Suggestions for more drivespace on the audio PC rig. . .

Hantra · « **on:** 15 Jun 2005, 06:16 pm »

All:

I'm running out of room fast on my audio PC. In fact, I've been running out, and now it's time to make a move. I'd like your advice on what move to make.

My main rig has a drive for the OS, and one for the tunes. My music drive is a 160GB. I have a 160GB external drive also that I use for backups.

My goal is to increase my space, while maintaining my current level of redundnacy. These rips take forever, and I don't want to do them AGAIN when the drives fail.

I figure I have a couple options.

I could get another drive and slap it in, and get another external the same size.

Or I could buy two more 160's and a RAID card and be there. More drives = more heat, and more noise. Plus, the RAID cards on the market that are cheap will not do RAID 5. And I am NOT doing RAID 0+1. I don't need speed, so why sacrifice the extra drivespace for 0+1?

So I'm not sure where to go with this. Maybe Zybar can send me one of those fancy EMC units at a deal.

What would you guys do?

Thanks!

B

Carlman · « **Reply #1 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 06:30 pm »

I was sort of lost in the dust on RAID... not sure how it works but I'm guessing it's like SCSI where the drives are daisy-chained.

I was thinking of doing a separate PC/server on my network but in a different room with the same number of backup drives as I have primary drives. That way, I have an entire backup PC. I was planning on doing 4 drives, all 200 or 250 gig. This machine need not be impressive... a $50 throw away would do. It just needs 2 IDE slots for this.

Then, I'll need to buy 8 hard drives. The one I have is OK but too noisy and is 'only' 150G. I want all 8 to be identical drives.

The only reason I haven't done this is cost. Each drive is $150 or so, making this a $1200 project. (plus the spare PC)

Anyway, that's the ideal thing to do. Likely I'll just buy one HD at a time for now.... I know this didn't help but thought this might jiggle an idea or 2.

zybar · « **Reply #2 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 06:48 pm »

Quote from: Hantra

All:

I'm running out of room fast on my audio PC. In fact, I've been running out, and now it's time to make a move. I'd like your advice on what move to make.

My main rig has a drive for the OS, and one for the tunes. My music drive is a 160GB. I have a 160GB external drive also that I use for backups.

My goal is to increase my space, while maintaining my current level of redundnacy. These rips take forever, and I don't want to do them AGAIN when the drives fail.

I figure I have a couple ...

How about this:

Now if you can give me a bunch of your credit cards I can see abut getting some of this to you.

George

Hantra · « **Reply #3 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 06:54 pm »

Quote from: zybar

How about this:

Now if you can give me a bunch of your credit cards I can see abut getting some of this to you.

George

Haha! I couldn't afford the POWER SUPPLY for one of those.

But we are getting some next year for the office. Maybe I could have a parition on there for me and just stream my FLAC over the Net.

JoshK · « **Reply #4 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 07:11 pm »

I highly recommend building a seperate file server. These can be built cheaply as not much power is needed. PII's can even work so I'm told. Linux might be nice but Windows will work too.

I don't get your comment about 0+1, you don't need 0+1, you just need 1 (I think 1 is the mirror and 0 is striping, but I could have it backwards). That is what you are doing anyway with the external drive. Striping isn't needed nor wanted.

If your file server is of most power you can run software based RAID 5. This is problematic if it is your main PC but if it is on a dedicated file server that doesn't need speed, this is of little consequence. Then you get a 1/3 or more space back over RAID 1 and still have the safety of redundancy.

On a side note, I read somewhere about using a laptop drive for the O/S in a file server because it takes a lot less power. The drive array for storage can be configured with software to turn on only when accessed, so power isn't being wasted unnecessarily. Not sure of the details yet but I think one could basically configure a "sleep mode" like button or command to wake up or put to sleep the server.

hometheaterdoc · « **Reply #5 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 08:06 pm »

Quote from: Hantra

Plus, the RAID cards on the market that are cheap will not do RAID 5. And I am NOT doing RAID 0+1. I don't need speed, so why sacrifice the extra drivespace for 0+1?...

