Looking to build a NAS. Drive Extender+RAID 5?
#1
So here's what I want to do. I'd like to run the hard drives in Raid 5 so if one of the hard drives in the pool goes bad I can easily replace that hard drive. On top of that I'd like it to be expandable with various drive capacities so I can keep adding hard drives to a pool of hard drive a la Drive Extender, and those added hard drives would also be in the RAID 5.

Is this possible? Am I just crazy?
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#2
Any reason why you want RAID 5 specifically?

A lot of people in this forum recommend unraid or flexraid.

They both can do things that you want to do. Easily replaceable hdd's, ability to add hard drives as you go.

Also benefit from unraid or flexraid over RAID 5 is that even if a hdd fails, you can still access data in other working hdd's, where RAID 5, you won't be able to access data until you replace the hdd (someone correct me if i'm wrong)

oh also, your hdd's don't have to be the same size for unraid or flexraid where RAID 5, if they're not the same size, you lose some capacity.
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#3
Ah. good to know. I'm pretty green when it comes to any kind of RAID. I did look very briefly at unraid and my only qualm with that one is that it only supports up to 3 disks free. Right? I'll look into flexraid.

EDIT: So flexraid is a paid one as well. Both unraid and flexraid seem to be about the same price. Time for some research.
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#4
(2012-09-05, 19:04)chubbycheese Wrote: Ah. good to know. I'm pretty green when it comes to any kind of RAID. I did look very briefly at unraid and my only qualm with that one is that it only supports up to 3 disks free. Right? I'll look into flexraid.

Yea. unraid is free only for 3 disks... and flexraid only has 14 days trial.

There are some other raid option similar to these two, but you basically get what you pay for in my opinion. Good to invest money on something like this.
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#5
(2012-09-05, 18:04)jangjong Wrote: Also benefit from unraid or flexraid over RAID 5 is that even if a hdd fails, you can still access data in other working hdd's, where RAID 5, you won't be able to access data until you replace the hdd (someone correct me if i'm wrong)

oh also, your hdd's don't have to be the same size for unraid or flexraid where RAID 5, if they're not the same size, you lose some capacity.

You are correct sir on all counts.
Sure you can lose 1 drive in RAID 5,..replace and it will rebuild the data onto that drive.
However,...if you lose 2 drives,..you're toast. The only way to recover data is from backups.



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#6
Why is no one ever suggesting snapraid? As far i read it works like a charm, it's easy to configure and it's free.

I mean What am i missing...
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Looking to build a NAS. Drive Extender+RAID 5?0