TBCS 5TB club

[x88x]

Well, I was sorta joking, but thinking more about it, I think it's a good idea ;P

So, here we go; inspired by Trace's 4GHz Club, I hereby announce the formation of the (unofficial but awesome) TBCS 5TB club.

Post your storage stats (screenshot/df output/etc) and an explanation of how you're doing it.

EDIT:
Updated rules:

1) Value must be must be unique, usable storage space.

---If you are using a RAID5 or 6 array, your parity drive does not count toward the total. If you are using a RAID1 or similar, your mirror drives do not count toward the total. If you are using WHS's 'duplication' feature, the 'duplication' space does not count toward the total since it is essentially acting as a logical mirror drive.

2) All storage must be accessible as a single unit.

---This may be multiple individual drives on a single system, an array of drives on a single system, multiple drives on multiple systems that can all be mapped to one, etc. As long as all storage is accessible at one time from a single system, it counts.

3) You must post an explanation of what makes up the space and how you have it managed, and a screenshot or command output showing the volume (see my first post for an example).

[x88x]

khar0n@faust:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/faust-root
3.2G 1006M 2.1G 33% /
udev 1001M 276K 1000M 1% /dev
none 1001M 0 1001M 0% /dev/shm
none 1001M 740K 1000M 1% /var/run
none 1001M 0 1001M 0% /var/lock
none 1001M 0 1001M 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sdf5 228M 15M 201M 7% /boot
/dev/md0 5.4T 3.3T 1.9T 64% /home/khar0n/faust

OS drive: 4GB Ridata CF card
Ubuntu server 9.10

Storage:
2x 1.5TB WD Green
3x 1.5TB Samsung F2
mdadm software RAID-5

[Drum Thumper]

I'll have to get back to you on this--I've got computers scattered around the state.

[Trace]

Is this for 5TB in one computer? Or 5TB throughout all my computers?

Glad to be inspiring :D

[x88x]

Is this for 5TB in one computer? Or 5TB throughout all my computers?

Preferably one computer, but conglomerate is acceptable :D

[slaveofconvention]

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/5tb.jpg

That's just the server - there is probably another 3 or 4 tb around the house in various computers - I know offhand my PC has almost 1tb, my media centre is 750gb, then there's the wifes, my sons, and 3 laptops all with between 160 and 500gb and who knows how many drives in "spare" computers I loan to customers....

Server has now run out of SATA ports to next steps will either be a controller card and then keep piling in the drives, or I'll start replacing the smaller drives with bigger ones - got a terebyte free at the moment so don't really need to worry yet...

[NightrainSrt4]

Arghh, I'm just off by a bit. My server has ~4.5TB. 2TB+ in the case, and 2TB+ USB backup.

Mostly just our movie collection, game backups/saves, drivers, OS Backups, ripped cd's, etc. I would shoot myself if I didn't have the backup and one of the drives died. I gladly sacrifice the space for an external copy that only gets turned on when adding something new to the server.

So all in all I only have 2TB usable, but the redundancy gives me a warmish feeling inside.

[slaveofconvention]

As you can see from the image above, a total of 340mb of my entire server containing 3.6TB is duplicated :s

Something for the future - going to start replacing small drives with 1.5's soon and I'll increase duplication then

[x88x]

going to start replacing small drives with 1.5's soon and I'll increase duplication then

Depending on how soon 'soon' is, you might catch the beginning of the 2TB best-cost-per-GB era. The Hitachi and Seagate 2TB models have been dropping down to $150 in sales recently; only a matter of time till they and the other manufacturers drop the normal prices that low. Of course, by then the 1.5TB models will be under $100....meh, idk, whatever; I'm locked into 1.5TB drives for the current iteration of my server anyways :P.

[slaveofconvention]

Pretty much every drive in that server was bought when it was the best cost per gb lol - and you're bang on the money, that's exactly why my current plans relate to 1.5tb drives. A side bonus is that the smallest drive(s) will be the oldest so I'll also be doing a little failure prevention by weeding out the oldest hardware.

One of the things I really like about Windows Home Server is the disk management - it doesn't care what drives you use, it'll make it work - IDE, SATA, USB, Firewire - it'll pile em all up and present them as a single volume and you can choose on a folder level what to duplicate and what not to. Not only that but if the whole thing goes pop, you can pull any drive, pop it into any (well almost any) PC and it'll be perfectly readable as long as it's physically ok. The duplication isn't space efficient, admittedly, on a par with Raid 1 but with the cost of storage nowadays, that isn't the issue it used to be...

[x88x]

Yeah, there is definitely something to be said for well executed appended JBOD, but I like having a little having more control over what's actually going on. A well executed striped RAID (0,5,6,etc) will also give you a nice performance boost, which should increase as more drives are added....not the performance really makes much difference in my setup since I have a 1Gbps bottleneck at the network interface... :whistler: It is much more of a pain to implement and manage a good RAID array, but I think it's worth it. Plus, since I use RAID-5, if any one drive in my array dies, I don't lose any data at all (assuming I get a new drive and populate it before any more drives fail). That's saved me a lot of trouble once already; I had one of my 1.5TB drives die a few months ago, and it was then that I stopped feeling bad about 'losing' one drive's worth of storage space (due to the RAID-5 parity)...it's a lot better to have to buy one more drive than to have to restore 1.5TB of data...if it's even possible to restore that data from another source.

