Advice Hard Drive Hnnnghh? Raid Hrrrmmpph?

[Trem]

My back up drive in my server has just died (Seagate.....surprise!) and I am now left with just the Hitachi 2tb main drive with all my stuff on and a smaller drive with the OS on.

I was looking for the exact same drive as the Hitachi for a raid setup but they don't make them anymore, also Hitachi are meant to be pretty fucking reliable. I will not buy a WD drive, I have never ever had anything but shit with them and I would rather buy Seagate again

So, is buying 2 identical drives the best way to do this and is that the only way to set up Raid on Windows (Server 2011)? There are external Raid boxes you can buy but other than WD they are either cheap and shit or mega expensive.

Is Raid set up via the BIOS or within the OS (never set it up before always relied on a NAS which I sold the other week).

Which hard drive do you guys go with other than WD and where is best to buy them from, Amazon don't seem terribly cheap? What do I look for in a hard drive nowadays, completely out of the loop, cache, read speed etc?

Help appreciated.

 

[Deebs]

Get a NAS drive, I actually prefer WD Red and have several which have been running 24 x 7 for years (come with a 3 - 5 yr warranty) and are designed for 24 x 7 operation whilst consumer drives are not.

WD are not the only vendor of NAS drives.

As for Raid, unless you have a hardware based RAID card on onboard chip it will use the OS to perform the RAID function. Nowadays CPUs can out perform hardware based RAID and I have never had any issue with using software RAID.

 

[Trem]

Get a NAS drive, I actually prefer WD Red and have several which have been running 24 x 7 for years (come with a 3 - 5 yr warranty) and are designed for 24 x 7 operation whilst consumer drives are not.

WD are not the only vendor of NAS drives.

As for Raid, unless you have a hardware based RAID card on onboard chip it will use the OS to perform the RAID function. Nowadays CPUs can out perform hardware based RAID and I have never had any issue with using software RAID.

I have a limited CPU in the server though chumface (HP Microserver same as @Poag and Meg and maybe you?). Because you are lord geek and I don't really understand what you've just said would I be better off getting a raid card due to my CPU's limited power and due to Windows Server 2011 being a bit AIDS and really a bit of a motherfucker to work with for a fuckwit like me?

Edit - I don't really want a NAS, have 4 bays in the server and will seem a bit silly to me to not use them, and I did just sell one because I didn't like the speed/restrictions.

Edit 2 - I am just waiting for the OS HD to die then I will move to another OS, Windows 10 more than likely.

 

[Deebs]

Your microserver will be just fine, I have Freenas running on the original microserver running ZFS in RAIDz1 and can easy saturate a gigabit link. This only applies if you are simply using your MicroServer as storage??

 

[caLLous]

I'd get a WD Red too, they're superb drives. I've had 22 of them going 24/7 in my server for well over a year with 1 failure.

 

[soze]

My new server is running WD Green Drives no problems to report here.

 

[Poag]

WD Reds are teh awesomes.

@Deebs Isn't RaidZ memory heavy tho? There was some requirement i read when i considered it that said 1GB of ram per XTB or storage?

 

[Trem]

Oh god, so say I did go with WD (they have *always* failed on me in not much time ) and say I went for an external option because it is not a hell of a lot more money and may help with cooling, memory etc would this be a good option? 2 x 3tb WD red's work out at about £170.

Edit - while I think about it is there an easy way to transfer all of my torrents to the new HD when I get it? So I use qTorrent on my 2tb drive in the server and that has everything on it and my torrent folder which then seeds back, will I really have to re-do each file one at a time on the new drive?

 

[Deebs]

WD Reds are teh awesomes.

@Deebs Isn't RaidZ memory heavy tho? There was some requirement i read when i considered it that said 1GB of ram per XTB or storage?

There are guidelines you must follow but I have a 4.5TB RAIDZ1 running in 2gb of RAM and has been rock solid (ie never crashed) in the few years it has been running 24 x 7. Obviously for production systems or more critical you would be having a lot more RAM installed.

 

[Deebs]

Oh god, so say I did go with WD (they have *always* failed on me in not much time ) and say I went for an external option because it is not a hell of a lot more money and may help with cooling, memory etc would this be a good option? 2 x 3tb WD red's work out at about £170.

As long as you have a USB 3 port spare.... and then convert the external box to RAID1, good to go!

 

[Trem]

As long as you have a USB 3 port spare.

Fuck!

They don't have them on our servers do they? You see what I mean, I'm gormless at the best of times

Not sure I have space for a USB 3 card......I'm sure I bought one you know.

 

[Deebs]

Oh god, so say I did go with WD (they have *always* failed on me in not much time ) and say I went for an external option because it is not a hell of a lot more money and may help with cooling, memory etc would this be a good option? 2 x 3tb WD red's work out at about £170.

Edit - while I think about it is there an easy way to transfer all of my torrents to the new HD when I get it? So I use qTorrent on my 2tb drive in the server and that has everything on it and my torrent folder which then seeds back, will I really have to re-do each file one at a time on the new drive?

