On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 08:07 -0500, Justin Piszcz wrote: > > On Tue, 16 Dec 2008, Redeeman wrote: > > > On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 06:44 -0500, Justin Piszcz wrote: > >> > >> On Tue, 16 Dec 2008, Max Waterman wrote: > >> > >>> Hi, > >>> > >>> I have a 8x200GB RAID5 array - 4 SATA and 4 EIDE. It has 2 spare, so > >>> that's only 6 drives actually in the array, making 1TB of space (I > >>> think that's right). > >>> > >>> The drives are quite old now, and people are asking what I want for > >>> Christmas...so I'm wondering how to upgrade this setup. Clearly I > >>> don't want to retire my existing drives prematurely, since they've > >>> shown no sign of problem. > >>> > >>> My initial thought was to make a RAID1 out of a new 1TB disk and my > >>> existing RAID5 array, but perhaps that doesn't make much sense... > >>> > >>> Perhaps I could get a 400GB drive (or more likely 500GB) and make a > >>> RAID1 with a couple of the existing 200GBs? > >>> > >>> ...but I'm just guessing and the purpose of this email is to get advice. > >>> > >>> What do you guys think? > >>> > >>> Max. > >> > >> Tough call, depends on what you want to accomplish? Availability or mass > >> storage space? You could continue running like you are now and use a 1TiB > >> disk as your "scratch" area and rsync the important data off to your > >> RAID-5 nightly for example. > >> > >> Another option (probably not a good one) take two of your 200s and make a > >> RAID1, leave your RAID-5 as-is, buy another 200GiB as a spare and then > >> with the rest of the $ buy something else, there are no good alternatives, > >> those are pretty old disks you got there, but I agree if its been running > >> fine, no reason to replace it. > > Hehe, i myself am in a somewhat similar position.. i have a 6x300gb > > raid5 array.. And the disks appears perfectly fine through smart etc, > > but on the other hand, a SINGLE new disk today can present me with the > > same level of usable capacity very cheap, and ill bet using considerably > > less power. Thus i have chosen to very soon retire this setup, and make > > a replacement 8x1tb or 6x1.5tb raid6 for increased capacity and > > safety :) > > > > i'd recommend you work towards deprecating LOTS of drives in favor of > > fewer bigger newer, and keep the old ones around as an archive/backup > > thing. > Agree here, but the 1.5TiB are not enterprise disks, I would not recommend > moving to them yet, but rather 1TiB, that is what I am currently doing, > moving to WD RE3's (1TiB model). I am somewhat scared of the seagate stuff too.. I however will probably go the WD10EADS way instead, i know its not the "enterprise" disks, but they are really lowpower, and well.. i would hope raid6 can bail me out of any disk failures. > > Justin. > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
