need RAID 1 for T42p - pls help

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hnq · #1 Post by **hnq** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 1:41 pm

I'm hoping that someone can point me in the right direction for building a RAID 1 array for my T42p. I've looked at Buffalo's Terastation, but most people have had problems with speed on it...

From what I've been able to gather on RAIDs:
- prefer hardware controlled (so that it doesn't suck cpu from my laptop)
- i can get external casings and drives (what specs should I look for? ATA or SCSI OR IDE etc...)
- i would need 2 drive controllers - one for each drive
- i would need a cpu and some ram - perhaps a cheap computer?
- since the 42p doesn't have any space for expansion - where do i put the controllers?
- i've been having problems with the usb2.0 devices randomly being assigned to a usb1.1 root hub in Win XP - would going to firewire be more trouble free?

Am I on the right track? Anyone know of a site that will specify exactly what components are needed?

I need to get this up and running pretty quick - my current backup drive is starting to go...

Thanks!

kano · #2 Post by **kano** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:49 pm

Buffalo's Terastation connected by crossover ethernet cable or GigaSwitch (like D-Link DGS-1005D) will be the fastest and simplest solution.
Regards, KaNo

hnq · #3 Post by **hnq** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 4:06 pm

I'm hoping to cap this at $500. The .6TB terastation is already at $600 and adding a gigaswitch will increase the cost even further...

kano · #4 Post by **kano** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 4:42 pm

Right now D-Link GigaSwitch is on sale and can be find for $30.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... pNo=624765
Regards, KaNo

JHEM · #5 Post by **JHEM** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:33 pm

kano wrote:Buffalo's Terastation connected by crossover ethernet cable or GigaSwitch (like D-Link DGS-1005D) will be the fastest and simplest solution.

Cheapest solution is to get an old desktop and simply dedicate it as a server!

I've picked up working P4s off the curb that had been put out for trash! Last one I got had a working 120GB WD HD in it.

Connect it to, or let it host, your home WiFi network and you're good to go.

Regards,

James

kano · #6 Post by **kano** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 6:21 pm

JHEM wrote:Cheapest solution is to get an old desktop and simply dedicate it as a server!

Yes, will be cheapest, but I don't expect really big difference: old PC + hard drives (600GB) + RAID controller + giga-ethernet.
My advice was about best connection to external RAID - ethernet will be faster then USB 2 or Firewall.
Regards, KaNo

hnq · #7 Post by **hnq** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 9:18 pm

Does the T42p ethernet port support gigbit speeds?

I also saw barebones systems on newegg for about $200 that would support RAID 1. They also has 2 internal SATA slots. What about using this as a basis for a new file server vs. the buffalo?

#8 Post by **Kyocera** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 9:34 pm

kano · #9 Post by **kano** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 11:41 pm

hnq wrote:Does the T42p ethernet port support gigbit speeds?

I also saw barebones systems on newegg for about $200 that would support RAID 1. They also has 2 internal SATA slots. What about using this as a basis for a new file server vs. the buffalo?

Interesting option. Price for barebone + HD + processor + memory probably close to Bufflo, but more flexible server.
Ragards, KaNo

hnq · #10 Post by **hnq** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:26 pm

I think that i'm going to look into using a building a system - it should be fun and educational.

The barebone systems only had 2 slots for drives - no room for expansion...

Does anyone know of any links that would detail how to build one? Also, I'll probably need to use linux as the OS (for price reasons) - Any thoughts on what flavor I should use (I've never used linux before).

while building this, is there any quirks that I need to keep in mind about the t42p? Afterall, this will be built to service the t42p...

Thanks!

JHEM · #11 Post by **JHEM** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 9:40 pm

hnq wrote:The barebone systems only had 2 slots for drives - no room for expansion...

First bit in your education, any modern desktop motherboard willl have two IDE channels, either of which will support two IDE devices, e.g you could have four HDs on the system.

Regards,

James

DIGITALgimpus · #12 Post by **DIGITALgimpus** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:26 pm

What do you specifically need RAID for? If your using RAID 1 for pure mirroring, i'd personally recommend using imaging software like Acronis, and just set it to mirror 1x a day (off hours on schedule) or perhaps 2 (sneak one in at lunch).

