ChrisDauer
Workshop Member
I've heard a few people talk about storage and I'm about to jump into that arena myself.
So I have a few options.
1.) Cost: $.4 Raid 1 (mirror - size unknown but half that of stripe), $.2 Raid 0 (stripe - between 400 GB and 1 TB; whatever is on sale). Buy individual drives and manage Mirroring on my own (ie, copy to each). This option is cheapest, and biggest PITA. I must copy first to one drive then when that finished, repeat the process to a second drive.
2.) Cost: $.6 Raid 1 (mirror - 1 TB), $.3 Raid 0 (stripe - 2 TB). Buy a raid unit w/ 2 drives having 1 TB each and go Raid 1 (mirror). The cost is a bit more but I do not have to manually copy to each drive.
3.) Cost: $.45 Raid 5 (1.5 TB), $.67 Raid 1 (mirror - 1 TB), $.33 Raid 0 (stripe - 2 TB). Buy a raid unit w/ 4 drives having 500 GB (.5 TB) and go Raid 5. It should yield improved performance and still provide data redundancy (if a single drive fails.)
So far, I'm leaning most towards option 3, (Raid 5). I get redundancy like Raid 1 but with more drive space and improved performance.
Thoughts, comments, other? What do you guys use?
Ps. Yes, I know that this doesn't cover fire, or theft, etc. When (if!) I start making money on this venture, I'll be sure to keep important images off-site. Until then; I'm just going to have to risk it.
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*mirror - duplicate information on multiple (generally 2) disc drives (like a mirror copy).
*stripe - information is written to two hard drives at the same time so that each drive only has to write half the information (like having 2 water faucets to fill two buckets. It will take only half the time). Improved performance is off-set by the fact that losing one drive will result in the complete loss of the image.
*Raid 5 - Uses a checksum bit to validate so that if any one drive fails, it can be rebuild by inserting a working hard drive. It's also spread over multiple drives which should improve performance (in theory, there are always exceptions).
So I have a few options.
1.) Cost: $.4 Raid 1 (mirror - size unknown but half that of stripe), $.2 Raid 0 (stripe - between 400 GB and 1 TB; whatever is on sale). Buy individual drives and manage Mirroring on my own (ie, copy to each). This option is cheapest, and biggest PITA. I must copy first to one drive then when that finished, repeat the process to a second drive.
2.) Cost: $.6 Raid 1 (mirror - 1 TB), $.3 Raid 0 (stripe - 2 TB). Buy a raid unit w/ 2 drives having 1 TB each and go Raid 1 (mirror). The cost is a bit more but I do not have to manually copy to each drive.
3.) Cost: $.45 Raid 5 (1.5 TB), $.67 Raid 1 (mirror - 1 TB), $.33 Raid 0 (stripe - 2 TB). Buy a raid unit w/ 4 drives having 500 GB (.5 TB) and go Raid 5. It should yield improved performance and still provide data redundancy (if a single drive fails.)
So far, I'm leaning most towards option 3, (Raid 5). I get redundancy like Raid 1 but with more drive space and improved performance.
Thoughts, comments, other? What do you guys use?
Ps. Yes, I know that this doesn't cover fire, or theft, etc. When (if!) I start making money on this venture, I'll be sure to keep important images off-site. Until then; I'm just going to have to risk it.
-------------------
*mirror - duplicate information on multiple (generally 2) disc drives (like a mirror copy).
*stripe - information is written to two hard drives at the same time so that each drive only has to write half the information (like having 2 water faucets to fill two buckets. It will take only half the time). Improved performance is off-set by the fact that losing one drive will result in the complete loss of the image.
*Raid 5 - Uses a checksum bit to validate so that if any one drive fails, it can be rebuild by inserting a working hard drive. It's also spread over multiple drives which should improve performance (in theory, there are always exceptions).