Topic: 1.5 TB Firewire/USB 2 RAID System Reccomendations?

[moellenium]

So I'm about to start consolidating my live music collection to hard drives.  I'd like to use RAID to serve my stuff.  Everything will be in 16 and 24 bit FLAC running off of my old Titanium Powerbook.  I'd like to pickup a 5 drive RAID box that connects over USB 2 or Firewire 800 (so I can add another in a daisy chain in a few months), for around $1600.  Any suggestions are welcome.  Also, if anyone knows a program similar to itunes for OS X that can handle FLAC, I'd love to hear about it.  Thanks.

[nic]

if I may, what are your reasons for requiring RAID?

are you looking for speed or redndancy?
what are your plans for backups?

[moellenium]

I'm more concerned about redundancy than anything else.  I would hate to put everything on 1 or 2 standard firewire drives and have one crap out on me.  I 'll be backing up everyhing to dual layer DVD+R.

[fozzy]

What ever you decide to get I would reccomend picking up a spare drive or two now and stick it on the shelf, When one fails down the road it may be difficult to find a suitable replacement and another drive could fail if you don't get one in in time.

fwdepot.com had some options.  Don't know what a powerbook can do but if you have a 1000mbit network card you could look into a NAS type device

[VA_TAPER]

I would suggest for the $$ you build a machine.  I just spent $2400 on my 3.2TB array with 400gb sata re2 drives.  But that price includes all the other goodies, HDTV card, FM analog TV tuner, Windows MCE, X1600, etc. stuff you would not need with your setup. 

I highly reccomend the Highpoint rocketraid card, it has 16 drive capability and online capacity expansion.  (I am currently running raid5 with a hotspare) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816115024

The Thermaltake Armor is the case I'd recommend: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811133163

If you decide to go this route setup is easy, but I can always give you some tech support because my setup is still fresh in my mind.

peace, chris

[moellenium]

Thanks Chris, I'll check that stuff out.

Joe

[BayTaynt3d]

TeraStation

[Startstop]

I just picked up this external 4-bay enclosure. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817332003

Im not using the raid functions but it does handle various size drives. Im running a 500gb 400gb, 250gb, and 200gb and have had no problems except the loud whine of the fan that came with it, which is easily replaced. Less then the cost of 4 external enclosures, raid, good coooling, decent usb2.0 speeds, great aluminum construction...this thing is a winner in my book.

[moellenium]

I've been talking to my boss (I work in recording and post-production) and he swears by G-RAID.  Their designed to handle broadcast video applications and are a little more mac friendly.  I'm going to head to Melrose Mac a litlle later and check them out.  They look really nice online.  Here's a link:

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID.cfm

[Brian Skalinder]

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID.cfm

FWIW, the model linked supports only RAID 0, which has zero redundancy.  Looks like the G-Raid Pro model supports RAID 3, which does offer redundancy, though you'll get better performance out of RAID 5.  Pricey, too - $1k+.

[macdaddy]

cog is a media player that does shn and flac for the mac (i use it on a powerbook running osx)

[moellenium]

I've decided I'm less worried about redundancy than I am about speed and price.  For some of those RAID 5 rigs I can buy the g-raids and afford less expensive drives to mirror my data.

Mac Daddy,

How does COG handle gaps between songs?  So far the best player I've found is iTunes but I'm looking at converting thousands of files to apple lossless, which I really don't want to do.

[tscales]

Good thread - please keep the opinions coming.  I'm leaning towards a TeraStation and would love to hear how its worked for others (maybe even for some less-then-expert computer people)

+T

[moellenium]

Has anybody tried running the Terrastation with a Mac?  When they say 1.5 TB, does that mean 1.5 TB with redundancy?  If so how many drives can go down before you start to lose data?

[tscales]

What I've gleaned from the Tera Station specs is that is can be run with and without redundancy - sounds like at least three different modes.

Its based upon four drives (250Gb and 400Gb models) It has a 1.6Tb model, I think, that you can setup to mirror/backup 0.8Tb (if both drives crash you're completely backed up) or use 1.2Tb and one drive will take care of redundancy (if one drive crashes you don't lose anything) or "spanning" mode where you are using all 1.6Tb but if a drive crashes you lose everything.

I may be waaaay off, but thats what I got from reading some spec and breif reviews.  I want to know how user friendly and reliabel it is - seems like a nice package for people like us.

+T