Because of the networking overhead, you will not get the greatest i/o with network storage obviously. Definately not enough for any real serious use (of course that's relative). By the time you get up the protocol stack, you've created a lot of overhead.

You could technically use a software RAID and use a USB drive (not sure how stable that would be on w32). Though performance would really stink. Even with another drive internal (take out the optical drive) it wouldn't be ideal, because you'd need to use software based RAID.

IMHO imaging is a much better suggestion. As far as redundancy goes.... practically it makes much more sense.

The odds that your drive fails are pretty low on a minute-by-minute basis. If you image 1x a day, you can only loose 1 day worth of data. 2 Backups/day, and you can only loose 1/2 day (4hrs) worth of data.

For that little data loss, with that low chance... you'd likely loose more productivity due to latency and performance issues on a RAID1 solution.

What is your reasoning for going with RAID1 (don't say "I heard it's good" or some other buzz related babble). Would make it much easier to recommend a good solution if we knew what you were trying to accomplish.

RAID is a very over-hyped solution. In reality it's only necessary, or even effective in a handful of solutions (and in those it's a golden solution). I've heard of RAID5 being implemented to solve a i/o latency issue on a system with too little RAM. Did they bother upgrading the RAM so that there's less disk thrashing and not everything is hitting the swap file? No, just RAID5 it... since that's the "better" solution, as price will tell you. Obviously even a RAID 5 is MUCH slower than an extra $100-200 in memory... and costs a LOT more.

hnq · #13 Post by **hnq** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:53 pm

Digital - thank you for the frank questions. I've actually been thinking about that same question most of the day. I already use Acronis - and thought that a RAID 1 would offer more granular back ups - less work loss. A RAID 1 would be cheaper than losing 1 day of work.

However, the more that I thought about it, the more that I realized that a RAID 1 would still not offer the data security that I wanted - the RAID would still be vulnerable to viruses and that I still needed a back up drive. Also, since I don't know what I'm doing, the time to set up a RAID, maintain it etc. could really add up... I think that the risk of something like a virus is much higher than a sudden hardware failure. With all of this in mind, I'm just going to get 2 external harddrives. I'll use acronis to image my laptop drive to drive A. I'll also use drive A for work data files. I'll mirror drive A to drive B on a regular basis.

Is acronis good for mirroring drives?

smugiri · #14 Post by **smugiri** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:34 pm

hnq wrote:Digital - thank you for the frank questions. I've actually been thinking about that same question most of the day. I already use Acronis - and thought that a RAID 1 would offer more granular back ups - less work loss. A RAID 1 would be cheaper than losing 1 day of work.

However, the more that I thought about it, the more that I realized that a RAID 1 would still not offer the data security that I wanted - the RAID would still be vulnerable to viruses and that I still needed a back up drive. Also, since I don't know what I'm doing, the time to set up a RAID, maintain it etc. could really add up... I think that the risk of something like a virus is much higher than a sudden hardware failure. With all of this in mind, I'm just going to get 2 external harddrives. I'll use acronis to image my laptop drive to drive A. I'll also use drive A for work data files. I'll mirror drive A to drive B on a regular basis.

Is acronis good for mirroring drives?

Am I missing something? It seems to me that it is not that useful to mirror a 2.5' laptop drive on a 3.5' desktop type drive. I would argue that mirroring is useful if you can take the mirror on a failure/virus and plug it into the machine and be ready to go. Data mirrors are by definition useless if they are not ready to go at the moment of crisis.

From a performance viewpoint, assuming you get ethernet connected storage, typical transfer rates are about 33MBs even with best of breed solutions so you can restore 7GB of data in about 58 minutes. USB 2.0 will give you 130MBs. I know that USB spec says about 480MBs, the bottleneck here would be drive transfer rate which would top out at about 120MBs for an Ultra ATA133 drive which translates to about 13 to 14 minutes to push/pull 7GB of data. This even beats Rescue and Recovery in some scenarios (specifically in the case of any laptop with a drive that is not Ultra ATA133 eg Ultra ATA100 which is the case for most if not all factory Thinkpads.).

