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[Mr Skrunts]

Having Zillions of files scattered over numerous hard drives I decided a few weeks ago to have a massive sort out.

The plan was to collate and sort in to folders/directories and then sift and sort duplicates out and maybe rename to contents (of some of the folders at least) for ease of indexing.

In total I now have :-

Numerous 1tb drives
3+ 2tb drives
2+ 3tb drives

I added 2 x 4tb SSHD Seagate's one of which is already fubar and I don't have a clue how much data is lost or whether it's backup exists or not.

Replaced the 4tb SSHD with a Toshiba drive and am quite impressed so went and bought a 6tb Toshiba with 128mb cache runs at 7200rpm, hadn't focused on speed of other drives as they are only for back.

The plan is to run a RAID setup up (Still reading up on what's what) but the question is, if all the drives are of equal size do they have to be the same make.

I am also surmising that if I use RAID 5 that all disks need to be identical.  (Considering using 3 6tb Toshiba drives)

If for any reason I took one of the raid storage drives out will the data be readable in another PC?

TIA

[TheBoy]

I wouldn't bother.

Consumer SATA drives are absolutely shite at RAID, including Toshiba (whose drives have dubious reliability, and they are going down the shitter anyway), and the RAID implementations  on consumer system boards are poor (basically variations of software RAID that rarely turns out well)

You won't get a consumer motherboard supporting RAID5. Fortunately.

Lastly, RAID is not a backup system. Never has been, never will be. Its an availability system.

[aaronjb]

See, I'd disagree with TB (when does that ever happen? )

I have two (rather expensive) QNAP raid housings here filled with drives - one is filled with standard consumer drives and the other with Western Digital "Red" (RAID) drives - both perform damn near identically and have pretty much the same MTBF.

That said, if you want RAID-on-the-cheap, look at UnRAID; several friends have been using that for years (since I started, before I graduated to more expensive solutions) and it has a number of advantages:

The drives don't need to be the same size, the only stipulation is that the parity drive(s) are the same size or larger than the largest drive in the array.
It runs on consumer hardware, you just need a reasonable motherboard (nothing too fancy) and a bunch of PCIe SATA cards (and a NIC, obviously)
It's very cheap
The software is now pretty mature and supports things like Docker so you can run containers with software like Plex Media Server or even ESXi and virtualise entire hosts on top of it (depending on how meaty your server is)

You clearly already have the hardware, assuming you can dedicate a machine to it, so it's a no-brainer to me. Run with dual parity and you can support the loss of two drives before losing any data - yes, it's not a backup solution, but it does significantly reduce the chances of data loss unless you ignore a failed drive.. (and despite supporting the loss of two I would always replace a failed drive ASAP as the chances of another drive failing get significantly higher when the whole array is churning away for 48hrs solid rebuilding the parity drives)

[Mr Skrunts]

I am over run with hardware at the moment.

I have an 8 core FX8350 16GB system.

I also ended up with 2 x 990X gaming SLi boards  (this was bought due to an issue with the above system.

Then I ended up with a Corsair 240 System which I am using for scanning photos, bills and invoices.

Then after all that I ended up buying an i7 4950K system with an Asus Maximus VII Ranger board.

Just looked through the specs and all but the Micro system have 6 x Sata connections and support  SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID5, RAID 10 and JBOD

So lots of fun and learning to be had.

Then when I am done going to sell all the slower PC's and build a new one in the new year, Just cant decide on Coffee Laje, Socket AM4 or TR4, Then I saw the Socket 2011 Boards and Dual 2011 Boards. Choices choices lol.

Yes I fully understand that none of this is work station or server standard, but all I want to so is improve the speed, stand and quality of my hardware.

[Mr Skrunts]

Just been looking at Qnap gear, would/could be a solution for me in the future.

[aaronjb]

When it comes to speed:

RAID0 - (two disks) slightly faster read & write than non-RAID. Lose one disk, lose ALL your data.
RAID1 - (two disks) faster read, no effect on write speed. Lose one disk, lose nothing.
RAID5 - multiple disks, striped data & parity. Read & write speed may be faster, tolerant of one drive failure.
RAID6 - multiple disks, striped data & parity. Read & write speed may be faster, tolerant of two drive failures.
UnRAID - multiple disks, data is contained entirely on each drive, parity is stored on one or two dedicated drives. Tolerant of one or two failures.

The big difference is that for 'real' RAID (0 through 6) all drives must be an identical capacity. UnRAID will use the full capacity of all drives, even of differing size, as long as the parity drive is largest, because it does not stripe the data across the disk set.

BTW, Synology also make nice NAS boxes, though I have no personal experience

[Mister Rog]

What on earth do people do with all this kit ? Getting ready to take over the World ?   

 

[Mr Skrunts]

What on earth do people do with all this kit ? Getting ready to take over the World ?   

 

Trying to keep up with TB and the OOF server room. 

[Lizzie Zoom]

What on earth do people do with all this kit ? Getting ready to take over the World ?   

 

My thoughts as well, plus others, like what an earth is all that for and what does it mean?

21st century boys toys I suppose, but as a girl what do I know!!

[Nick W]

What on earth do people do with all this kit ? Getting ready to take over the World ?   

 

the modern equivalent of a Playboy under the matress?

[TD]

In my PC I have a fast boot disk (500Gb) that has OS and programs installed
Then I have 2x 1Tb disks running raid1 for storage.
The system board has a raid controller built in and a utility manages the raid1. Its suppose to tell me if the raid fails.
I know the disks are 1G but I know they aren't the same make.
Also I believed you can use different size disks but you loose the capacity of the higher disk. So for example, if you were to use a 1Tb disk and a 2Tb in a raid1 configuration you would loose 1Tb of the 2Tb disk, so you just had 1Tb storage.....

I also realise it isn't a backup solution....but how do you back up 1Tb of data, apart from to another pc on the network with a large disk in it.....which I don't have....

[Mr Skrunts]

My backup up is done via external drives, My oldest one is 2tb Samsung Story drive that has an On/Off knob on the front plus a blue LED under it to show activity.  The other 2 are 3tb + 4tb externals both are Seagate but sadly the 3tb is fubar already, hopefully can strip it and replace the drive.

I am also aware that the 3tb ext and 4tb SSHD both from Seagate are under warranty but sadly dead money as I cant trust any body with any banking details or personal data they mind find during resurrecting the drive.

[Mr Skrunts]

What on earth do people do with all this kit ? Getting ready to take over the World ?   

 

My thoughts as well, plus others, like what an earth is all that for and what does it mean?

21st century boys toys I suppose, but as a girl what do I know!!

Lizzie, as you ought to know

Bigger and faster is generally the way to go.

[Mister Rog]

What on earth do people do with all this kit ? Getting ready to take over the World ?   

 

the modern equivalent of a Playboy under the matress?

   Surely not . . . .    Everyone here is pure of thought and clean living

Must be a lot of "playboys" and very high resolution 

[Lizzie Zoom]

What on earth do people do with all this kit ? Getting ready to take over the World ?   

 

My thoughts as well, plus others, like what an earth is all that for and what does it mean?
 I
21st century boys toys I suppose, but as a girl what do I know!!

Lizzie, as you ought to know

Bigger and faster is generally the way to go.