You don't want to do RAID 5... take it from someone who's now involved after the fact with SAN setups that were configured as RAID 5.... doesn't save you when multiple drives in the same array go kaput at exactly the same time..... cold database backups are your friend in that instance.....

Raid 1+0 is much preferred in the type of situation you are describing from a performance perspective. But for just music files and you want backup reassurance, raid 1 will work as well.

Having just gone through the procurement process to buy hardware for an app that will run on a laptop, you don't want to know how fast it will run when you give it clustered 8-way, 32GB RAM database servers and 5 load balanced 4 way, 8 GB web servers, all with Raid 1+0 20K rpm scsi hot swappable main drives and 40TB of SAN storage space.... I tried to do the math to see how many CDs I could fit on 40TB worth of space.... it's a lot

In all seriousness, the easiest method to provide more storage space is a seperate file server stored in a seperate room to cut down on noise issues that you access via ethernet or 802.11G wireless. If you don't want to build a file server, you can add network backup devices or NAS units that do the same thing for a bit more money.

Russtafarian · « **Reply #6 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 08:36 pm »

I've been backing up my apple lossless files to DVDR. A pack of 50 will store over 200GB of files. I just bought a 50 pack of DVD+Rs for $20 at CompUSA.

It's more time consuming, but it's a cheap and permanent backup solution. I'm about 500 cds into my 1200 cd ripping project and it's very reassuring knowing I won't have to start from scratch if a drive goes down. As we've all learned the hard way, it's never a matter of if a hard drive goes down, but when.

Hantra · « **Reply #7 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 08:59 pm »

Quote from: Russtafarian

I've been backing up my apple lossless files to DVDR. A pack of 50 will store over 200GB of files. I just bought a 50 pack of DVD+Rs for $20 at CompUSA.

How do you figure out what to backup? I mean, in a month, when you do your next backup b/c of the stuff you've ripped that month, how can you figure out what to back up easily?

JoshK · « **Reply #8 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 09:01 pm »

Do an advanced search in explorer for file creation date.

Hantra · « **Reply #9 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 09:05 pm »

I really like the idea of a big RAID server. I know that RAID 5 is not as safe as 1, but I just don't want to lose 50%.

Can you expand a software RAID 1 volume on the fly with 2000? Never tried it. But if I am going RAID 1, the cards are only $30-$40.

Thanks for the info fellas.

hometheaterdoc · « **Reply #10 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 09:43 pm »

Quote from: Russtafarian

I've been backing up my apple lossless files to DVDR. A pack of 50 will store over 200GB of files. I just bought a 50 pack of DVD+Rs for $20 at CompUSA.

It's more time consuming, but it's a cheap and permanent backup solution. I'm about 500 cds into my 1200 cd ripping project and it's very reassuring knowing I won't have to start from scratch if a drive goes down. As we've all learned the hard way, it's never a matter of if a hard drive goes down, but when.

I highly recommend this approach if your biggest concern is backup of the files so you don't have to go through the ripping and encoding process again.

I just bought 200 Phillips 8X DVD+R media for ~$60 delivered. Cheaper media can be even more affordable. I like the Phillips stuff because I've yet to make a coaster with any of their disks and they don't seem to scratch as easily and stand up to the abuse I put them through. It takes ~6 minutes to backup a 4.5GB disk using Nero. Irregardless of what you do with RAID drives or whatever, this is a good failsafe. If a couple hours of reloading DVDRs after a drive failure doesn't bother you, this kind of negates the need for RAID at all and you can use 100% of your disk space.

Edited because I continually use you're improperly.... and it's aggravating the $hit out of me to go back and see the awful mistakes....

brj · « **Reply #11 on:** 15 Jun 2005, 10:20 pm »

For those of you using DVDs for backup, have you evaluated their longevity? I know there is a huge variation in the data integrity vs. time trend among brands and versions of CDRs. I've heard of some CDRs starting to go bad in less than a year. It wouldn't surprise me if this was even more of an issue for DVDs.

