mirrors from primary in real time. That would be a (kinda shaky but redundant) backup as well, right? Thanks, I think I'm asking too many questions here.

 

[kanewolf]

Here is a good article talking about why RAID is not backup -- http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-features/31745-data-recovery-tales-raid-is-not-backup

Also one on preparing for RAID failure -- http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-features/32168-data-recovery-tales-prepare-the-right-way-for-raid-failure

If you do real time mirroring between the two RAID sets you still don't account for several of the failure modes shown in the RAID is not backup article.

 

[mjslakeridge]

Good articles ^^. I really don't know why anyone would want to use RAID for a home server. Downtime usually isn't an issue at home. Most average users (like me) wouldn't probably be able to recover from a disk failure, too many variables. I also read an article where a business had a 4 drive raid array and one of the drives had failed years ago and they didn't know they had a problem until the second drive failed. Then they were in big trouble.

We had a raid disk fail in our small energy trading business and the IT guy even struggled to get everything back to normal, but eventually did. We were also doing a full backup to a separate server nightly, so I think that is what he ended up using.

For my home setup, I just back up the OS drives using Acronis True Image Home to external drives, and backup important data by manually copying it to external drives. I know I could use the automated backup features in Acronis, but I trust myself to schedule the backups manually more.

 

[kanewolf]

Good articles ^^. I really don't know why anyone would want to use RAID for a home server. Downtime usually isn't an issue at home. Most average users (like me) wouldn't probably be able to recover from a disk failure, too many variables. I also read an article where a business had a 4 drive raid array and one of the drives had failed years ago and they didn't know they had a problem until the second drive failed. Then they were in big trouble.

We had a raid disk fail in our small energy trading business and the IT guy even struggled to get everything back to normal, but eventually did. We were also doing a full backup to a separate server nightly, so I think that is what he ended up using.

For my home setup, I just back up the OS drives using Acronis True Image Home to external drives, and backup important data by manually copying it to external drives. I know I could use the automated backup features in Acronis, but I trust myself to schedule the backups manually more.

I do use the scheduled backups in Acronis. I keep 7 (discrete) daily backups of critical data (email, quicken, etc).
These are all done to two NAS units in the middle of the night. I then use amazon glacier for my off-site since Synology has a glacier client on the NAS.

 

[mjslakeridge]

That seems like a pretty sensible process. I may fiddle around with the scheduled backup feature in Acronis. For my everyday computer, there isn't really much important data, and that which is I have stored elsewhere (Word Docs, Excel Files, MP3 library, etc.) I just use the manual Acronis backups so that all of my programs on the OS drive would not have to be reinstalled if my drive failed or malware hits. I keep the last 2 or 3 backups, spaced about 1 month apart. Same with my wife's computer.

For my Pro Tools audio recording computer, which is not connected to the internet and no new programs have been installed for several years, the OS drive is backed up with Acronis. The important data (the audio session files) get backed up manually to an external drive after each recording session. I also have another copy of the entire session files (about 100GB) on my everyday computer's D drive (copied over the lan). That way, if I mess up an audio file when overdubbing or editing, I can just import the "clean" file back into the Pro Tools session from one of 2 sources.

I think as long as you have a process, and document where everything is, you should be OK. The one weak link in my system is I don't have offsite backup.

 

[ideaman924]

Thanks, kanewolf! So I'll make a RAID pool with three 2TB drives and then buy a 8TB drive to backup everything to there. (no RAID over there). In the event of RAID failure, I should be able to keep going without much hassle.

Although most of the articles describe RAID failures as human errors like pulling the wrong drive during a rebuild or choosing incorrect drives during a rebuild. Or deleting important files. Thanks!

(I still think a backup SERVER (not drive) for a RAID server is completely ridiculous in a home environment. That only applies to enterprise stations, where a loss of a single file can be a loss of your job.)