Bluehub

Let's assume you wanted to add another 4-5 hard drives minimum externally but through SATA for maximum speed possible. What would be the smartest way to go about doing so? Do they sell HDD 'boxes' with fans where you just buy a power supply, plug it all up and then attach an external SATA card? Are there any problems with one computer managing 10 hard drives at one time?

I don't want them internally for safety reasons (and because I don't have any space for them )

Thank you!

dai

server racks? quite often see them advertised second hand

Sgt_Grim_Reaper

Ebay!

Bluehub

So I need a server rack, I'll look into it then. Would I need any special software or would this all be possible via Windows XP Professional?

dai

not in my area of knowledge it was just a suggestion,i will ask someone to come into the thread

crazijoe

The limit on an on board SATA controller is 4 drives. To add more than 4 drives to an array you will first need to find a controller capable of handling more than 4 drives. I hope your resources are limitless because this could get pricey.
Promise EX12350 @ $590.00

Now in order to get the fastest speed possible you would need to configure a RAID 0 array and remember a striped array offers no redundancy what-so-ever. Plus the more drives in a striped array, the more chance of a failed array.

To make the drives external is the easy part with adapters and external enclosures. However the length of cable is limited.

Bluehub

Thank you very much for replying. I'm not so much worried about the speed just the ability to utilize more space. Cost is meaningless, after I buy the card what would I buy to house the hard drives? I looked up external enclosures on Newegg and they're all for just 1 drive. I would prefer a box that I could plug them all into and plug that into my power supply and all the SATA cables to my controller.

Would I be able to use that controller with an external enclosure? If so, can you or anyone else recommend a hard drive 'box' that could house 4-5 drives at one time? Thank you very much.

crazijoe

There are a lot of options for you in this type of application. For purely storage, I would opt for a RAID 5 array since this would offer you redundancy and performance. Plus the added ability to rebuild the array on the fly.

http://www.blueraid.com/
http://www.norcotek.com/DS-1220.php
http://www.cidesign.com/product_list.jsp?catID=1
http://www.datadirectnet.com/SAF.html

Bluehub

I'm definitely about to pickup the BlueRAID 800 Case and 4 500GB Seagate HDDs.

Would it be possible for me to use a card that has an external connector? Something like: HighPoint RocketRAID 2322 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card RAID 0/1/5/10/50 JBOD although it says I need a mini-SAS cable (don't know what that is) or am I going in the wrong direction?

Also, can I expand later and add HDDs to my setup? I'm not sure how RAID5 works but I read even if I lose 1 drive I can just install another and include it in the setup so there is healthy fault tolerance.

Here is my setup so far
HDD Case: BlueRAID 800 Case
4x HDDs: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3500641AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Controller: Promise SuperTrak EX12350 - Storage controller (RAID)

All to go on my current motherboard: Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2

All looks good to go? Thank you very much for all the replies and help.

crazijoe

I'm not that familiar with SAS connectors but from what i have seen each SAS port can be converted to 4 SATA ports. The Highpoint looks like a very nice controller but you would need to see how you would implement that into your BlueRAID solution.
Normally in a RAID 5 best practice is to implement a hot spare. Keep one drive in the set doing nothing. When a drive fails, the hot spare will immediatly kick in and array will rebuild itself with the hot spare.

Check with BlueRAID and see what type of setups and configurations they have. I normally like to discourage people from buying separate components and having them buy from a single vendor. It is usually easier to get vendor support when you get all components from them. (enclosure and controller)

Bluehub

Thank you very much for all the help, I researched through BlueRAID as suggested and they offered me a prebuilt solution that would work with my motherboard. Thank you again.

Edit:

Last quick question. I've been reading about SATA II and I'm trying to understand if that basically means 3GB/s or if I would need special cables to use it.

I want to purchase this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816150004
To go in my motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186072

Are they compatible? I'm not sure what SATA II is unfortunately. Much appreciated.

crazijoe

SATA transfers at 150MB sec. SATA II transfers at 300MB sec.
Now that is just interface speed. The actual data transfer speed from the disk to the head is much lower, normally about 60-90MB sec. SATA II is backwards compatible with SATA I.

Bluehub

Okay then I'll pickup that card. Thank you again.