[grevaeg]

<- want in the club!

http://grevaeg.com/images/case010/070809up/IMG_5665.JPG

[x88x]

Heheh, I was wondering when you were gonna show up, grevaeg. I've always wondered though; how do you have your space managed? (Also, I believe I said explaining that was a requirement ;) ) I seem to remember you have the drives spread across multiple PCs in there? Do you have them network mounted and accessible as a single unit or what?

On a different thought, I think I might make a small sig art logo that can mark members. :D (I just have to come up with a good idea for it....)

[grevaeg]

12 disks pc 1 - Raid 5
12 disks pc 2 - Raid 5
12 disks pc 3 - Raid 5

All disks mapped on all 3 comps trough gigabit, screenshot will follow the day i decide to boot it up again :P

Currently using my laptop / htpc 0.o

[x88x]

I'm assuming that's a software RAID? What OS are you running on them?

[grevaeg]

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on all of em, and yup, its software raid, beside the sas drives thats running stripe on a lsi 3041 SAS controller, was running win 2k3 on the server for awhile, but i dont really need the functions it provide, can easily run media server's and disk mapping on windows 7, and the new backup tool is actually quite nice 0.o

[DarthBeavis]

Ghey Midget pRon on it. Adding several moar 2 terabyte drives as soon as I get the painted new case back for it
http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/8977/1227200995754pm.png

[StyleCore]

Hey guys can I join?
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/4268/500000tb.png

[x88x]

Hahaha, I have more storage than that on my phone! :D (Ok, that in and of itself is rather ridiculous...)

[StyleCore]

Haha, I know it's ridiculous. I really need to upgrade. I'm just waiting for a job.

[Mark_Hardware]

I have 5.45TB accross 3 2TB HDDs (nothing like losing 500GB to formatting) plus my 320GB boot drive...

[x88x]

Are those 3x 2TB drives managed in some sort of RAID? What OS?

[Waynio]

Only just :).
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/qq59/waynio_2008/drives.png
Oh & they are simply connected to motherboard, all 6 sata ports are used, I use an IDE dvd drive.
Windows 7 home premium 64bit, used everest for the screenshot
32gb free
320gb free
337gb free
243gb free
658gb free
612gb free
So plenty of free space :).

[x88x]

OS? (I'm guessing some version of Windows from the screenshot) Drive management? Full space?

[Mark_Hardware]

I just have the three drives set as one dynamic disk in windows. I was trying for RAID 0, but I couldn't get it to work for the life of me so I said screw it.

[Trace]

I'm going to try. My server has 2 1TB drives + 2 320GB in my main PC + 1.5TB for another, 4 * 500GB RAIDed for my bro's PC

[Kayin]

If you're gonna run RAID, run RAID.

I just picked up one of these hosses on Ebay...

http://www.6thstreetshops.com/int-srcsas18e.html

Population shall commence upon receipt.

[crenn]

I could have sworn I had posted in here. Current setup after some upgrading:

1x 500 WD
2x 1TB 7200.12 Seagates
2x 2TB Seagate LPs

This will be moving to

1x 1TB Seagate 7200.12
3x 2TB Seagate LPs

And then when I can get my next bits for my next computer

1x 500GB WD
3x 2TB Seagate LPs

[x88x]

Well, I was getting dangerously close to 750GB of free space on my array, and Newegg just happened to have my favorite 1.5TB HDD on a great sale! So, I grabbed one of those, and massive props to Newegg for crazy fast shipping! I ordered it at noon yesterday, and it arrived at about 1PM today!

Now, to grow my array.... O_O

When I first started the process, it said it would take...somewhere around 7.5 months. ... :whistler: ... Needless to say, it's sped up quite a bit, and now it looks like it should be done in only 17 hours! :P We'll see.. ;)

[x88x]

w00tz! Done! Between growing the array and the filesystem, it took almost exactly 23 hours. And now for the results :twisted:


khar0n@faust:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/faust-root
3.2G 1.8G 1.3G 60% /
udev 1001M 260K 1000M 1% /dev
none 1001M 0 1001M 0% /dev/shm
none 1001M 288K 1000M 1% /var/run
none 1001M 0 1001M 0% /var/lock
none 1001M 0 1001M 0% /lib/init/rw
/dev/sdg5 228M 16M 200M 8% /boot
/dev/md0 6.8T 4.5T 2.0T 70% /home/khar0n/faust

EDIT:
Also, here's a picture of Faust in its temporary home. :D
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/x13931x/HPIM0623.jpg

[The_Crippler]

Okay, I'm a little late to the party, but I've been away for awhile. Seems that there is some flexibility to the rules. Going with the "spread across machines," oh yeah - I'm there.

