The best RAID setup for my situation?

[kaotik123]

Hi guys got some questions.
New to RAID, but I am tech savvy.

Ok basically I have a media centre with 3x3tb Hdds. They are all installed as seperate drives (not RAID) and filled with data.
I want to set them up as RAID but as I understand this will wipe the data on the discs.

So if I buy an NAS box and another 3x3tb hdds on a RAID setup, can I transfer the data from the media centre to the NAS, and then RAID the existing 3tb hdd inside the media centre and then transfer the data in the NAS back? I guess I am asking is this best way to go about this?

What RAID type would be the best for the NAS and media centre?

Thanks in advance

 

[manofchalk]

Write performance on RAID5/6 is going to be slow, to my knowledge Read speeds improve under RAID5/6.

For the price of a $400 RAID card, you could just buy yourself a 4TB RAID10 array, which is a lot simpler and gets you performance and redundancy (one drive failure, two if the right drives fail). Think we are making this a bit more complex than it needs to be :lol:.

 

[dingo07]

Lets not forget that RAID was an implementation to get speed out of drives that were not even 120GB in size on a SCSI bus.

Like the article that was linked to by drewhoo, RAID is not for everyone, and with the advent of drives larger than 1 TB, the rebuild times have skyrocketed because the technology is based on 1980's technology, give or take.

 

[kaotik123]

Hmmm yeah I think i was just trying to make it more complicated than it needed to be.
So I am just going to buy a separate RAID backup and then with the drives currently in my system I will use a application like Drive Bender or Drive Pool that lets me view all the drives as one letter.
Thanks for everyone's help, much appreciated.

 

[drewhoo]

I agree that RAID isn't for everyone, even though on the surface it looks like a panacea for storage woes. FWIW I have been using my RAID5 array for some photo and video editing where sequential read matters a lot, and it is *amazing*. A lot of what I do involves uploading ~1000 12Mb files and then waiting on my computer to render jpg previews from RAW files (this is where the 600Mb/s sequential read and 500Mb/s sequential write speed shines) so I can go through and sort photos from a shoot. There is no more waiting! It's so wonderful! I haven't done as much with video, but playback on the Premiere Pro timeline for 720p 60fps footage is instant, without MPE enabled. (Footage is on the RAID5 and project file is on the OS SSD).

manofchalk makes an excellent point--I could have spent $640 (about $400 less than my setup costs) for 4 2TB WD Caviar Blacks and to get the same storage capacity in a RAID10. That would mean about 1/2 the r/w speed and slightly better drive failure tolerance (but 10x the URE rate). I've got to be honest, I didn't think of that configuration prior to making my decision, and I can't say I wouldn't have gone that route, even though it would have left me with no open SATA ports whereas now I have 7 open (4 MoBo + 3 card).

Post back when you come up with your solution and let me know how you like it!

 

[dingo07]

I too built the system in my sig with a RAID0 for Premier Pro video editing, primarily, and it's a godsend working on AVCHD files taken with my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS3 camera. It games well too with the SLI 460's.