You have covered everything that I could have thought of except that you need to get rid of the 250's, you can send them my way.....
Mark MD Computers 602-421-0329 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 3:28 PM To: hwg Subject: [H] RAID 5 upgrade planning When I built my HTPC a year ago I used a MegaRAID controller and 5 250GB SATA drives. This gave me a RAID 5 array with about 1.1 TB usable. Things have been working quite well, except that I am down to my last 100GB of free space. I was doing some calculations trying to figure out how much storage I would need. I have 400 DVDs that I own. If I were to store each one as a Xvid file in addition to the ~5000 TV shows, music, photos, and ebooks I would need around 3TB of space. If I were to store them in vob form that number jumps to around 6.7 TB. Using 750GB drives, 6 in a RAID 5 gives about 4.5 TB total and 3.8 TB of usable space. Good enough for xvid, but not for vobs. Even if I waited for the 1TB drives in the spring I wouldn't be able to get enough space out of a 6-drive array (now that's scary). So I guess my only option for now (is to stick with the xvid solution. It works fine (AutoGK does a wonderful job) but every once in a while you get an xvid with offset audio and it's a pain to line it up properly. So with that figured out, next I need to figure out the best way to upgrade the RAID in terms of cost and time. It is my understanding that the size of each element in the array is only as big as the size of its smallest member. So if I start replacing the 250GB drives with 750GB ones, I should be able to do that without too much disruption to the array other than the time needed to rebuild it after I swap each drive. Then, once I have all 6 swapped out I should be able to increase the size of the array, correct? I don't really have the ability to backup the full 1TB of data on some other device which is what's causing the problem. The only thing I know of that can handle that much data is a tape drive and that is several hundred dollars I would like not to spend. Anything I've forgotten? -- Brian