Btw,

You select the size and it comes with 2 x RED drives in the price, not sure if you realised that.

Yes, plug it in back of server, format it as NTFS, then it will appear as a drive letter allowing you to move files around and in qTorrent set the download folder to be on the external drive.

 

[Deebs]

Fuck!

They don't have them on our servers do they? You see what I mean, I'm gormless at the best of times

Not sure I have space for a USB 3 card......I'm sure I bought one you know.

It will work over USB2 but will be slow as fuck.

 

[Trem]

Btw,

You select the size and it comes with 2 x RED drives in the price, not sure if you realised that.

Yes, plug it in back of server, format it as NTFS, then it will appear as a drive letter allowing you to move files around and in qTorrent set the download folder to be on the external drive.

Yes chum I realised it comes with the drives.

The torrent thing was regarding existing torrents I am seeding, I mean the location of them now will change when the new drive is there so it will no longer be a valid, erm, location or something so then they will no longer seed.

*looks for USB 3.0 card purchased ages ago*

 

[soze]

Your software Probably looks for D:\Torrents\.. so if you stop the software then Move the contents to the new drive. Then change the drive letter so your new drives are on D when you start the software it should just pick up where it left off.

*Sorry I should say it will be fine as long as you no not install software to the Storage Drive. If you do moving the directory is easier.

 

[Trem]

Your software Probably looks for D:\Torrents\.. so if you stop the software then Move the contents to the new drive. Then change the drive letter so your new drives are on D when you start the software it should just pick up where it left off.

*Sorry I should say it will be fine as long as you no not install software to the Storage Drive. If you do moving the directory is easier.

Thanks chum.

*gives soze remote access again*

 

[soze]

Thanks chum.

*gives soze remote access again*

haha anytime.

 

[dysfunction]

omg @Deebs is alive!

 

[Embattle]

I've been using 5 Seagate NAS drives for a while without failure so far *touch wood*, WD Reds are very good as well.

 

[Moriath]

I've been using 5 Seagate NAS drives for a while without failure so far *touch wood*, WD Reds are very good as well.

My seagates died around the same time but it took a couple of years. I got wd reds now. Going fine and backed up to cloud

 

[Embattle]

Just to be extra careful I've got my Synology NAS doing a backup to a external hard drive and to Amazon cloud, however at the moment the Cloud Sync App from synology only allows one folder per account which is highly odd and hopefully will be rectified soon enough.

 

[Trem]

I ordered 2 x 3tb WD red drives which will be here today. I was close to ordering the WD red Pro drives but didn't because of the higher temp they *may* run at. I bloody hope you lot are right about WD now because they have never been any good for me

I also do want a cloud account to back up to (currently have a Google 100gb one) but they all seem so fucking fussy and expensive for anything worthwhile. I have a One Drive account as well, think that's 100gb but there has to be something better, Dropbox?

 

[soze]

Dropbox is not the cheapest but it is right up there as the best imo. £8 a month for 1TB and it has apps for almost everything. But you are £2 off getting a copy of Office for 5 devices and using One Drive for Business which gives you 1TB. But that has some funky file limits. My friend Photo collection failed to upload and he was told the file count was too high but that it would be fixed this year.

 

[Embattle]

Even though I have seagate drives and not had any issues in terms of absolute reliability WDs are the best, you've just been unlucky

I just got 50GB for £16 a year from amazon because that is more than enough for the stuff like personal documents, family photos/video, etc that matter more if there was a fire or something.

 

[TdC]

I have WD Red drives in my server and in my NAS. Sure, they're not the fastest but not had a failure like...ever.

 

[Trem]

These cloud people, well, what I want is auto back up. Do any of them offer that or is it something I need to install my end or is it just not possible? I guess scanning for new files and automatically backing them up is a thing of dreams?

 

[soze]

These cloud people, well, what I want is auto back up. Do any of them offer that or is it something I need to install my end or is it just not possible? I guess scanning for new files and automatically backing them up is a thing of dreams?

They will all do that but you have to save the folder inside the Synchronised folder. So Dropbox will create a Folder where ever you tell it and everything inside that folder will upload automatically. My Docs and Pics ect can just be changed so the folder is inside Dropbox which will not change the user experience but will mean all contents are uploaded. It gets more interesting when your files are outside of the standard folders. You can still use something like Sync Toy or Free File Sync to copy files from your folder into Dropbox.

 

[Trem]

Installed the 2 WD reds, changed it to raid in bios under the ide settings and windows won't boot, gives bsod. Boots fine if its left as ide in bios and the drives are all installed etc. Any ideas? Are there certain bays they need to be in? @Poag @Deebs anyone?

OS is Windows Server 2011 and it gives the bsod right after the windows logo and progress bar.

 

[Poag]

During boot hit...umm...F6 i think....to load the raid configuration tool, Create a raid array of the two drives, save the config then reboot.


If you are trying to convert an IDE install to a raid install tho...you can't afaik. Reinstall.

 

[Deebs]

Eh I am confused, thought you were buying the external device with 2 drives and connecting via USB?