Expandable RAID Solution

[sakhurst]

Hi,

I plan on wiping/reformatting my system soon, as it is getting bogged down. At the same time, I would like to implement a storage solution with the following characteristics:

1) Fault Tolerance - if one of the drives fails, I want to be able to continue using the machine.

2) Expandable - I thought 320 gigs would be enough - not so. Since I will likely fill up the new storage limit in the future at some time, I would like to be able to simply add a new drive, rather than have to back everything up, delete the array, and rebuild with the new disk.

I should also mention I plan on partitioning the drive into two parts: System and Data. The Data partition is the one I would like to be expandable.

I thought a RAID5 array would be ideal, but I've read that it is not necessarily expandable - though different posts claim different things.

Is there a solution - RAID or otherwise - that allows for such a configuration?

Motherboard: Asus P5B Deluxe (with on-board RAID controller)

 

[Nodsu]

First, forget about your integrated RAID. If you want online array expansion/migration and performance, then you need a real hardware RAID controller.

SATA controllers tend to be fakeraid with not so many features, so make sure that you get a real hardware one! A sure bet would be to get a SAS RAID controller (SAS works with SATA drives too). You can scale up to some 50TB with better models - would that be enough?

The features you want would be RAID5 (of course), online capacity expansion and RAID level migration.

The better brands to check out: Adaptec, 3ware, LSI Logic

 

[sakhurst]

Thanks Nodsu...that's perfect!