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HOWTO: 0.5TB RAID on a Budget

Posted by timothy on from the not-so-far-from-retail dept.

Compu486 writes "Inventgeek.com has a new how-to article titled 'The Poor Mans Raid Array.' The article details how to make a modular .5 terabyte Raid 5 array for under $250 (USD), and it all runs on the Mandriva flavor of Linux." Drive prices being what they are, this seems cooler than it is practical. Update: 06/25 23:31 GMT by T : If that's not enough storage, Yeechang Lee writes "Let me show off the 2.8TB Linux-powered RAID 5 array I built for home use a few months ago. I provide lots of details on how I did it, what I used, and the results. The Usenet thread has good followup posts from others, too."

8 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. typical? by mnemonic_ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    this seems cooler than it is practical.
    Perfect for slashdot!

  2. Howto by zabagel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Possible new Slashdot Category?

  3. Cool? Naah, old by riflemann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I seriously doubt that this is cool nowadays. A huge case, a lot of fans and the heat it generates isn't something in anyway impressive nowadays.

    It takes just TWO modern disks to get 1/2 terabyte of space, and not much more ot get them in raid5, plus you can have a compact box (the one in TFA is very boxy and ugly) and a lot less noise and power consumption.

    Not impressive. Sorry.

    --
    Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
    1. Re:Cool? Naah, old by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uhh, it'd be worse. You're more likely to have a double drive failure out of ten drives than three.

      And a double failure is all it takes to take out a RAID5.

      -Z

  4. Only reason it's 'budget' by OverlordQ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Only reason it's budget is because they bought drives off eBay . . . personally . . I think I'll skip eBay if I'm buying Drives.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  5. Ridiculous by tabdelgawad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This project looks like a giant, hot, slow, old-tech, loud, power-hog of a 500 Gig 'drive' for $250 (low-ball estimate with all the eBay pricing and special batch price on the drives the author got, and not counting time/labor).

    A 400 Gig drive (probably of equal or better reliability overall and a warranty) costs about $260 on newegg.

    Reminds me of people using 486's as routers/firewalls when you can pick up a Linksys or D-Link for $20 or $30.

    Thanks, but no thanks.

    --
    Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
    1. Re:Ridiculous by HermanAB · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, a 486 with Linux and IPtables has better throughput than the little ARM processor in a Linksys / Dlink and you can run a proxy filter, since you have a hard disk for the cache. There is just no comparison really.

      --
      Oh well, what the hell...
  6. Damn the enviroment, burn those kws... by HiyaPower · · Score: 3, Insightful

    After paying for the electricity to power this thing, you would be much better off with a RR1820A and some Sata drives for about $1000. Not only would it use a lot less power, it would give you a lot more storage. The bucks now are not so much in the hardware (8 250 GB drives + a RR1820A $1100 ~ $250 for the size array this guy made), but in powering the beasts and keeping your house cool in summer at the same time. The way I figure it, you get about a 20:1 power saving on an equivalent sata array.

    $60 a barrel oil? What $60 a barrel oil? Must be nice not to have to pay your electricity bills...