Internal RAID or NAS

[antonioh]

I'm have written a PC configuration that I intend to buy within the next month. This will be used basically 80% for gaming. I'm planning to store the vital information on a RAID system however I'm in doubt whether to build the Raid within the PC case or use a NAS (D-Link DNS-323) system.
I would appreciate receiving opinions on this, for example: what are the advantages in each situation, mainly performance.
Just for reference; following is the PC confguration I intend to have:

-XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI MO
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor
-BFG GeForce GTX 260 OC MAXCORE Video Card x 2
-OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
-BFGR800WPSULE 800-Watt Power Supply
-Thermaltake VH6000BWS Armor+ Full-Tower ATX Case
-WD Velociraptor 300GB for OS
-Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB HD x 2 (in RAID 1)
-Win XP 64Bit or Vista 64Bits

 

[DelJo63]

Unlikely that you will get RAID on a NAS device unless it is a Raid Cage with onboard
raid support.

RAID needs either Software or Firmware support and NAS devices usually only have
network + raw filesystem support.

Also suggest you search this board for issues pro/con raid and also use google search --
A common misunderstanding is RAID-1 is an alternative to backups which
it is not and RAID-0 may give trivial performance boost but at the risk of major
rebuild and restore upon any failure.

 

[gguerra]

I assume you are looking for redundancy when you mention RAID and not all RAID systems offer that. Some are built for speed instead of security. I would use a NAS (or external hard drive) and a software package such as Acronis to perform regular scheduled backups. Acronis is nice because it will perform differential or incremental backups of the disk image which will allow you to do bare metal restores off a boot cd. So even if your system crashes completely you can quickly bring it back to life.

 

[antonioh]

Internal RAID x RAID on NAS

Unlikely that you will get RAID on a NAS device unless it is a Raid Cage with onboard
raid support.

RAID needs either Software or Firmware support and NAS devices usually only have
network + raw filesystem support.

Also suggest you search this board for issues pro/con raid and also use google search --
A common misunderstanding is RAID-1 is an alternative to backups which
it is not and RAID-0 may give trivial performance boost but at the risk of major
rebuild and restore upon any failure.

Hello jobeard,
Thanks for your reply.
My understanding is that the D-Link (NAS external cage) will bear the 2 x 1GB hds. This will be connected to one out of the two Gigabit connectors on the XFX motherboard. The MO has the software for Raid implementation. Also data security is my major concern, though performance is always welcome

 

[DelJo63]

if this is so, then you should be good to go.

NAS usually refers to HDs with ethernet connections, not M.B. connections.
Any HD connected to the M.B. is just an external HD

Best wishes