# Adding External Storage - Opinions Needed



## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

I have a Macpro1,1 with the following disk config:

90GB Agility 2 SSD in optical bay for boot.
1TB WD Black for home directory / user files
2TB Green for MP4 movies
2TB Green for DVD iso images Titles beginning with A to M
2TB Green for DVD iso images Titles beginning with N to Z
External FW800 2TB WD Green as Time Machine for just the boot and user files (no movies)

So I have managed to fill up my 3 X 2TB drives with my movie collection and have need to add some more hard drive space. I have ordered the Sans Digital external eSATA case linked below and plan to attach it to my SI3132 based eSATA controller.

Newegg.ca - Sans Digital 4 Bay eSATA Port Multiplier JBOD Tower Storage Enclosure (no eSATA Card bundle) TR4M+BNC

I have also ordered a pair of WD Green 2TB drives to start off with.

I also keep an eSATA hard drive dock connected and use bare 2TB drives as my backups of the internal 2TB drives. About once a month I just copy over whatever I have added so it is a pretty basic hands-on approach to backup.

So my question is.... Should I set up these disks in the external enclosure as a JBOD spanned set (if I am using the right terminology)? I read that in early days of OS X if a single drive failed you lose the whole set? Has this been fixed in Snow Leopard?

Should I consider some sort of RAID for data protection (I don't care about speed)?

Looking for ideas so fire away.


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2011)

I would do 4 drives and then RAID5. Then you get protection against drive failure. Spanned (or concatenated) has no protection, you lose a drive you lose the data. That's exactly how I have mine (RAID5).


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## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

mguertin said:


> I would do 4 drives and then RAID5. Then you get protection against drive failure. Spanned (or concatenated) has no protection, you lose a drive you lose the data. That's exactly how I have mine (RAID5).


Thanks. I read somewhere that RAID5 should be done in hardware? Would I need a RAID card for that option?


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2011)

Dadi_oh said:


> Thanks. I read somewhere that RAID5 should be done in hardware? Would I need a RAID card for that option?


Yes, that's not supported with software raid in OSX (there is third party software that can do it, but you don't want to go there). Didn't you have the Newertech RAID card at one point? If so it installed the drivers and software to do raid and probably also still works with your other cards. It's web based OEM version of the highpoint software. That's what I'm using for my setups (2 raids on 2 different cards - 4x2TB and 8x1.5TB).


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## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

mguertin said:


> Yes, that's not supported with software raid in OSX (there is third party software that can do it, but you don't want to go there). Didn't you have the Newertech RAID card at one point? If so it installed the drivers and software to do raid and probably also still works with your other cards. It's web based OEM version of the highpoint software. That's what I'm using for my setups (2 raids on 2 different cards - 4x2TB and 8x1.5TB).


Ah. Therein lies the confusion. I don't have a RAID card. Just a cheap SIL3132 card. I think I will just use JBOD and to keep it simple I will probably also just run them as separate disks. I will just sort the movie titles by title and put them on the appropriate disk to spread the load across the disks. Basically what I am doing now. I run Plex server so it takes care of presenting all of the movies to my media player independent of what disks they are on.

Thanks for the suggestions. Very much appreciated.


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## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

Well this card was on sale for $70 so I ordered it. I have been a little suspicious of my cheap sil3132 so this looks like a good option. And it supports sata3.

Computer Accessories by NewerTech® - MAXPower eSATA 6G PCIe Card

Is this the one you have?

Edit: And would WD green drives be suitable for a raid setup? I thought I heard that they were not?


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## Guest (Sep 13, 2011)

That's the newer tech card I have and it will work fine and comes with the web based software for the card setup. A lot of people had issues with greens but I think that was with the embedded type raid setups (the enclosures that do the actual raid stuff), i have greens in one of my setups and have had no issues.


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## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

mguertin said:


> That's the newer tech card I have and it will work fine and comes with the web based software for the card setup. A lot of people had issues with greens but I think that was with the embedded type raid setups (the enclosures that do the actual raid stuff), i have greens in one of my setups and have had no issues.


Awesome. Thanks. I guess I will try it and see.


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

For future reference we stock the OWC / Newer Tech raid cards and they are excellent.

Green drives tend to be slow but are fine for backup.


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## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

MacDoc said:


> For future reference we stock the OWC / Newer Tech raid cards and they are excellent.
> 
> Green drives tend to be slow but are fine for backup.


Good to know for future. I can't find them specifically on your site. Do you carry the whole OWC catalogue or just specific items?


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## Guest (Sep 15, 2011)

Here's a good reason to run RAID5 ... I lost a drive in my RAID5 today, piece of $&@* Seagate 1.5TB drive (7 more in the case) -- have seen lots of them croak but there's no recall on them that I could find. I think I might even setup a hot spare or two for the duration.

I swapped it out with a 2TB Hitachi drive today ... the extra half terabyte is wasted space for now, but I'll swap them all to 2TB as they fail. The only concerning thing for me would be to lose a drive while doing a rebuild (8 hours + to go on current one) ... if I did I'd lose the RAID and have to do the long restore ... hence setting up a hot spare sooner than later. Think I'll have to make a hard drive run tomorrow


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## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

mguertin said:


> Here's a good reason to run RAID5 ... I lost a drive in my RAID5 today, piece of $&@* Seagate 1.5TB drive (7 more in the case) -- have seen lots of them croak but there's no recall on them that I could find. I think I might even setup a hot spare or two for the duration.
> 
> I swapped it out with a 2TB Hitachi drive today ... the extra half terabyte is wasted space for now, but I'll swap them all to 2TB as they fail. The only concerning thing for me would be to lose a drive while doing a rebuild (8 hours + to go on current one) ... if I did I'd lose the RAID and have to do the long restore ... hence setting up a hot spare sooner than later. Think I'll have to make a hard drive run tomorrow


Bummer. I gave up on Seagate after my last 2 failures. Standardized on Western Digital in all my machines. I have 12 WD drives in various machines over last 2.5 years and not a single failure.... touch wood....


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## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

Noticed you have an original MacPro - have trade up program on to an 8 core for reasonable price point. Email if interested. We have a 3.0 8 core particularly well priced


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## Dadi_oh (Nov 9, 2010)

MacDoc said:


> Noticed you have an original MacPro - have trade up program on to an 8 core for reasonable price point. Email if interested. We have a 3.0 8 core particularly well priced


Thanks Doc. I already did my own upgrade to a pair of E5345's. Works great. This is my server so power consumption is a consideration. The X5365's draw quite a bit more power and I don't really need the horsepower. But you do have a good price if that includes installation. Cheers.


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