Hey guys, I'm hoping for a bit of advice towards a bit of a tricky build. I need this box to cover a few gaps/holes in my current workflow and storage solutions. 1. Store personal media: photos, music, videos, torrents, etc. 2. Store client files for web & media. Clients will need to be able to remote access the files, particularly print files, for the times I'm not available to send them off. 3. Import and store commercially taken RAW photos & video, preferably firewire readers. So far I'm thinking LAMP w/ Samba should address all these issues, however I'm having some some difficulty choosing the actual drives for storage. Current build: Intel i3 530 Zotac H55ITX-A-E (Purchased) Corsair 4GB (2 x 2GB) CMV4gx3m2A1333C9 Lian Li PC-Q08B Corsair HX-650 (Left over from recent upgrade) Sandisk Cruzer 16gb for the system drive. Will be a headless box, so not worried about video. Looking for 6TB total storage w/ backup. would like to stay under $200.00 per drive, total budget under $2k CAD. I've been looking at the 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F4's, but I've been considering the WD Green 2TB's too. I'll be looking to purchase 3 now, and another 3 in a couple of weeks for back ups. Just can't seem to settle on a final decision. I'm open to other suggestions, other than Seagate. I used to love & use their stuff exclusively, but it seems like their drives are turning to crap, including the 2 1TB drives I currently have, so I'm not going anywhere near them till I see some consistent reports for awhile. Also, am I going to have issues with using the USB drive as a system drive?
My issue with a drobo is the fact that I need clients to be able to remotely access files, which as far as I can see I can't do with the drobo. That, and looking now, the Drobos end up being more expensive overall.
[EDIT: Didn't read the original post right, so I've deleted my response - but if you were still willing to look at a NAS, then the Synology DiskStation DS410 has FTP, web hosting, etc. I've not used any of these 2TB disks sorry.]
USB is slower than SATA. You may find the Cruzer too slow. They also suffer from the same read/write limits as SSD's. I doubt it has any wear leveling. Some of this can be reduced by putting "busy" directories on the hdd's. I'm assuming you intend a raid10 setup. Have you thought about raid 5, you could gain more space or save on HDD's. Though you do sacrifice some cpu usage(for software raid).
Tbh I wasn't intending any kind of raid set up at this point, mostly because ive had bad experiences with software & onboard raid. Once I can afford a proper controller card + backup ill go that route. I was kinda afraid of that answer on the USB but I figured it was coming. Since I'll have 2 free sata ports I'll just use a 2.5 drive for now.