(For reference, good storage practices - cool and dark locations - can help a great deal.)

EchiDna · « **Reply #12 on:** 16 Jun 2005, 12:03 am »

how about another pair of drives, one external, one internal - but 250gb each...?

RAID is where I'm at, but then I already had an old athlon 1.2gHz just sitting around under the desk unused in a tower case - now it's a media and file server. Is it easy? to set up- yes - but then so far I've not had any drives fail

am I tempting fate here???

JoshK · « **Reply #13 on:** 16 Jun 2005, 12:15 am »

fwiw, many decent mobos these days have raid 0/1 built in. I got a $50ish mobo with raid that I am using.

hometheaterdoc · « **Reply #14 on:** 16 Jun 2005, 02:06 am »

Quote from: EchiDna

Is it easy? to set up- yes - but then so far I've not had any drives fail

am I tempting fate here???

quite simply..... yes....

not a question of if, it's a question of when your drives will fail.... good power conditionning and surge suppression is helpful... running them 24/7 I've personally found is easier on the drives than daily powerups and powerdowns....

each manufacturer goes through up and down years as far as reliability... there used to be a time when you couldn't kill a western digital drive even if you tried.... I've been through 8 in the last 2 years, not counting the ones that were replaced under warranty.... now that they've gone to a seemingly 14 day warranty, I've started keeping count of all the money wasted and data lost.... seagate on the other hand has never let me down (but I do have a drive right now that seems to have developed an odd controller issue.... but only after using it in an external drive enclosure. it worked without a hiccup for several years in another system right up until I pulled it out to put it in the external enclosure)....

I've never encountered any degredation on CDR or DVDR media. I've got discs that are 11 years old that work the same as the day I burned them.... no problems whatsoever.... I'm not saying the issue doesn't exist. I just haven't encountered it yet. The media sure is inexpensive these days. I wouldn't doubt some quality had to give....

ctviggen · « **Reply #15 on:** 16 Jun 2005, 04:34 pm »

Even though George was joking about the EMC products, I was very impressed with EMC when I interviewed there for a position there about four years ago. They have a great campus, in a nice location, and seem to care about what they were doing. They're also the little guy (relatively speaking, as compared to IBM and others). I got a chance to come out for a second round of interviews, but I took another position (a really small company, which was my preference at the time). Regardless, I was impressed overall with that organization.

zybar · « **Reply #16 on:** 16 Jun 2005, 04:48 pm »

Quote from: ctviggen

Even though George was joking about the EMC products, I was very impressed with EMC when I interviewed there for a position there about four years ago. They have a great campus, in a nice location, and seem to care about what they were doing. They're also the little guy (relatively speaking, as compared to IBM and others). I got a chance to come out for a second round of interviews, but I took another position (a really small company, which was my preference at the time). Regardless, I was impressed overall with that organization.

Bob,

I am also impressed with EMC and the 4+ months I have been working for them have been challenging, but exciting and rewarding.

I spend a good amount of time at their HQ (Hopkinton, MA) and the area really is no different from the where I currently live (northern suburbs of NYC) except for all those damn Red Sox fans!!

George

ctviggen · « **Reply #17 on:** 16 Jun 2005, 04:59 pm »

I came here (to CT/MA) in August/September, and I thought the campus there and the areas surrounding Hopkinton, MA were extremely nice. And, you're right -- it's not much different than here in CT(though perhaps there's a bit more Bostonian accent there, and there's a definite slant to baseball and football). I wonder what the housing prices are like? If I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know now about working in a law firm as opposed to working "in house", I would've definitely gone through the second round of interviews there. Alas, hindsight is always wonderful thing. (And, as my girlfriend says, "You made the best decision at the time given the information at hand.")

Anyway, if you head up there, I wish you luck in your new position, in finding good housing, and with EMC's prospects.

JoshK · « **Reply #18 on:** 12 Jul 2005, 08:00 pm »

So what didya end up doing?