Why bother mirroring when you can recover the OS from Rescue & Recovery in about 20 minutes and spend maybe 30 minutes installing applications or restore a machine image with apps in about 60 minutes? Restoring the OS and Apps from a ethernet or IDE mirror will take atleast that long and requires special software (Acronis or something of the like).

Either way, you have the machine ready to go in an hour and a half top and all you have to transfer is your data.

I would argue that the best bet at this point in time in terms of speed and performance is a good USB enclosure ( preferably a 2.5 so that you can interchange disks in the laptop without issue ) with an Ultra ATA133 drive. This will outperform any IDE based RAID/Ethernet setup you can think off.

This setup cannot be compared with a SCSI or SATA RAID which would just blow its socks off. The hardware will also no longer be in the <$1000 range.

Even better is an ultrabay caddy with a drive like this in it. If you have a couple of these, you pop it in, do your backup, take it out. Every other day, use the 2nd one to do your backup so that you have a primary and secondary backup from 2 different days.

If you ever have any problem, remove the primary drive from the machine, replace with drive from the ultrabay, reboot and you are back in business. Start backing up to the original drive.

No matter which 2.5 drives available on the market today you chose, even if you bought 3 identical drives to use for this backup scheme, you would spend less than $600. ($600 would give you 3 drives with 120GB in capacity each, a more reasonable $450 would buy you 3*80GB Ultra ATA133 7200s while a very reasonable $360 would buy you 3*100GB of Ultra ATA100 5200s ).

You would also have 2 backup copies of your data. And with the right software, you could even have real time replication.

It would go up to $1000 if you choose to get the new 160GB Seagate though. The price of being an early adopter.

kano · #15 Post by **kano** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 1:29 am

smugiri wrote: Am I missing something? It seems to me that it is not that useful to mirror a 2.5' laptop drive on a 3.5' desktop type drive. I would argue that mirroring is useful if you can take the mirror on a failure/virus and plug it into the machine and be ready to go.
From a performance viewpoint, assuming you get ethernet connected storage, typical transfer rates are about 33MBs ??? USB 2.0 will give you 130MBs ??? I know that USB spec says about 480MBs, the bottleneck here would be drive transfer rate which would top out at about 120MBs ???

RAID 1 never pretends to be backup solution, typical misunderstanding, it is against hardware failure.
USB 2.0 max speed is 480Mbs, and this small b make real difference 480Mbs/8=60MBs (in real life <400Mbs). Finally theoretical speed for giga-ethernet is 1000Mbs/8=125MBs. (in tests ~800Mbs). NAS devices (not necessary in RAID configuration) are typicaly also printer and ftp servers.
Regards KaNo

hnq · #16 Post by **hnq** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 3:55 am

I agree that the fastest course to get back up would be to use 2.5" drives and to mirror them on a regular basis. However, the problem is that I have a number of virtual PC files - which take up a lot of space. This means that I often end up working while connected to an external 3.5" drive. My back up solution would have to backup the contents of my primary drive - AND the contents of the external drive. That's why I'm planning on using Acronis to back up my primary drive to external A. Then clone the contents of external A to external B. Though this won't win any speed awards in terms of getting back up - it does provide a backup for both my primary and external drive A. I'm currently using a 100gb external drive - but it's way too small - I'll need at least a 250+ external drive to store my data.

I'm open to suggestions.

By the way, I'm looking to upgrade the HD in my t42p to . I've read some of the other posts - but really didn't find any problems with the t42p. Is it as simple as putting in the new drive and using the recovery CD's on it - then using acronis to restore everything else? I'm looking at putting in the HITACHI Travelstar 7K100 HTS721010G9AT00 (0A25015) 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive. I'm also planning on wiping my current primary drive, throwing it into a usb powered enclosure and making it a mobile external HD. Any suggestions on the HD enclosure?

