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RAID Storage ideas

gazwas

Active member
Sorry if this is in the wrong place but having just bought a P65+ my increased data usage means I'm in search of an external RAID mirrored storage solution for Mac and was wondering what people here are using. I instantly thought of Lacie 2big and Drobo but hear horror stories about both units. I don't like the sound of the Western Digital units having to install their software to use the drives as I just want it to appear as one large external drive that I can then use with Media Pro to catalogue my sessions. Also being based in the UK, we don't have access to some of the specialist Mac shops in the US so ideally it will be an "off the shelf" solution rather then build your own solution.

I'm leaning towards a Lacie 2big 4TB or 6TB as it looks a really well made unit but obviously looks aren't everything.
 

H3dtogo

New member
Don't go for the Lacie solution. They will fail, it is only a question of when it will happen. I had a lot of lacie disks, they all crashed.... so i asked some colleagues about their experiance: same thing over there. I think they are not up to " hard labour". I went for some simple external harddisks and now i am about to order some Raid disk's from OWC. OWC is probably the world leader in good memory and storage solutions for Mac.
 

Christopher

Active member
Sorry but OWC world leader ? Perhaps in the US, nobody even knows them here in Germany. ;-)

There are lot's of option. My current second backup is a case from Lian Li.
 

Jeffg53

Member
+1 for OWC, and agree about LaCie. I got burned with them a few times. The support was as good as the product. I have found WD to be good too.

I have also sworn never to be a Linux based one again, having been left with useless disks when the controller has died. If my Mac can't read the data, I don't buy it.
 

cly

Member
If possible, I would avoid a (hardware-based) RAID solution unless you are willing to invest in rather expensive hardware: As soon as you do more than plain disk mirroring, you are vitally dependent on the controller of your system. If the controller dies and your replacement controller comes with a different firmware, you are out of luck.

I guess it depends (i) on the data volume you have to manage and (ii) on the way you backup you data, but if you can break it up into 2-3 TB chunks I'd go for a software-based mirroring of HDs. (But: Breaking it up might make it more difficult to run proper backups because doing it automatically get's more difficult.)

BTW: Being based in Europe doesn't mean you can't order from OWC. Shipping time is a few days.

Chris
 

Don Libby

Well-known member
Another vote againt Lacie and another vote for Drobo. I've been using 2-Drobos now for a couple years without a hitch.
 

narikin

New member
Another -1 for LaCie and (sorry) Drobo.
LaCie's just break all time, Drobo's are very slow, plus neither of these are really professional solutions.

My main solution is an internal Areca ARC-1222 Raid Card, currently 6x 3Tb drives =18Tb internal, in Raid 6, which is amazingly reliable, huge (up to 24Tb with 8 disks) flexible (array roaming, hot spares, capacity changes, multiple raids/volumes, etc) and above all *fast* at 700mb/sec sustained read, and 1050mb/s burst. BUT... Mac's don't have the internal room for enough drives inside the machine -it's one of their handful of major negatives - so that's not on your list.

This is backed up onto an external Areca ARC-8040 also an 8 drive unit, but in a self contained box. This is my main backup of my internal raid array. I would recommend that to you, but am not sure of the Mac compatibility. Otherwise it is pretty perfect with USB 3.0, e-SATA, Firewire, USB 2.0, Ethernet, etc, etc. Rock solid. Nowhere near as fast as the internal one, but a nice solution.

My best advice would be to get a QNAP NAS machine. This can be anything from 4 to 8+ drives - whatever you require. Set it up in Raid 5 (or 6). I have a 5 drive one in Raid 5, and back my main array up onto it also. (thats 3xbackup, I'm neurotic) It is of course a NAS system, so everything is online. That has been a life saver a couple of times. Not remotely as fast as the internal Areca, but amazing machines with a huge online community that solves any setup issue. It can also act as a Time Machine backup as well as being your raid array + your files are on the network, so any computer can access them, in your home, or anywhere else in the world, with a password. Great reliable machines, and fast becoming the leading NAS system/community in the world.
 

narikin

New member
If possible, I would avoid a (hardware-based) RAID solution unless you are willing to invest in rather expensive hardware: As soon as you do more than plain disk mirroring, you are vitally dependent on the controller of your system. If the controller dies and your replacement controller comes with a different firmware, you are out of luck.
This seems odd advice. All the professional systems are hardware based (Raid cards with dedicated I/O processors) to say this is insecure flies in the face of the entire industry. Cards from one manufacturers are inter-operable. I've put old arrays into new cards and read everything.

OK, the advice is sound if you are a small, low volume user. If everything you have already, and are likely to need in the future fits into a single 2Tb or 3Tb drive, which you just mirror every so often, then kind of fine. But that's a Raid system (raid 1 - mirroring) just a home made one.
 

gazwas

Active member
Thanks for your replies. So the Lacie is a big no, no! I've spoken to a couple of others and tey have also said avoid any Lacie products.

