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Starting new RAID for video storage...would you use this?

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KuriousJorj

KuriousJorj

Technical User
May 20, 2004
38
US
Hi folks...

I recently lost my video storage drives; two 73GB SCSI Cheetahs, striped, RAID 0, of 5 years failed (burnt PCB), and I can't afford to recover the data... (starts at around $2500...)

Anyhow, it's been 5 years since I've priced this stuff, and looks like things have changed...


I was thinking of going two SATA, striped again, with a RAID card...


And


What do you think...?

thanks

BJ
 
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I have several questions for you.

Are the Cheetah drives still working? What PCB burned?

Why are you using RAID zero. Yes its faster. But not reliable. If one disk dies - your data is gone! Given how much cheaper hd's and controllers are than 5 years ago I think you should look at RAID 1+0, also known as RAID 10. RAID 10 will give you the speed of RAID 0 with the protection of RAID 1. So if one disk goes, and is replaced, the RAID can be rebuilt.
 
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Also, tigerdirect is usually expensive and their shipping charges are double or triple. I suggest you try newegg for what you need to buy.
Not only that but i also found, in the past, that tigerdirect passes off refurbs, re-builds, used, as new.
Not a good company in my opinion. I learned the hard way.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips
 
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Thanks, guys, this is EXTREMEMLY good advice! I'm not going with Tigerdirect now...just needed to hear someone say it first!

As for my pre-existing RAID setup, I would often disconnect the Cheetahs unless I was editing video (they got VERY hot!)...

One day, I reconnected, powered up, and smelled something burning, thinking it was the power supply, so I turned off my system.

Now, one of the drives won't even start up, and you can see a burnt component on the underneath of the drive...

Data recovery places I called claimed one cannot simply replace the PCB; that in such an incident, BOTH drives are affected, the partition table, etc., was probably affected... And RAID is very expensive to recover. I guess I lost the short films I had on those drives...

I'll definitely look into RAID 1+0...

thanks again

BJ


 
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If the drives worked Raidrecover would get the data back onto a large enough third drive. But sounds like that's not an option in this case.
 
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My current setup has two 160 gig SATA drives on a raid 0. I took the two 120 IDE drives I had been using and set them up as storage space. Ghost backs up the RAID array to one drive every week or so, and I dump whatever a copy of whatever I'm working on to the other drive when I take a break.

I got all my drives at Frys, kept my eyes open for the times when they sell 'em cheap with big rebates. I think I got all four drives for less then $300.

I try not to let my ignorance prevent me from offering a strong opinion.
 
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Thanks, guys...

I actually went ahead and bought a 250GB drive from Newegg, though it's SATA, and my system currently doesn't support SATA, so I think I'm going to upgrad EVERYTHING... (board, CPU, RAM, video card...)

Not sure yet if a single SATA drive will be fast enough to capture/edit video with, so I may still get 2 smaller SATA drives, RAID 0 them, then use Ghost as suggested, to periodically backup my data to the new 250GB drive... Much cheaper/easier, than any sort of Mirroring, I would think...

thanks for the input!

 
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I don't know how many SATA ports motherboards come with these days. My board has two, and I suspect that's the case with most other boards. You might have to get an extra card to plug in a third SATA drive.

Also, be aware that Ghost won't completely back up a RAID array. See this thread for more details:


As nearly as I can tell, Ghost is backing up my data faithfully, but if my RAID crashes, I won't be able to just do a restore. I'll need to reinstall the OS with the right drivers, then recover my data files from backup. Still better then losing everything.




I try not to let my ignorance prevent me from offering a strong opinion.
 
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I have a Promise RAID. I had occasional trouble with BSOD's and finally a disk failed, so I put down to that. I've re-build the RAID with new disks (SpinRite passes them a-okay) and was just copying data back to the RAID - when BSOD!

So I don't rate Promise!
 
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Okay, guys, here is what I'm leaning towards (note: I already got a 250GB SATA drive from newegg (1 day deal, had to hurry!), so here is the rest...) BTW, this is for video editing first, video games, second...

Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 3000

Video Card

DDR PC-3200


If I'm not mistaken, this motherboard has 4 SATA ports, OR, is it 2 ports that function in two different ways?

So what do you think?

BJ

ps. the video card probably need not be this model; could go $50 cheaper, and get more RAM instead...
 
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Your links are allllll broken. Something about the way their website is laid out, I imagine.

Maybe you can make a wish list and post a link to it.



I try not to let my ignorance prevent me from offering a strong opinion.
 
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Your links are allllll broken. Something about the way their website is laid out, I imagine.
Click to expand...
Whoa, that's wierd! Here's another forum (video editing/DVX camcorder) that I started a similar thread, and posted the same links; they work from this thread:


(now I have to wonder if THIS link will work, lol!)
 
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Something I just noticed; the video card has a PCI-express interface, but the motherboard is AGP 8X/4X...

The only reason I chose that card is because it was recommended on 'Toms Hardware...' Not sure I really need such a card, though...
 
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