Thanks!

smugiri · #17 Post by **smugiri** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:03 am

kano wrote:
smugiri wrote: Am I missing something? It seems to me that it is not that useful to mirror a 2.5' laptop drive on a 3.5' desktop type drive. I would argue that mirroring is useful if you can take the mirror on a failure/virus and plug it into the machine and be ready to go.
From a performance viewpoint, assuming you get ethernet connected storage, typical transfer rates are about 33MBs ??? USB 2.0 will give you 130MBs ??? I know that USB spec says about 480MBs, the bottleneck here would be drive transfer rate which would top out at about 120MBs ???
RAID 1 never pretends to be backup solution, typical misunderstanding, it is against hardware failure.
USB 2.0 max speed is 480Mbs, and this small b make real difference 480Mbs/8=60MBs (in real life <400Mbs). Finally theoretical speed for giga-ethernet is 1000Mbs/8=125MBs. (in tests ~800Mbs). NAS devices (not necessary in RAID configuration) are typicaly also printer and ftp servers.
Regards KaNo

Thanks for setting me straight, I always forget that a capital 'B' means something different from the small 'b' when talking about transfer rates. bits vs. bytes, an 8-fold difference.

I also did not consider gigabit ethernet connected storage that theoretically gives the 125MBs number. With the right hardware and configuration (raw driver using jumbo frames), you can get up to 245MBs with gigabit ethernet. The only way to be able to get this type of speed off a disk though is to use SCSI or SATA/PATA.

I still want to argue that the bottleneck even with gigabit ethernet is the drive transfer rate and not the bandwidth of the pipe. Its like connecting a 4 inch fire hose to a kitchen faucet, yes you can carry lots of water but the faucet can only deliver so much for the hose to carry.

DIGITALgimpus · #18 Post by **DIGITALgimpus** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:11 am

smugiri wrote: I still want to argue that the bottleneck even with gigabit ethernet is the drive transfer rate and not the bandwidth of the pipe. Its like connecting a 4 inch fire hose to a kitchen faucet, yes you can carry lots of water but the faucet can only deliver so much for the hose to carry.

At that point it's not really important. TCP/IP has serious overhead (that's the major drawback of using TCP/IP compared to a lighter protocol). Drives are pretty slow... which one essentially drags down performance? Likely a combination of both (remember data goes both ways, you must request before you recieve data, and there are control signals sent).

There's also a latency issue. Your bus is much faster than even the best ethernet connection.

IMHO any solution mentioned could be the best, or the only solution... but until it's clear what the goal is... it's pretty hard to say. Typically, RAID is misused. Only a few tasks actually benefit from such a system, and they are pretty limited to high performance computing (compiling large software, servers, in particular mail servers) and other cases of large i/o... or cases where replication is critical, such as TPS (transaction processing systems).

smugiri · #19 Post by **smugiri** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:15 am

hnq wrote:I agree that the fastest course to get back up would be to use 2.5" drives and to mirror them on a regular basis. However, the problem is that I have a number of virtual PC files - which take up a lot of space. This means that I often end up working while connected to an external 3.5" drive. My back up solution would have to backup the contents of my primary drive - AND the contents of the external drive. That's why I'm planning on using Acronis to back up my primary drive to external A. Then clone the contents of external A to external B. Though this won't win any speed awards in terms of getting back up - it does provide a backup for both my primary and external drive A. I'm currently using a 100gb external drive - but it's way too small - I'll need at least a 250+ external drive to store my data.

I'm open to suggestions.

By the way, I'm looking to upgrade the HD in my t42p to . I've read some of the other posts - but really didn't find any problems with the t42p. Is it as simple as putting in the new drive and using the recovery CD's on it - then using acronis to restore everything else? I'm looking at putting in the HITACHI Travelstar 7K100 HTS721010G9AT00 (0A25015) 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive. I'm also planning on wiping my current primary drive, throwing it into a usb powered enclosure and making it a mobile external HD. Any suggestions on the HD enclosure?

Thanks!

If you do not use your optical disk much and don't have another PC to transfer data back and forth to, I would suggest IBM's Ultrabay caddy(about $50 from IBM and maybe $30 on eBay or other used sites).

