What kind of RAID to use/how to configure HDDs?

[Grovestand]

Hi,

I'm very new to NAS and I'm not sure if this has been asked, but I could use some help with configuring my system for some sort of redundancy.

My situation is as follows:


I retreived my P4 2.8ghz computer (ASUS P4P800E Deluxe, 4 Sata ports, wow!).

I will probably try to upgrade to an Athalon at some point, but in the meantime I have set it up as a file server running FreeNAS. There may be a more elegant solution, and perhaps you guys can suggest it to me.

The reasons that I need a dedicated NAS as opposed to sharing files from my PC or running NAS software in a VM, are as follows:

Main PC has to multiboot OS X and Windows 7 (so it's not always on).
Server has to provide storage for Windows 7 and OS X PCs.
I would like to have some sort of parity protection.

OK, that said, my first attempt was to run Windows 7 on my main desktop with parity via FlexRAID and samba shares.

The drawback of that was that A) there is no support for AFP, so connecting to the server was a pain for my girlfriend. B) it wasn't persistent. C) Since I am running windows 7 ultimate there is no way to view multiple drives with one share point, meaning that you had to connect to each share individually.

So I tried leaving my main desktop in OS X all the time and sharing from there. That worked OK, but my hardware isn't 100% compatible and the instability and performance issues aren't worth it anymore. The only reason that I want to use OS X at all is because there is no Windows version of Logic Pro. It may be that at some point in the future I will switch to a Windows based DAW and this will no longer be an issue, but as of now I need to boot into OS X from time to time.

So I have the desktop listed in my sig as well as an aging P4P800-E Deluxe as well as the following HDDs. I'm broke, so any $ solution will have to either cost less than $200 or be put off for a while (and I need something that will work in the meantime). I had no problem streaming 720p video from the P4 this morning, so I have some hope that it will have acceptable bandwidth and processing power.

3x2TB Samsung F4EG (one of these has been clicking on spin up and I think it will have to be RMA'ed)
2xSeagate GoFlex USB3.0 1.5tb external drives
2x1TB Samsung F3
1x500GB Seagate drive (Mac OS drive)
1x80GB X25-M (Windows 7 OS drive)

Here is my wishlist for a NAS:
*works with current hardware
*parity for one drive failure (RAID 5?)
*expandability without rebuild (if I fill up 4TB of space, I will not be able to backup all 4 TBs to add more HDDs)
*view multiple HDDs as one point of storage
*portability (HDDs transferrable to another OS)
*AFP and SMB support
*iTunes server
*media server for PS3
*Bittorrent client
*fairly simple
*headless

FreeNAS running a ZFS share with RAIDz would meet all of those requirements except for running on my P4 and being simple. I may go in that direction once I upgrade the server?

In the mean time, how should I configure the HDDs to allow for some protection without too much of a performance hit? (3x2TB in RAID 5?)

If I do that, will I be able to pull one of the drives and read it in another machine? If the whole system falls apart but two drives remain healthy, can I still rebuild?

I'm just looking for the best solution to my problem. I really liked FlexRAID, and the ZFS filesystem looks like it provides all of the functionalities that FlexRAID does, but I don't think that my P4 would be able to keep up.

Thank you in advance for any help that you might be able to provide.

 

[joeschmuck]

Grovestand,
You didn't mention RAM you have on your P4. You should have a minimum of 4GB to use ZFS. I would RMA that clicking drive, it's about to fail. Using your main computer to run a NAS in VMWare is okay for testing but you will hate yourself in the long run. I would not use the USB drives but just use the 2 or 3 2TB Samsung drives. 2 in a mirror ZFS would get you started, 3 for a RAIDZ1. FreeNAS 8 doesn't support UPnP yet but it will eventually be here (could be a few months to a year, who knows). You can install a UPnP yourself and there is a how to guide on that if you're in a hurry.

The other option is FreeNAS .7x which has all the features you want and is ready to go right now. I don't know if it has ZFS (my ignorance) but it has worked well for tons of people and is still completely supported.

As for using the NAS as a backup, keep in mind the cardinal rule, backup everything you want to keep to other media (like DVD) because if the drives smoke, you accidentally format the drives, acts of God, whatever it is, should your data go away, have the important stuff saved somewhere that you could recover from it.

-Mark

 

[Grovestand]

Sorry, the P4 is an ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe running @ 2.8Ghz. 2GB DDR RAM. I have a couple of old AGP video cards and a 10/100/1000 NIC as well.

I really doubt that ZFS is going to be an option for me. I'll stick with FreeNAS 8.

Don't worry. I backup all the data that I really care about in my main desktop, on my laptop, and to the two externals, so I'm not trusting too much to the server (it's mainly large video files that could be ripped from DVD again.

 

[ProtoSD]

Grovestand, based on your hardware and your budget, I'd have to agree with Joeschmuck that FreeNAS .7x may be the better choice for you now. It does have ZFS, though it's a slightly older version. Even if you choose FreeNAS .7x, with only 2GB of RAM, ZFS might not be the way to go. The thing is, it has more features that you want and is a bit more stable, and down the road when you have more money, FreeNAS 8 will have more of the features you want and is supposed to have a built-in upgrade feature.

 

[Grovestand]

OK, I tried FreeNAS 0.7 and my network card was unusable. Perhaps I should switch to the onboard NIC. I have the server up and running in FreeNAS 8 but as you pointed out, most of the home user functionality was missing.

I'll switch back to FreeNAS 7 and see if I can get the onboard NIC running.

Also, I have 3 2TB drives but the only option I get is RAID 3. Shouldn't I be able to do RAID5?

Also, if I build my server in FreeNAS 7 will I be able to move the RAID to a new motherboard/CPU/RAM combo or will it be tied to the OS?

 

[joeschmuck]

Knowing your RAM limitation I think FreeNAS .7x is the only way to go. You should be able to build a nice NAS with what you have. Try to get the onboard NIC working. Make sure you start posting in the FreeNAS .7 forums (link at the top of this page) for proper support from other users of that version.

The beauty of FreeNAS is your hard drives are not locked to the rest of the hardware. If FreeNAS (.7x or 8.x) can run on your MB/CPU/RAM combo (really good odds it can) then your drives can be connected to it and you can access your data. The only part I've seen people having issues with have been if the MB can boot from a USB device. For FreeNAS 8.x it's recommended but you could boot from a dedicated IDE or SATA if you really wanted to.

Good Luck