Re: [PLUG] Two-Drive Software Raid 5?

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Claude M. Schrader
<plug@claudeschrader.com> wrote:
> On 09:37 Tue 04 Jan     , Rich Freeman wrote:
>
>> 1.  I need 1TB of redundant space now.
>> 2.  I only want to pay for 2 1TB hard drives now.
>> 3.  I want to be able to add 1TB at a later date for the cost of 1 1TB
>> drive, and migrate data online (or at least without access to other
>> storage).
>>
>> I don't really see any other options.
>
> someone mentioned in irc that 1TB drives are only $59 at microcenter right
> now. I say just buy 3 or 4 now and get it over with. While a 2 drive raid5
> may be theoretically possible, do you really want to trust your data to
> such a crazy untested setup?

Yup - I bought the two drives for $59 at micro center...  :)

But, why would I want to spend an extra $60-120 for an extra 1-2TB of
space that I might not use for a year or two?  If I wait I can buy
that disk space for far less when I need it.  I don't need to get
funding, do a formal migration plan, testing, coordinate with an
infrastructure team, etc when I want to increase my disk space, so
there really is no reason to spend a fortune up-front like a fortune
500 company might (if I were making recommendations for work I'd do it
differently).

What I finally settled on is going ahead with conventional raid1.  In
theory I can convert this to raid5 and expand it later if necessary.
However, if I don't need that extra space for a long time (likely)
chances are that I'll be buying 10TB drives or whatever in which case
I'll just be planning a whole new array.  And who knows, maybe we'll
all have 10Gb/s internet connections by then and I'll just be booting
from iSCSI hosted on Amazon S3 or whatever.  :)

Rich
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