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justinkim · Jul 13, 2005, 09:26 AM

I've been asked to set up an archive disk for some of the folks in my office. I'm working under the following constraints:

1) No budget
2) No backups
3) Need a lot of storage space

Because of those constraints, I've been thinking of setting up a RAID-1 array of external firewire disks on a spare G4. Since I'm *not* IT guy (though I seem to be morphing into him), I don't really know what the pitfalls are of Apple's built in RAID support.

This is for archiving, so speed isn't a deal breaker. I chose RAID-1 because none of the desktops 'round here are backed up (I know, but I don't have any control over that) and RAID-1 will provide us some protection from loosing a drive and all the archived work with it.

Does anyone have any recent experience with Apple's software RAID they'd like to share?

OreoCookie · Jul 13, 2005, 09:42 AM

Working under those constraints is … ahem … difficult.

How much storage space do you need?

Tyler McAdams · Jul 13, 2005, 09:58 AM

It would be to me a bad choice to use firewire drives... but if that's all you've got then go for it. I have found OS X software raid rock solid... you might want to try other 3rd party venders for more control over your raid volumes, however:

http://www.attotech.com/expraid.html

http://www.attotech.com/expraid.html

chris v · Jul 13, 2005, 09:59 AM

what do they mean by "no backups?" Do they not want to have to perform backups, or do they not want anything backed up at all?

I've made Firewire RAIDs before, but they seemed kinda dicey to me. Also, they'd be saving to this over ethernet? That'd probably be kinda slow. sounds like they need to sprng for some kind of NAS device.

OreoCookie · Jul 13, 2005, 10:15 AM

If it's a G4 tower, you might have four internal drive bays …

And even though there might be no backup (yet), implement a backup solution asap. In the last two months, I had two harddrives fail on me, one was brand new.

justinkim · Jul 13, 2005, 10:33 AM

"No backups" means that IT doesn't back up desktops and I have *no* budget. I've been told that it *may* be possible to swing as much as $800-1,000 for everything and I need to provide at least 450GB of space.

I think that everyone here would like it if desktops were backed up, but there's no budget to implement it within my department and the company's IT won't do it (budget again, I suspect). Creatives are supposed to work off some SMB servers which are backed up, but we're chronically pressed for space and working off the servers is way too slow.

Speed isn't a big issue for this. This is going to be used for archiving old work that may be reused or re-purposed.

Once the array is set up, how easy is it to move to another machine? Is it as simple as unplugging the drives and moving them to another machine?

Thanks for the replies so far!

OreoCookie · Jul 13, 2005, 10:45 AM

Get two 400 gig drives, put them in your G4 tower as internal drives and create a RAID1. 400 gig drives go for around 270 € a pop. Depending on your G4, you might need an IDE card.

You shouldn't move FireWire RAIDs to another machine, unless you have a (more expensive) solution which does the RAID in hardware.

Tyler McAdams · Jul 13, 2005, 10:46 AM

Yes... if you are just going to take one of the mirrored drives off the array after powering down the server it's attached to and attach it to a workstation and move the files, then put it back in the array... yeah, you could swing that.

justinkim · 12:05 PM

Yeah, the dual 400gig option was already at the top of the list. There isn't enough space left inside the machine for additional drives, so I think I'm going to have to go with the firewire option.

Would moving the array be as simple as moving one of the drives to another machine, erasing the second and rebuilding the array on the new machine?

Thanks, everyone. This has been really helpful.

Tyler McAdams · 03:21 PM

Not sure... Why would you want to do that? Why not just move the entire array? It will show up on any OS X box correctly...

justinkim · Jul 13, 2005, 04:09 PM

Cool. I am a novice in things RAID. Thanks again!

Mithras · Jul 14, 2005, 06:30 AM

I think you're better off with a backup than with a RAID. The chances are much higher that a backup will prevent a catastrophe than that the RAID will prevent a catastrophe.

If they say, "no backup", just tell them you're doing a slow, asynchronous RAID-1.

Tyler McAdams · 07:35 AM

I think he's implying backing up... on *to* the raid partition.

justinkim · Jul 14, 2005, 12:48 PM

We're going to use the array to archive work. This work needs to be easily accessible by production folks which means no tape backups. There's enough work that backing everything up to DVD would be a fairly major project and the production manager isn't wild about having to keep track of so many DVDs. There isn't enough existing network storage space to accommodate our needs.