I use the SmartDrive 2.5 external enclosure. It is a little heavier than the other enclosures on the market, handles Ultra ATA133 and is made of 1.5mm aluminium rather than the .3mm or so sheets that lots of the newer enclosures are made of. It also closes with screws as opposed to just snapping shut and has some great design going for it. You can also get it with a USB and FireWire ports. I have not been copying data off the USB drive to other computers much though and I rarely use the optical drive in my machine so I am looking to get the Ultrabay caddy and have the extra storage with me all the time.

hnq · #20 Post by **hnq** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:58 am

So, if i had an ultra bay, I could pop in the new drive, use the mirroring software that comes with the ultrabay, then swap hard drives? That would make swapping drives a LOT easier! Also the times when I need an optical AND the extra storage is rare - so the ultrabay caddy is a great suggestion - THANKS!

I'm planning on wiring my house with cat6 in the next several months - so I'd like to get an external gigabit case. Perhaps the dlink GS600. Any recommendations?

smugiri · #21 Post by **smugiri** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 3:08 pm

hnq wrote:So, if i had an ultra bay, I could pop in the new drive, use the mirroring software that comes with the ultrabay, then swap hard drives? That would make swapping drives a LOT easier! Also the times when I need an optical AND the extra storage is rare - so the ultrabay caddy is a great suggestion - THANKS!

I'm planning on wiring my house with cat6 in the next several months - so I'd like to get an external gigabit case. Perhaps the dlink GS600. Any recommendations?

Not that easy really since I do not think that there is any mirroring software that comes with the Ultrabay.

edit:
I just saw the bit at the IBM ultrabay caddy link that talks about backup software so you could even save and use that!!

You could

- use something like Acronis to clone the Ultrabay drive and then do data backups only every so often (once a day or twice a day as @DIGITALgimpus suggested )
or
- maybe even pop the drive into the regular HDD slot in the machine, install the OS from recovery disks as well as all your apps then put the disk back in the Ultrabay and just drag and drop the data that you want to back up at the end of the day to your Ultrabay drive (or schedule the process using the Windows scheduler). This is a great solution if you cannot or do not want to spend extra on backup and cloning software.

A great advantage with the Ultrabay solution where you do just data back ups is that you will always be ready to go in case of a failure or virus since your applications are already installed and ready to go and are guranteed virus free since only data is back up incrementally. You never back up applications or the operating system so if something goes wrong, you will be restoring up to date data on a freshly installed OS with a set of freshly installed applications that are guaranteed problem free. All you will have to do is patch with the latest updates if you want to.

DIGITALgimpus · #22 Post by **DIGITALgimpus** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 3:31 pm

In that case I'd go with external USB... so that you unplug it when not in use (more likely to keep it mounted if it's in the bay.

Simply because, what the OS can't touch.... the OS can't screw up.

Simple principle. When the power's off, it's safer.

hnq · #23 Post by **hnq** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:15 am

One more question about the ultrabay - does it come with any kind of a case (it looks kinda exposed)? If i'm not using it, i'd like for the HD to be protected.

I've decided to go with 2 external drives (3.5") in the 300+ gig range. Any recommendations? I've heard that samsung and hitachi are very good brands. I was thinking about looking on Newegg. Any recommendations?

I'll also upgrade my primary HD to 100gb (currently have a 60gb 7k2 rpm). Any recommendations?

On a side note - i recently added another gig of Crucial memory to my t42p. The interesting thing is that Newegg was selling 2 versions of the stick - totally different part numbers. Of course, the more expensive one was the one selected for the t42p. The interesting thing is that the descriptions and specs were identical. I talked to Crucial tech support and they confirmed that the sticks were indeed identical and that I should go with the cheaper one. Saved over $70 by doing this!

So far, it works great! The explanation was the different computer manufacturers wanted to have their own part number on the product and wanted to charge their own prices - this way, the part would match what was offered by that mfg... The cheaper stick is exactly the same product as the one branded for IBM's - but was $70 cheaper because it was unbranded / "generic".

need RAID 1 for T42p - pls help

need RAID 1 for T42p - pls help

KaNo

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