Raid

Orclas Wrote:I've said it before and I say it again: streaming HD does not take more than 30Mb/s max (per stream). That's not even 4MB/s, so all else properly built and configured, SATA II or III wont matter for that part.

It might matter for copy speed, but since already SATA II is 3.0 Gbit/s (that's 375 MB/s), I think you'll find the bottle necks elsewhere than in the SATA bus speed alone.

^^^ that.

You can stream 1080p/12k off an old IDE hard drive with no problems at all. My RAID5 is SATA II and it'll punch out 4 simultaneous 1080p streams at the same time as it caches a billion parts of an nzb downloading at 14 mega BYTES per second. The bus will not be the bottleneck. Nor will the drives.

I using Windows also, that's apparently not the issue.

patseguin Wrote:...and not good enough to stream 1080p media throughout the home.

Across a network or some direct-connect?

Forgive me, I've forgotten. Are you setting up a central media server with RAID and then connecting multiple clients across a network?

If so, where are you observing/measuring performance? At the server or a client?

If the server is effectively acting as a NAS then almost certainly your network will be more of a performance limitation than your storage.

Good points. I can use 4 drives and be dependent on the controller or all 5 and be dependent on the motherboard I guess is what it comes down to now.

No problem djmcnz, I've made so many posts I don't expect you to remember. ;-)

Where I am at right now is a Zotac 41 on my main plasma living room TV and a Zotac 36 in my bedroom. I am currently getting my content over the network from my gaming pc (where I temporarily stored everything). The big tower that I used to have next to my TV and that used to run XBMC will now soley be a media server. So, yes it is effectively acting as a NAS. I just need to figure out if I want unRAID (which doesn't seem to be working out), freeNAS, LSI SATAII RAID controller w/4drives, or AMD motherboard controller with 5 drives.

patseguin Wrote:No problem djmcnz, I've made so many posts I don't expect you to remember. ;-)

Where I am at right now is a Zotac 41 on my main plasma living room TV and a Zotac 36 in my bedroom. I am currently getting my content over the network from my gaming pc (where I temporarily stored everything). The big tower that I used to have next to my TV and that used to run XBMC will now soley be a media server. So, yes it is effectively acting as a NAS. I just need to figure out if I want unRAID (which doesn't seem to be working out), freeNAS, LSI SATAII RAID controller w/4drives, or AMD motherboard controller with 5 drives.

Use the independent controller, it's probably got it's own ram and cache and will take load off the motherboard, however incremental. Set it up, RAID5 sounds right for you and then test the performance of the array on the server using any number of read/write test tools. Confirm your performance is sound then look at your network if streaming is bad.

You'll need a switched gigabit backbone at least, preferably the whole network (or wireless N), and turn auto-switching (10/100) off on all your ports and set manually to max. Plug the media server directly into the primary switch (or switching router).

Good luck!

patseguin Wrote:Just an update for anyone who was following my progress. I set up a RAID5 and it was incredibly slow. We are talking 9 hours to copy 1tb of data. So I went with RAID0 for now with 8tb of space and the data copy is about 3 hours. I figure maybe Ill get a battery back up and a NAS.

Have you let the array build before using it?
This can take a day or two. After this performance is way better.

I really doubt a raid5 array is 3 times slower then a raid0...

My 8x 1.5TB SATA Software RAID5:
Timing buffered disk reads: 2260 MB in 3.00 seconds = 752.59 MB/sec

OK so with 12TB of storage I will get a little less than 6 with RAID5 right but I can lose 2 drives and still have my data intact?

patseguin Wrote:OK so with 12TB of storage I will get a little less than 6 with RAID5 right but I can lose 2 drives and still have my data intact?

No...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

4x3TB=12TB*RAID5=(4-1)x3TB=9TB

And only one disk can fail.

Hmm, nope. I just assumed that once it showed the array online it was good to go. Once I added the drives and it spent 14 building the parity drive, I started copying files. I am still ripping so I don't want to be having to create an MKV file and have it take 3 hours to copy. Windows 7/motherboard RAID10 had me copying those files in 2-3 minutes.

My drives are consumer drive too by the way, not enterprise disks.

imo; Windows with RAID isn't really the way to go. You will only get some performance if you have a good hardware controller like an Areca. Not the Windows software raid or the onboard controller.

Your better off making a nice linux NAS for performance.