1TB HDD choice and to RAID or not to RAID?

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Asmodeus

1007 posts

Uber Geek

#24630 29-Jul-2008 15:16

Hi guys,

Im very close to the hardware ordering stage for my HTPC and have a couple of HDD questions.

I figure I may as well go for 1TB HDDs as less drives = less noise/heat, etc. not to mention the price has been coming down nicely lately. Was thinking of just getting 1 to start with but then I though perhaps I should get 2 and do a RAID 1 or 5 for better security (nothing as frustrating as losing the only HDD in your build).

What are you guys doing for this? I will certainly eventually want more than 1TB in storage as I plan to rip lots of DVDS and do lots of recording as well as having games, etc on there so will eventually be adding.

So... should I RAID or not?

Other question was, which 1TB to go for. Id rather not pay top dollar (duh) unless its really justified. I looked at the GP WD drives but the 5400rpm thing bothers me as I will be doing some gaming (not sure how they do at simultaneuous HD recording/playback, etc either). Also looked at the spinpoints from Samsung but have read iffy things about reliability...

Hmmmmm.

So, in short:

1) Just use 1TB drive(s) normally or RAID?
2) Which drives (make/model) would you guys recommend?

Cheers in advance!

(IF I sound like a n00b, its because I've never done a RAID array before...)

Asmodeus

1007 posts

Uber Geek

#152813 30-Jul-2008 20:55

Anyone?

Not asking people to design my pc for me, just asking what you do in your builds and some general recommendations

mcraenz

1091 posts

Uber Geek

#152819 30-Jul-2008 21:07

Best option is to have a single drive in the HTPC big enouth for apps/games/recordedTV (All the stuff you don't care if you loose) and then have a separate file server / NAS with raid5 for DVD/documents/music storage. That's what I do; If I didn't have a separate file server then I defiantly would have a mirror in my HTPC. It takes a very long time to rip several hundred gigs worth of CDs, DVDs; know what I mean? A drive is always going to fail it's just a matter of time!

Recommend seagate, actually anything with a 5 year warranty but I've always bought seagate and been happy.

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Asmodeus

1007 posts

Uber Geek

#152840 30-Jul-2008 22:24

mcraenz: Best option is to have a single drive in the HTPC big enouth for apps/games/recordedTV (All the stuff you don't care if you loose) and then have a separate file server / NAS with raid5 for DVD/documents/music storage. That's what I do; If I didn't have a separate file server then I defiantly would have a mirror in my HTPC. It takes a very long time to rip several hundred gigs worth of CDs, DVDs; know what I mean? A drive is always going to fail it's just a matter of time!

Recommend seagate, actually anything with a 5 year warranty but I've always bought seagate and been happy.

Exactly what I was after. Cheers mate, I'll look into it

Regs

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Snowflake

Subscriber

#152859 30-Jul-2008 23:45

Asmodeus: Hi guys,

So... should I RAID or not?

(IF I sound like a n00b, its because I've never done a RAID array before...)

Don't ever choose RAID-0 (striping), especially on really big disks.... if one disk fails you lose everything and the boost in speed is not worth the risk! You are much better to just use each disk on its own so that you only loose half your stuff if a disk fails.

RAID-1 is good if you want to protect against data loss, but remember that you lose the capacity of the second disk - e.g. 2 x 500GB drives in a RAID-1 mirror will only give you 500GB useable space.

Its pretty rare to see RAID-5 or other raid versions in PC's unless you buy a seperate raid card.

Also, avoid software-based raid solutions - it will slow your disk access down.

i have seagate and samsung drives in my htpc. both are good, but the samsung spinpoint drive is way quieter than any of the seagates.

Over the years I've had failures from: quantum (lots), IBM Deskstar (lots), Maxtor (lots), western digital (a few), seagate (less than a few). i cant include the samsung here as i've only used two and thats not statistically significant :)

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nzsouthernman

44 posts

Geek

#152939 31-Jul-2008 11:14

Hi dude. I agree with the others - you *definitely* don't want to be having to re-rip all your media, and then go through all the pain of the system reconfig unless something catastrophic occurs. RAID-1 (mirror) is usually the simplest, and most new boards support SATA mirroring. RAID-5 allows for tons of capacity (3+ disks) but you'll need either an additional card to get it working (hardware) or use a software solution (linux/Windows). Don't trust Windows Dynamic Disks to do it. :( Failed that way myself once.
Cheers.

buzzy

217 posts

Master Geek

#153296 1-Aug-2008 13:19

I've got a WD GreenPower 1Tb drive in my HTPC and it's fine. It's the only drive in the system so it's used for everything: booting Windows and storing all my PVR recordings, music, DVD-rips, etc.

The GreenPower is noticeably slower than the pair of 300Gb 7200RPM drives I had in there, but it's quieter and cooler and the performance penalty isn't huge. I don't use this system for any gaming so the I/O demands are not high. I've heard good reports of the Samsung SpinPoint drive if you want something quiet and better performing than the GreenPower.

Would thoroughly recommend backing up your DVD-rips and music; I do this regularly to a 500Gb external USB drive so it doesn't have to be powered on all the time.

One comment on the RAID card: if you want to do RAID-5, ensure that the card or motherboard does the RAID calculations in hardware. Some cheaper cards load a Windows driver for the RAID calculations, which means the driver usually offloads much of the parity calculation to the CPU, resulting in crummy performance. It can also mean you need another drive which isn't part of the RAID set to boot from - you may want to do that anyway, but it's nice to have the option of booting from the RAID set if you want to.

HTH
Buzzy