Re: MDADM RAID1 of external USB 3.0 Drives
Linux-Fan <Ma_Sys.ma@web.de> writes:
>> On 09/14/2014 12:38 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
>
> or even buy some additional drives (I know that it is often said that
> "today drives are cheap" but for me being comparatively new to
> computing, 60€ are still much for a HDD)
Where do you get good 2TB+ drives for only EUR 60?
>> Goodness, an HP Microserver fully made and ready for four drives costs about twice the cost
>> of a 4TB internal drive.
+1
These also have ECC RAM, and when a 2TB RAID-1 is enough for you, you
can as well buy one of those instead of a SAS/SATA controller or a port
multiplier. IIRC, they consume only about 30W, so you can probably
connect it to your existing UPS. You can offload services to it and
leave it running.
I considered buying one and didn't because it was difficult/impossible
to find one that has at least 8GB RAM without spending quite a bit of
money. I also wanted some more processing power than the Microservers
have, and getting real server hardware was intriguing, so I ended up
buying a 19" server.
If you only want storage (plus a firewall/router, DNS, a web server and
an MTA, perhaps even asterisk) and don't need to run a couple VMs, a
Microserver is a pretty much perfect choice for you. I don't remember
if you can put SAS disks into these; if you can, get 2 72GB SAS disks @
15k RPM (about EUR 10--15 each) and run them in a RAID-1 to install the
system on. Then remove your USB disks from their enclosure, plug them
into the Microserver, and you're good to go.
It'll cost you about EUR 200. If that seems a lot to you, please
consider that you get a *very* decent solution unlikely to cause any
trouble whatsoever (which would waste your valuable time) for the next
10 years or so, unless a disk fails (which happens anyway). You also
save the cost of a router/firewall blackbox which very much limits you.
Only "problem" is that you're going to like the SAS disks and find out
how terribly slow your USB disks are ;)
--
Knowledge is volatile and fluid. Software is power.
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