building a Linux file server for home advice needed

[Dog6880]

OK i would say i am an advanced user of computer systems relative to most people i meet. I am currently working on my Network + Certification just for the hell of it and due to the fact that i have been wanting to create a file server to store movies music and pictures on. Over the years i have quickly filled up tera bytes of hard drives and figure i should be storing everything in a central location with back ups to prevent past hard drive failures from happening again. Lost a ton of family pics when the wife knocked an external hard drive off the kitchen table while hooked up to her laptop.

Please correct anything i am wrong about:

So my specs for the File server are:

- must be able to run a Linux server with Samba so my windows machines can access the files
- have multiple RAIDs set up to ensure that all data is backed up (1 pair for OS and application files and a pair of 1 TB drives for storage) I am looking at SATA 3G 1TB drives and a pair of smaller drives for the OS/apps
- a motherboard that is top of the line now so i dont have to upgrade it for years currently looking at P5BV-E/SAS

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=9&l2=39&l3=352&l4=0&model=1997&modelmenu=1

- ability to keep adding Pairs of HD's as needed
- ability to access the file server from anywhere using a specific laptop

i have been reading a lot about 1TB+ hard drives and the negative reviewers all seem to complain about them failing while hooked up in RAID configurations so are there any suggestions for Reliable 1 TB or 1.5TB hard drives or if i should just go with smaller drives?

Thank you for your time.

 

[pentode]

I'm sticking with 500 GB drives at present, but that's probably just me. Trying to do any disk diagnostics on 1 TB disk takes a long, long time.

But I'd question the need for RAIDed drives for the OS (or even the data, actually) in this application. This is assuming you have a separate backup process.

And even if you put everything on RAID, I would still strongly recommend a separate backup system - probably an external USB drive, or some other type of remote backup. It's not too hard to find horror stories of one drive failing and taking the other RAID drive with it, or a RAID hardware control failing. I'm very happy with rsnaphot backing up to a local USB hard drive in addition to a remote backup to another physical location.

And I'd definitely suggest considering using Logical Volumes to make any future disk additions much easier.

 

[Dog6880]

I was under the impression that a pair of RAID drivers set up to duplicate the data on each drive was adequate.

Correct me if i am wrong but if Drive A and Drive B are identical models and are set to RAID 1 wont the data be duplicated on each drive and if the RAID controller or one of the drives fails wont the data be safe on at least one drive?

I don't plan to back up remotely or using another method. An external USB drive is what i am trying to avoid and the actual action of doing any backing up myself as opposed to letting the server do it all. All i want to have to do is to occasionally check to see if the data is being duplicated as it is suppose to be.

 

[Kozusnik]

I think pentode may be suggesting that if you get corruption on the mirrored drive A, it could pass that corruption to the other drive also. I've not had that happen myself, but I suppose it's possible.

I think you'll probably be fine with what you're planning to do. The OS might not need to be duplicated, you could always reinstall without losing your data drives.

You could even rsync the data daily from the primary to the secondary rather than use RAID. Considering that this is not a production server, the absolute drive redundancy might not be as big a deal.

Good luck with what you decide.

Mark

 

[pentode]

You should be able to do a little research on RAID installation to find anecdotal cases of loss of data in multiple RAID drives, due to a variety of issues. I'm not saying it's common, but it seems to happen sometimes.

If your goal is to learn more about RAID, then go for it. I was just saying that if you have data that you care about stored on the RAID drives, I would still recommend a separate backup.

Of course, for really critical data, it is always backed up off-site regardless of anything else.

 

[Dog6880]

this is for home movies, multimedia entertainment, home pictures and files. The really really critical stuff is small in size and we keep it on a thumb drive at my parents house.

Still just looking for a good reliable hard drive.

 

[m4ilm4n]

When I built our e-mail vault I got a bunch of Hitachi CinemaStar 1TB drives - they've been running 24/7 for over a year with no hiccups at all.

 

[BadBigBen]

as for the Software side here, take a look at FreeNAS, it might do exactly what you want and as it's name suggests it is free...

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.

source:

http://www.freenas.org/

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[danomac]

I run six Seagate Barracude 1TB drives in a raid5, and have done so for almost a year. No hiccups either.

FWIW, I used a 2.5GB hard drive (yes, I still have a couple of those from years forgotten ) for the OS. It's just big enough to have a non-gui linux install to bring up the raid array and put it on NFS/CIFS.

 

[hursto75]

I would take a look at CentOS for your sever. This has the ability to handle Raid and Logical volume management. You can start to add HDs and the LVM will the LVM tools will really help. The distro includes Samba and most of the tools you will need.

http://www.centos.org/

is basically a Redhat Enterprise clone. Also take a look at media sharing apps.

If you have any questions let me know.

Brad K.

http://www.techjaws.com

 

[Edcrosbys]

I would recommend either FreeNAS or OpenFiler.

 

[BatmanHFT]

I used FreeNAS for over a year and loved it, even has itunes support. I am using Ubuntu 8.04 Server LTS now but that is because I wanted to use vmware