The G speed looks very interesting as still does the Drobo S. I want the unit as my master storage and backup backup hence wanting the mirrored RAID.

My only worry with the Drobo is thd reports of how slow it is in operation however it seems a lot cheaper than the G Speed. I will use via FW800. Can any Drobo users coment on this and which unit your using.
 

Dustbak

Member
I use an internal Areca 1220 Raid Card (4 ports internal) with 4 WD drives. This rocks and is faster than a software RAID and faster than the Mac RAID Card which is maxed out at 500MB/s. The Areca RAID is much faster than my OWC SSD. I could install up to 6 drives (even 8 with some modification) in my MacPro but the Areca only has 4 ports anyway.

You have to install the latest Areca firmware for the Mac and it works just fine on my MacPro with 10.6.x

I use the external OWC RAID case for Backup. I can definitely advise you to not use the firewire port but instead find something that supports eSata.
 

cly

Member
This seems odd advice. All the professional systems are hardware based (Raid cards with dedicated I/O processors) to say this is insecure flies in the face of the entire industry.
Narikin, you didn't read my posting. I wrote "unless you are willing to invest in rather expensive hardware".

You don't get a professional systems for the price of a LaCie, Taurus or whatever consumer-level RAID solution one might have in mind. I'd never go with the latter but I wouldn't hesitate going with an industry-proven solution.

Chris
 

gazwas

Active member
And I thought buying an MF sysytem was an education.

Thanks for your recommendation narikin, the QNAP does look a very robust storage solution and can also grow with my needs. The QNAP TS-659PRO+ Turbo NAS 6 Bay NAS looks very interesting and looks like it could last many years or are these like computers that get outdated very quickly and need replacing?

Also as all this is very new to me I'm a little confused. An I correct in thinking being a NAS basically means its accessed over a network either wireless or ethernet? So for best performance ethernet would be the main connection to my master computer.
 

narikin

New member
Narikin, you didn't read my posting. I wrote "unless you are willing to invest in rather expensive hardware".

You don't get a professional systems for the price of a LaCie, Taurus or whatever consumer-level RAID solution one might have in mind. I'd never go with the latter but I wouldn't hesitate going with an industry-proven solution.

Chris
Internal Areca cards start around $325 - cheaper than Drobos or LaCie's. And vastly superior. I wouldn't call that "rather expensive hardware".

All you need is to add the drives of your choice/capacity.
 

narikin

New member
And I thought buying an MF sysytem was an education.

Thanks for your recommendation narikin, the QNAP does look a very robust storage solution and can also grow with my needs. The QNAP TS-659PRO+ Turbo NAS 6 Bay NAS looks very interesting and looks like it could last many years or are these like computers that get outdated very quickly and need replacing?

Also as all this is very new to me I'm a little confused. An I correct in thinking being a NAS basically means its accessed over a network either wireless or ethernet? So for best performance ethernet would be the main connection to my master computer.
They are very reliable and no, you don't need to update or change them much. They are like little self-contained computers. Linux kernel, I believe.

NAS is Network Attached Storage, so yes, it connects via your Ethernet, usually just plug it into the router. Shows up on your network. You control it by entering its I.P. address (shown on the display panel) into your browser. amazingly easy. I have the TS-509Pro, but that is 4 years out of date now. works perfectly though.

You can get good quality 2Tb drives as low as $70 each (try Samsungs - they are excellent), so I'd go for that size. Put 4/5 of them in Raid 5 and you'll be happy for a decade probably. If you have the 6 bay system, you can do that right away, and add extra drives later to expand the capacity. Or have the 6th one in there acting as a 'hot spare' should a drive ever fail on you.

This will not be as fast as an internal Areca system, but will compare well with most any other raid box. If ultra high speed is your requirement, then you have to go internal raid. If not, then this is an excellent answer.
 

narikin

New member
The bit no-one wants to hear:

A raid system is not strictly 'backup'. It does protect you against the most common form of data loss - drive failure (a WHEN scenario, not an IF scenario). But - something like a flood/fire/theft and you loose protection.

So make a backup, and keep it elsewhere. Transfer data to backup disks, label and wrap them securely and store off-site. Disks are so cheap now, its better to keep the old ones in case you make a mistake and delete something, than have a backup overwrite the old, 'safe' copy.
 

narikin

New member
Here is a snapshot of my Raid systems:

'Local Disk C' is the OS disk -a SSD 240Gb drive. very fast and reliable
'Internal Raid R' is main ultra fast internal storage raid 11Tb usable out of 17.5Tb total, in Raid 6.
'External Raid T' is external Areca Raid box as daily backup for the internal array, in Raid 5.
'Locked Backup Raid Z' is again the external Areca box with a locked 5Tb volume, where I keep a fixed backup from a year ago. Also Raid 5.

Remember the capacities showing are what is usable after the Raid array has protected itself against disk failure. Actual total disk capacity is larger.

There is also the Qnap showing on the Network in bottom left, for my NAS storage.

I should add that this is overkill, but my work is my life.

 
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