I had a server running in RAID0 that had a drive fail so I lost everything. I will be using a large portion of the storage simply to hold media to stream to my TV, so having one large filesystem doesn't give me any benefits.
Im leaning towards a JBOD solution but someone more experienced may be able to give me a better point of view.
You need a backup system no matter what you've got, but it's even more critical when using a striped set as the primary array. You're begging for trouble like this if you don't.
Thats exactly what im doing. I have an Intel X25-M 160GB SSD on the way for my boot drive. Gonna throw my home folder on one of the 2TB drives, and then install 3 x 2TB drives (ill do a 4th in the second optical drive if it comes to that) and use that to hold a bunch of media (HD TV, HD Movies etc for Boxee streaming).
You may run into throughput throttling with all of this attached to the internal SATA ports, as the ICH is limited to ~660MB/s (assuming multiple disks will run simultaneously).
The 80GB SSD can produce ~250MB/s, and a single 2TB disk ~110MB/s (reads in both cases). For 3x mechanical + the SSD, you get 580MB/s, which is fine. It's the addition of the 4th disk that could hurt you, as you're now at 690MB/s.
To prevent this, you'd need another SATA controller to take some of the load, and push it across the PCIe lanes instead.
I have a ReadyNAS Duo with 2 x 1TB drives and its already full...
What are you using it for?
I ask, as you need to do something about this, but the answer (as well as other information), could get you into the right solution. Time may also be of critical importance, depending on the overall storage configuration, or you could be open to a disaster.
These days, with very cheap 2TB drives, the only reason I can think of for using JBOD is to allow easier file organization for media storage usage. For anything else, JBOD is pretty much useless.
No, it's not useless.
Let's say the JBOD is used as a backup solution, and a stripe set is used for the primary data location. Now you get a simultaneous failure (both lose a drive). Instead of losing all of the data, you only lose whatever is on the failed disk in the JBOD set.
Not ideal, but you'd be amazed how many users don't have a primary backup system, let alone more than one (i.e. on-site + off site, or at least archived to tape or optical media, as would be the case with purchased DVD movies for example).
Downloaded movies tend to fall into this connundrum, and takes both time and money to re-download everything that's lost the user wants back (assuming the sources aren't DRM hacked copies available on torrent sites).
yeah exactly... I dont have the cash to backup 8TB so im willing to take the risk of only losing 2TB rather than all of it. Yeah yeah I know back up, sure I backup my important stuff, but im really gonna spend all that cash just to back up 8TB of media I could download again in a couple days? idk seems stupid to me.
It's not ideal, but better than a total loss. You'd be best to get an external enclosure (Port Multiplier chip equiped) and an eSATA card for a large capacity backup solution.
It will save you a lot of time and money, if you're not getting your content off of torrent sites (in which it's only time, if your ISP doesn't have fees for exceeding data caps).
Do SSD. Using a mechanical drive @ 10K rpms is asking for problems.
The Velociraptor is an enterprise grade drive, and mechanical is still better suited to high write environments than SSD's, particularly MLC based models.
MLC is fine however for an OS/applications disk, as it spends the vast majority of it's life reading rather than writing data.
