Closet Raid

I have been thinking about setting up a raid server in my closet that will run on Wi-Fi. I would like to do this because any computer in the house would be able to access the share. When I first started to think about getting a backup system I thought about getting a ReadyNAS NV+ which is a device you can put up to 4 hard drives in and have RAID 5 which is a great bonus.

3ware I searched around and found that the ReadyNAS NV+ costs $1,049.00 (directly from NETGEAR) as an empty unit (meaning no hard drives). I found this to be quite expensive for lack of growth that it offers. You can only have 4 drives, they can be no larger than 750GB each. You are limited to 3TB of storage space.

I have been pricing out all the hardware I would need to setup a massive RAID system and actually it’s a lot cheaper than I thought it was going to be. The main PC components such as case, motherboard, processor, memory, power supply only run about $450. The kicker though and what is stopping me right now is the fact that if I do this I want to do it right. I have been looking at a 3ware SATA II RAID Controller card that will support up to 16 SATA II drives. It is quite pricey though. It is $749.99 just for the PCI-X card.

You might be saying to yourself "christ just buy the Infrant" but with this system I would not be limited to the amount of space like 3TB. In theory if it was financially possible I could throw 16 1TB drives in the case and have a heck of a server. I do not plan to do that though, I will wait for the cost of the drives to drop

I plan to start off with 3-4 500GB SATA drives and every month or so throw another drive or 2 at it You must be thinking why does he need all of that storage space? Truthfully I don’t but it will be nice to know you will never ever run out of storage space. I am going to start buying the pieces to this system over the next few months and hopefully have it built by February of 2008. I also plan to have the machine be a dedicated computer for the seti@home and rosetta@home projects. I also plan to use it as my development machine with Apache, MySQL, PHP, SVN, etc all installed.

Development, Entertainment, Raves.

2 Comments

Steven Vance

12/09/07
03:15 PM

It’s limited to 750 GB because that’s the largest drive size available for which the Infrant has updated firmware. When 1 TB drives (I think Hitachi is the only manufacturer of this drive size so far) are more widely available, an update to the firmware from Infrant can be expected.

Joseph Crawford

12/10/07
05:32 AM

Western Digital puts out a 1TB drive along with a few other manufacturers. They should have upgraded the firmware by now however Infrant was bought out by Netgear from what I have seen so who knows when the update will be out now, the point is I don’t want to be limited even to 4TB. If they made a larger unit that held 8 drives I would buy into it, however not at the prices they are charging.

They are taking advantage of people charging so much for the disks and no longer sell an empty unit. Even when they did $649 (I think it was) was way too much money for the hardware you get.

Have your say...

SEO Consultant SEO services