I need lots of storage

[dustbuster]

I need to have about 2400G worth of hard disk space. This space must be accessible as a drive or as a number of drives.

Can someone give me suggestions as to the most cost effective way to do this?

My OS is Winodws 2000 Professional.

 

[SYAR2003]

Hi !
Only i can think of as a good solution at that size is a NAS server .


Example:
A NAS server at Dell 1TB space (max for this model)
PowerVault 725N

$3,498


syar

 

[GOLDENCHILD]

Obviously the cheapest drive type is IDE and if you use a set of large drives from your favorite manufacturer (mine is Maxtor) you'll be able to get high performance at low cost (all depending on your choice of drives).

Some Motherboards are born with Dual IDE-raid such as the Epox EP-8K5A3+ (Socket A)(this is not their newest board

http://www.epox.nl/english/products/motherboard/8k5a3+.htm

)
With an on-board dual IDE-RAID or ADD-ON dual IDE-RAID it will give you a total of 8 drives and if you use "slow" 300GB-5400 RPM you'll get an even 2400GB , you'll then ofcourse have to have a third controller to boot on CD-ROM / DVD if you won't boot via Floppy and/or NET card....

For Maxtor 300GB Maxline II please see here :

http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/maxline_ii/index.htm

Another solution is that you could use drives on Firewire - I do not know much about price and availability but see this example to get an idea :

http://www.fibrenetix.co.uk/products/293

And last but not least you may use Windows 2000 capability to collect different drives into one pool making them appear as one drive when you write to them though they are in fact not. I do not know the expression in English but see Windows 2000 help for Disk handling/managing .

Regards

 

[GOLDENCHILD]

P.S.
Ofcourse you probably could boot from the RAID , I just meant that if you needed the drive for seperate storage you would need another device to boot from and run your files from....

Regards

 

[Cervantes]

As a sidenote, if you do go RAID and join up 8 drives, it's well worth your while (assuming you have the cash and the stuff on there is important) to mirror as well as stripe, or if it's slightly less important, daily backup. I've seen more than one multi-drive array die well before it's supposed to ... I don't know what it is, but I think the disks know when they're very important and conspire to die in the most inconvenient manner possible. Many is the array I've seen last all of 3 months before a drive dies.
If you go that route, don't forget you'll need special case considerations. Space is no problem, as I've seen server cases with 10-12 internal 3.5 racks, but cooling is... you'll need air forced over each drive with an array of fans at the front, as any hot spot is going to get VERY hot, and stacking drives like that (with associated cables) does interesting things to your airflow.

Oh, and never, EVER use IBM DeathStar drives ;-)