Apart from the messy inside, this is what I'm using now for a couple of months, and I must say
.
This is my Vista playback machine with 4TB of music on-line, all with SATAII-speed. 2 spare connections (and spaces) left, so with a theoretical 6TB on-line (for current disk sizes) the configuration is this :
1 x ATA (IDE) boot disk (the left most shown). No music on that one.
The next 4 are 1 TB disks, containing music data. They are just separate volumes (hence the most decent - / less complex type of volumes), XXHighEnd making one logical volume of it anyway (Galery function).
The additional (6th) one in the drive bays is an on-line backup disk. Say it has the most economical size (which currently is 750GB), unrelated to the source disk's sizes. It serves as a backup disk for newly ripped albums, and it is replaced with a fresh one when the current one is full. They are bought when they are needed, and at the most economical size as occurs at that time.
The disk laying on top consumes the ad-hoc connection, and that connection serves as a connection for (manually) (re)backing up data from one of the source volumes, or it serves as an input connection for restoring data or wherever a source to copy comes from, like a disk from another PC.
According to the latter too, all is about speed. Please note the importance of this when the volume of data becomes really large, and your total amount of data can be copied in 10 hours (doable) with SATAII to 300 hours with 100Mbit Ethernet (totally unacceptable) with the various connection types hence speeds in between. In sequence of speed : 10Mbit Ethernet, WiFi 11MBit, USB 1.1, ATA (IDE), WiFi 54MBit, 100Mbit Ethernet, USB 2.0, Firewire400, Firewire800, SATA, SATAII (there are some more like Ultra ATA, SCSI, but they are out of date or not for home PC useage).
Important : The speed can be increased a little by some types of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). Note the "Independent" ...
not true !!
. RAID configurations, except for RAID1 are DEpendent; they are dependent on the configuration itself, might it be hardware or software; Can't you copy that in a new or other system when needed, all is lost. The moral : keep it simple ! Just single volumes, and as said, XXHighEnd is disigned for it (it makes one large volume out of an umlimited amount without any spur of danger).
The number of disks you see in below picture, are kind of outrageous for a more or less normal PC. As said, the one on top is an ad-hoc backup connection/disk, as well as one on-line in the bays. The disks outside are backup disks too. When do I need those ? well, I *did* need them at making a backup to them which was only once, and I will need them when something bad happens (it did once, see
Spanned Windows Volumes ... maybe not).
Do not use any RAID configuration again to maintain your so called backups. Thus, e.g. before mentioned RAID1 configuration is safe by itself according to the arguments mentioned before, but like e.g. RAID5 it just copies YOUR behaviour. When your behaviour is exidentally deleting some bunch of data, it's immediately deleted from your RAID "backup" disks as well. So, RAID only protects against hardware failures, and it does not protect against you.
The outrageous number of disks directly connected, does not harm the PSU (useage) at all. Why ? well, the main reason is because -like me- you could use Galeries to access all, and my Galeries are on the boot disk (with backup of that elsewhere, but never mind that). Now, assuming that the boot disk is always spinning, it just as well can spin to serve access to the Galeries; When I choose an Album to play, only then one (and only one) of the other disks start spinning for a couple of minutes.
Important :Only the SATA(II) connection guarantees that idle disks will spin down. With other connections (like USB/Firewire) it depends largely on the intelligence built in the (obviously) external box, with a 90% chance of Not.
Concluded : I will use 2 disks at the same time only, or 3 when a backup disk is involved.
Any disadvantages ? Yes !
Firstly, you have to adopt the idea of hen deleting Albums, you don't delete them from the backup disks. Too much hustle ! But, when you need a restore, you'll have them back !
Then, as often happens, you upgrade CoverArt. Go and find the disk where the according backup is on ?
So you better find a method of saving your latest
changes (could be a re-rip as well), that backup means to be restored over (!) an initial Restore when applicable.
Next, you'll need a decent administration. In the literal case as how I presented it, because of two reasons :
1. At a restore you 'll need to know where the (backup) sources are to restore to what;
2. Your backup disks are not 1:1 to the source disks because the backup disks consist of more volumes than the sources (this is because of smaller disks are always more economical, hence cheaper, than large (newest technology) disks.
Lastly, obviously it takes you more time and attention to perform a restore. I say : so what. You'd need to intervent a couple of time (switch backup disks) and you thouroughly need to follow the administration.
No big deal. After a few days throughput time (you being at your work or sleeping, the system working hard), all is done.
... But with all due respect ... making a regular full backup of everything is out of the question, and by the time it's half way you'd want another. Think of this carefully, because this follows from the amount of data (and no SATA(II) connections left, hence sloooww connections).
Peter
