Hello, HA users.

A new project that I am considering starting is to build a NAS with RAID 5 distributed parity that has at least 2TB of storage, if not more. This would certainly be quite the undertaking and I am simply not sure if I should put myself up to the challenge, or run out and buy a Buffalo TeraStation Live (http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/terastation/terastation-live/).

My simple 500GB iomega hard drive is ill-equipped for a new music collection that I’m currently ripping to FLAC. Plus, there is absolutely no chance of any recovery should the drive fail. Kind of scary. I also want to be able to back up my sister’s extremely large photo collection of my niece.

I’ve tried to do quite a bit of research lately and have come across a couple websites purporting on how to build one: www.smallnetbuilder.com, www.tomsguide.com, www.tmk.com/raidzilla/, etc. I’m probably most excited about being able to access the RAID from any place that has an Internet connection (FTP).

I currently do NOT have extra computer parts lying around. I would be starting from scratch. Also, I have never built any type of computer component before, let alone a server. Dealing with command lines rather than GUI pages are like reading the Matrix.

So, with that said, does anyone have any advice to give? Build it and feel a sense of accomplishment when finished? Or save the time and energy (though not money) and buy one?

Are there any additional places that I should look? Or can anyone recommend a good book or ‘how to guide’ on Amazon?

Thanks for your input and discussion.

Cool Hand

You will likely save time, energy and money by going out and buying one. Or more likely (I'm advising this since I've done it and been happy with it) get a barebones server and fill with hard drives of your choice.

I got the Thecus N5200 which appears to do want it to do. Hardware-wise it's comparable to new stuff you could get price wise, but power wise, it runs at about 1/10th the power (which I'm assuming you'll be running a large portion of the time).

5x 500 GB hard drives will do the job for you for 2GB Raid 5 on this machine.

There are other manufacturers that compete with Thecus as well, but I'm happy with what I have. The only real problem that I have with it is that it's loud and noisy. But that's a minor issue since I keep it as physically far away from my main computer as possible.

If you build your own you will have compete control as to what file system you choose. I didn't see in a quick glance for the product linked, but I think the file system options are severely limited with an OEM NAS. Most of the time it doesn't matter but you should be aware of any limitations before investing in the product.

Thank you for the replies. Good advice. After doing a bit more research the last few days, and considering the relative cost versus effort ratio, I think that I'll simply purchase one.

Again, thanks. I appreciate it.

I recently did 2500 CDs to FLAC and I too was worried about loss. I dont like RAID 5 for data integrity because the problem is that if the computer hiccups (much more likely than a drive failure) you can get a damaged file system even though the HW is fine. What I opted for and it is slick is RAID one in a 3 in 2 hot swap enclosure. the enclosure fills 2 drive bays with 3 hot swappable SATA trays. You simply open the door and slide the drive in. What I do is once a week I remove one drive from the RAID 1 pair, insert a third spare drive and rebuild the pair. This way I always have a backup that is not in the server and it is instantly readable in any machine supporting SATA.

Let me tell you a story about RAID 5. We have a manufacturing server in our plant which gets backed up once a week (the backup takes 17 hours to tape). There was a power hiccup and the controller got fried but not before it trashed the file system. The array was unrecoverable. We then discovered that the backups had missed part of SQL database due to a backup SW bug. We lost a lot of data. WE then swicthed to RAID 1 and pull drives once a week or sometimes even sooner. We can rebuild the pair in 4-5 hours and again we always have an easily read backup. The other problem with RAID 5 is that drive models change often and changes in drive speed, cache and geometry can lead to performance issues. What RAID 5 does give you is a large performance gain but this is irrelevant for audio playback.