[ale] Build-yer-own NAS server

[J. D.]

> > Just the drives.  I've seen 300MB drives on special < $100, so the 1TB
> > is withing reach.


Ahh I see. That type of configuration (with three drives totalling 900GB) is
a raid0. It can be kind of scary because it means if one drive fails, all
the data is lost. The nerve-wracking thing it would be that hard drives are
one of the two most likely to fail devices in a system because of their
moving parts.

> Looks like I need to read up on RAID.  Any suggestions for a good primer?

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/linux-adv/raid.htm

This article is an interesting read and covers a lot of key stuff like
descriptinon of raid types, choosing the drives, and making it work in
linux. My interpretation of the article is to steer clear of IDE for raid
because two drives on the same cable limit redundancy. One drive can fail
and cause the other not to function occassionally. But it may still be fine
for a home setup.

I personally use a two drive lvm span set of two 80gig drives for 150gig or
so total storage. Ideally this should be a raid5 but the drive I was going
to use failed... That data is rsync'd nightly to another machine through a
little creative shell scripting. It isn't terribly elegant but it works well
enough. ;)

Best regards,

J. D.
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