New PC build - best hard drive configuration 4

[goombawaho]

I'm building a PC for a customer and I think I know what hard drive configuration I want to use, but wanted to bounce it off everyone. She has online backup so this is about quick recovery or redundancy via RAID1. I will also purchase Macrium to do an image backup. I think all her data and operating system will fit comfortably on a 500GB drive.

1. 250GB boot SSD + single spinning drive for data (OS image backup to spinning drive)
2. 500GB Boot/Data SSD + single spinning drive for image backup destination

3. 250GB boot SSD + RAID1 spinning drives for data (OS image backup to spinning drives)
4. 2 500GB SSDs in RAID1

I guess I'm going to pick option 4 since she doesn't have much data and everything will be on the RAID. Comments?
But what option would you choose if someone had a lot more data, making it too expensive to put it all on RAID1 of SSDs?

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[Scott24x7]

Corruption across a multiple drives is rare, -- define rare.

rare is one of these words that gets tossed around like a prom dress, and it gets just as much.

Best Regards,
Scott
MIET, MASHRAE, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[technome]

Corruption across a multiple drives is rare, -- define rare."

Dealt with 100's of raid since 1992 and only had 1 "puncture" on a setup I ordered. This was due to the customer not going for a hardware raid but one of Dell's software based garbage raids. Seen a couple other, same issue, on software Percs. Mind you these were the result of using a wannabe raid, something which should never had gone into production. So to define rare I would say it is extremely unlikely a hardware raid user will ever see a double fault/puncture if a minimum of care is taken, as in using "scrubbing" or unless a user proceeds to create a ridiculously size raid.
Ps. I love to know where you got your info concerning raid, it surely is not from experience.




........................................

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
Popular Mechanics, 1949

 

[Scott24x7]

Yeah, it's nothing to do with having worked for Dell for 15 years, or owned a computer hardware company for 4 years, or you know, been building data centers for near 2 decades. I'm still wet behind the ears.

Best Regards,
Scott
MIET, MASHRAE, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[goombawaho]

Oh snap - like two cats squaring off. But seriously, there has to be a way to define "FAILURE IS RARE" even when using the motherboard based RAID.

I Google searched for "RAID1 failure" or "RAID1 not reliable" - can't find much evidence. Nor from my experience.
Maybe just better to say "RAID1 gives you much better redundancy than a single drive".

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[Scott24x7]

See that's the funny part... I have seen RAID 1 improperly setup particularly for boot, and they think they are protected, and they are not.
It's a cautionary tale, not a guaranteed failure. And if you think you're ever going to grow beyond the need for a single drive, then RAID 1 is a terrible way to go because you have to start doubling your drives, and that's a huge waste, and slower write than RAID 3 and slower read than RAID 5.

Agree for most "power users" this isn't needed, and my point there is a 2TB boot SSD for apps and the like, and the second drive for storage say a nice fat 10TB Ironwolf, and when you need to reinstall your OS and your apps your data is all safe and sound and you can back it up to a cloud or something if the data is that irreplaceable (but just the irreplaceable data. You can download Star Wars again later....)


Best Regards,
Scott
MIET, MASHRAE, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[kjv1611]

This has been both amusing and informative to read. I know it's made me both chuckle and think and research and reconsider things. And I'm still thinking. I guess it's also why I just decided to skip out on RAID altogether at home a while back - it IS more complicated than single drives.

Scott, I must say, even "Power Users" mostly would not need a 2TB System drive SSD. Even a 1TB SSD for most of us is still steep (give another year or two and maybe not).

For most people, even "Power Users", a 256GB to 500GB or so SSD is more than substantial for the system. You can install Windows, oodles of programs, and even have some storage left.

For data, from users I've seen, it'd be rare to need a 10TB drive (for now). Anything 2-4 TB is probably ideal for most people for a separate data drive, and many do fine without. Now if a 10TB hard drive seems cheap and 2TB SSD seems cheap, then by all means, but that won't be the vast majority of even power users. I could see the large data drive useful for say a professional photographer, graphics designer, video editor, basically those that work with large files all the time. But "Power Users" is a very generic term, not necessarily in the same category.

Thanks to Scott, technome, and Bill besides goombawaho on bringing different perspectives to the conversation.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[Scott24x7]

Not to be a "better than", this is the spec of my current home workstation: (I have 3, but this is the main one):

ASUS Z10 LGA2011 dual CPU board, (populated with twin E5-2699A 22 core 2.4Ghz CPUs).
Memory: DDR4: 8 x 32GB stick for total 256GB (128GB per CPU, expandable to 1TB RAM).
28 port ARECA RAID controller, in RAID 5 currently with 5 x 10TB Ironwolf (until the 4TB SSDs come down to around $500 a piece. they are currently still in the $1,500 range, while the Ironwolfs are $500 - my "sweet spot".
RADEON Duo Pro video supporting 4 43" 4K monitors.
Xeon Phi 61 core co-processor board
10G NIC (so backup doesn't take 4 days)
M.2 3DXPoint Optane Memory for fast index
2TB Samsung SSD drive for boot and apps (and when you have 256GB memory on your machine, you will be surprised just how much that 2TB gets eaten by swap and hibernate, though I kill that capability).
And I don't play games.
Just saying some of us DO have needs for high-end workstations, and we care about the RAID and ease of ability to recover when boot drive fails. Have an image, spare SSD, restore an image, back up and running in 15 - 20 minutes. None of this mucking about with RAID 1 and it's disasters.


Best Regards,
Scott
MIET, MASHRAE, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[SamBones]

Apropos to the topic of drive reliability, I found this interesting...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/big-hard-disks-may-be-breaking-the-bathtub-curve/

 

[goombawaho]

That's so funny - 2TB SSD. Who's going to pay for that? Nobody that I have seen PERSONALLY. And as to storage drives, I have never seen anyone with a larger hard drive than 2TB in terms of the non-business customers that I service OR what they ask for in a build. I know, I know, most people (especially computer dudes) have more adult videos to store and more music stolen when Napster was a new thing!!

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, Scott, your budget is what some of us maybe dream about.

And I was excited to pick up a used 4th gen i7 setup with 500GB SSD (2.5 SATA) to use for audio recording and add a couple WD Black 6TB drives for storage.

But I guess when computers were first out, the kind of money your system cost was about like what a basic run of the mill system cost. I guess I'd of been sticking to a calculator back then.

I wonder if using RAMDisk type setups with 256GB Ram works out well or not. But depending upon what you're doing, may or may not make sense.

My guess is Scott is running something for SETI trying to talk to ET.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

 

[Scott24x7]

KJV1611,
There is something better, and far more reasonable. Look at Optane memory from Intel. It's based on 3D Xpoint technology, and a simple 32GB of it is around $100 so doesn't break the bank. Perfect for what you're talking about.
-S


Best Regards,
Scott
MIET, MASHRAE, CDCP, CDCS, CDCE, CTDC, CTIA, ATS

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."

 

[kjv1611]

Thanks for the suggestion. However, from everything I can find, there is no real world gain if already using an SSD for the boot drive. In the system I have, 500GB SSD = boot drive. I do have one M.2 NVME slot on the board, and it is not currently used. The Lord willing, I'll consider putting an M.2 NVME SSD in the system for the OS, etc in another year or two. But I don't know just yet that we'll get enough gain from it anyway. Probably end up sticking with this new build that I'm piecing together now for a few more years.

By then, perhaps, we'll be talking Quantum computing as the latest greatest stuff to the market at large.

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57