Requesting Nerd Help - Raid Controller Selection and Drive Choice

[Zach929rr]

Bump.... anybody else have input? Wanted to make my purchase this week, and any further input is much appreciated.

I think one of the 3ware x8 SATAII raid controllers will work well for this application, perhaps paired with a WD Caviar Black? I read the 3ware's pair nicely with those.

[TurboGizzmo]

I use these http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...tation-pro-ii/ i have one at home and more at various customers sites. I run RAID 5 for most backup solutions.

[Zach929rr]

I use these http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...tation-pro-ii/ i have one at home and more at various customers sites. I run RAID 5 for most backup solutions.

Nice price on those units. I'm assuming the build quality and reliability has treated you well?

[TurboGizzmo]

one older model had a drive fail (the older models were harder to replace the drives) but after replacing it rebuilt the array and is still going....it replicates to a newer model for even more redundancy. Mine at my house works fine, its not the newest so its not the fastest thing but works well for holding customer images for 30 days. I also have this running at my house, but its a bit extreme. http://www.nasi.com/nexsan_ATAboy2.php

[Zach929rr]

Looks great. I had been leaning towards being double redundant with the backups and including a NAS in my scheme with some sort of hot swap SATA availiable. Would like to be able to pull drives out and stash them in a fire safe or something on a different level of my house or placed off-site.

[TurboGizzmo]

Looks great. I had been leaning towards being double redundant with the backups and including a NAS in my scheme with some sort of hot swap SATA availiable. Would like to be able to pull drives out and stash them in a fire safe or something on a different level of my house or placed off-site.

Best bet is replicating off-site on top of a raid setup, if you have a lot of data like me (over 4TB) you make the first replication onsite and then put the 2nd nod off-site to continue to replicate daily snapshots....again i am bit more extreme Firesafes are ok too but they make fire proof external drives you could replicate onsite to so your RAID array could back up to them every night and as long as the drive doesnt fail at the same time the fire happens you would be ok http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TI7GTK

[willb003]

NAS?!?

[Panman06]

Looks great. I had been leaning towards being double redundant with the backups and including a NAS in my scheme with some sort of hot swap SATA availiable. Would like to be able to pull drives out and stash them in a fire safe or something on a different level of my house or placed off-site.

The only thing I don't like about the Buffalo NAS is when they act up recovering from a brown/blackout. Keep them on a UPS. We have three of those and two lost their RAID configuration in the past due to brown/blackouts. We have all three on their own 1500VA now.

[Zach929rr]

Thanks everyone for the input. I think I'll be going with a RAID6 implementation with 4x640gb WD Caviar Blacks and an ioSafe Disaster Proof NAS box @ 1TB. Just need to crack the workstation open today and see if it will fit 4xHDDs.

[TurboGizzmo]

pics!

[Zach929rr]

Give me a week

[DavidofColorado]

Give me a week

No now!