data storage server

e24ohm

I need some pointers and ideas.

I just purchased a new motherboard and AMD processor. The board supports many flavors of RAID. What i want to do is have a storage server for data, but i am not sure the configuration foot print. should i have a 40GB OS/App partition and the rest a RAID 5 configuration to protect the data?

This is going to be my personal storage server, and will be saving over 200 GB, so a backup is not goign to be practical.

dynamik

How many ports and how many hard drives (and sizes) do you have to work with?

tiersten

If you only need 200GB then just buy two HDs and mirror them. RAID isn't a substitute for a backup however. RAID only protects you from a HD failing. It doesn't do a thing about you from deleting the wrong file.

e24ohm

tiersten wrote:

If you only need 200GB then just buy two HDs and mirror them. RAID isn't a substitute for a backup however. RAID only protects you from a HD failing. It doesn't do a thing about you from deleting the wrong file.

Not worried about deleteing the wrong file, this is going to be archive location for data. The data will be around 200 +/- GB, and i do not have a backup method. Creating multipul DVD is not on my high list, so i thought that a RAID 5 array would be nice to store the data on. Not sure if this is a good soltuion or not, but that is what i was thinking and wanted to hear what other had to say or give tips or insight on soemthing that i might have over looked.

thank you.

dynamik

You didn't answer my question. What do you have to work with? That's going to affect things a great deal. I'd typically put the OS on RAID-1 and the data on RAID-5 in this type of situation.

Tiersten makes a valid point as well. It's not just deleting the wrong file. You have coffee spills, fires, theft, etc. to worry about as well. I have two external drives that I keep in a fireproof safe and rotate weekly for full backups. It's a painless process, and my data is significantly more secure.