Company IT wanted to charge us >$8,000 to set up a proper server with backups and everything. Given our budget is, at the outside, $1000, it devolved to me to find some kind of solution, even if it is a kludgey sub-optimal one.

Basically the mirror is to give some degree of protection against a hardware failure trashing a whole lot of work. Given that there's a requirement for easy access, any process that involves me digging out a tape and restoring files is a non-starter. Also, creatives will often not be quite sure what they're looking for so they have to be able to browse the contents of the stored files which makes relying on backup tapes for this problematic at least.

The procedure for finding something will probably be sitting down at the spare machine, browsing through the archive volume, and using personal file sharing to transfer the files over. Not optimal, fast, or horribly convenient, but it'll do until we can get the budget for a real file server.

skelotar · Jul 14, 2005, 12:52 PM

external SATA or SATA2

justinkim · Jul 14, 2005, 01:24 PM

Firewire. This is going to live on an old G4. Not enough space for more internal drives (either on the IDE bus or physical space) and no fancy-schmancy external interfaces

.

OreoCookie · Jul 15, 2005, 04:18 AM

Well, if that's what you want, but from what I've heard, software RAID functionality can be flaky via FireWire.

MaxPower2k3 · Jul 15, 2005, 09:17 AM

A bit outside your budget, but LaCie's firewire Biggest Disk drives ($1499 for a terabyte) will do RAID 0, 0+1, 1, or 5, and they've got removable drives in case of a failure. Since the RAID is done in hardware, you'd have no problem moving it from one machine to another.

OreoCookie · Jul 15, 2005, 09:38 AM

Yes, there's also a solution by [url=http://www.wiebetech.com/products/rt5.php]WiebeTech[url] for about the same with 5 drives (which makes more sense for a RAID5 setup). It is portable and uses both, FireWire 400 and 800.

Otherwise this external SATA enclosure by WiebeTech for around $1300 including drives and SATA card is the cheapest alternative I can think of. Obviously, this one couldn't be moved as easily as the FireWire enclosures.

Tyler McAdams · Jul 15, 2005, 09:56 AM

Medea raid arrays are in my opinion the best... you could check out the g-tech g-safe... an nice low cost solution.

justinkim · Jul 15, 2005, 03:11 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Well, if that's what you want, but from what I've heard, software RAID functionality can be flaky via FireWire.

What I want is to get a proper server with a lot of disk and proper backups. What I can have is a first generation G4 I can add a couple of extra disks to. If you (or anyone else here) have specific knowledge of software RAID over firewire being unreliable, I'd love to hear it. It might help to convince the finance people to squeeze some extra money out.

mhuie · Jul 15, 2005, 07:25 PM

Originally Posted by justinkim

What I want is to get a proper server with a lot of disk and proper backups. What I can have is a first generation G4 I can add a couple of extra disks to. If you (or anyone else here) have specific knowledge of software RAID over firewire being unreliable, I'd love to hear it. It might help to convince the finance people to squeeze some extra money out.

You're better off buying a cheap, used linux box to throw the drives in. I'm sure you can find something for under $100. Archiving over ethernet to a server running firewire drives is just asking for trouble.

justinkim · Jul 15, 2005, 08:42 PM

Ok, I'm betraying my ignorance by asking, but why are firewire drives so unreliable?

Deicide · Jul 16, 2005, 02:15 AM

Originally Posted by justinkim

Ok, I'm betraying my ignorance by asking, but why are firewire drives so unreliable?

They are not unreliable. I have a been using two 1Tb(4x250GB) firewire software RAID 1 for almost two years. I do a verify disk in disk utility once a month and they have no problems. Both are filled to over 650 GB each.

Tyler McAdams · Jul 17, 2005, 05:30 PM

There are actually firewire arrays... it's just that firewire is seen in the eyes of many in the IT community as unsuitable for backing up or similar scenario since there are more robust technologies that are more suitable for this kind of thing. SCSI being that specific technology and serial scsi, SAS to follow. Not only that, external firewire connections could be dangerous due to the curious coming up and playing around with the cables.