But, I like the spirit of the "all in one machine." My media server has 4 1TB drives in a RAID arrangement, so only 3TB are in use. How are we scoring that?

That box also has several smaller drives in there - so I could just slap one of my spare 500GB drives in there to put it over the top if we'll count the RAID as 4TB.

[x88x]

We're counting usable space for total capacity. I'm assuming you run a RAID5 configuration? In that case your usable capacity would be, what, a little under 2.7TB? (Taking into account the decimal/binary conversion.) That's why my capacity is 6.8TB, not 9TB (6x 1.5TB ... +4GB..but that doesn't really count :P ).

I meant to clarify this earlier, but what I meant for 'spread across several machines' was if it is accessible as a unit. For example, for a while I had 4 file servers all cheap little machines, connections maxed out, with drives mounted and mapped between them so that when I accessed the central node I could access all of them as a single logical unit.

[The_Crippler]

I meant to clarify this earlier, but what I meant for 'spread across several machines' was if it is accessible as a unit. For example, for a while I had 4 file servers all cheap little machines, connections maxed out, with drives mounted and mapped between them so that when I accessed the central node I could access all of them as a single logical unit.


Ooooooh, well that's a horse of a different color. Then again, I do have the drives of all my Linux machines mapped to the central machine, so I might still be able to calculate something out.


Curse you and your rules.:D

[x88x]

Curse you and your rules.:D

Heheheh. :twisted: Dance puppets, DANCE!

[The_Crippler]

Hon? Can I buy two more 1.5TB drives? Why? Uh....'cause I want them?

*mutter, grumble*

Fine. I didn't wanna be in your stupid club anyway.

[x88x]

Hahaha. There have been a lot of 2TB drives dropping down into the $120-$130 range recently... ;)

[NightrainSrt4]

I don't see why redundancy can't count for this, even if usable capacity is under the limit. Those who are using redundancy could just toss the array and snap a pic with all drives, giving the max capacity.

Those concerned with the safety of their data shouldn't be at a disadvantage in getting into the club imo, as they could waste hours tossing raid, snapping the pic, just to put it back together again. 5TB is 5TB, it shouldn't matter if the capacity is being used for duplication, parity, or just plain data. I do agree with the one system concept though.

I'm at 4.5TB now, but half that is redundant by my choice. Going to be tossing 1TB into a different rig though, but hopefully can break the entry barrier soon with some new drives. Just been waiting for the right size/price.

[x88x]

I don't see why redundancy can't count for this, even if usable capacity is under the limit. Those who are using redundancy could just toss the array and snap a pic with all drives, giving the max capacity.

Those concerned with the safety of their data shouldn't be at a disadvantage in getting into the club imo, as they could waste hours tossing raid, snapping the pic, just to put it back together again. 5TB is 5TB, it shouldn't matter if the capacity is being used for duplication, parity, or just plain data. I do agree with the one system concept though.

My club, my rules. :P The whole point is 5TB unique usable storage. It doesn't matter that I have 1.3TB 'lost' to parity (and 1.2TB 'lost' to binary conversion). I can't put unique data in that storage space, so it doesn't count. Besides, if someone is gonna go to all the trouble of disassembling their array and posting false results, I think they're just going against the spirit of the thing. ...besides, how many people have the extra storage space to cache everything from that large an array while they do that? If they did, they would probably have more than 5TB usable anyways, between that array and wherever they're caching the data.

Thinking on this though, I guess this does kinda penalize people doing redundancy or parity (imo) properly (ie, RAID, not the software juggling that WHS does). Hmm.. :think: Ok, how about this:

If using WHS's 'duplication' feature, the 'duplication' amount doesn't count toward to total, because like with parity and mirror drives, it can never contain unique data.

So, for example, slaveofconvention would have 5.0TB, not 5.34TB.
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/5tb.jpg

That should even things out.

[NightrainSrt4]

That it is. =). I just don't see why those who choose redundancy/parity get penalized. 5TB is 5TB, how the user divides it up is up to them. Whether they stuff it with copies of what they have on another drive, parity data, pron, games, dvds, linux distros, random 1's and 0's, free space, shouldn't matter. That's just my view though, and as it is your club, I shall speak no more of it =P.

[crenn]

Current usable data: 5.43TB over 3 drives ;P
Will later be doing RAID 10.

[Outlaw]

Yey! I am late but finally able to join the club. 6.75tb usable + a 160gb not shown due to lack of motherboard connections. Just added the 2x 2tb

http://i52.tinypic.com/34fog1h.jpg

[x88x]

Heheh, nice! Welcome to the club. :D

[slaveofconvention]

Right now I'm halfway thru a space upgrade. I'm replacing two of the smallest drives (500's) with a pair of nice new 2TB drives. Next drive upgrade will take me over 10TB heh.

Actually I'm kinda pleased with the way this is working out - I "only" have 10 SATA connections in the server, and they're all used so I now have to take out a drive and replace it with a larger one to upgrade. A very positive side effect to this is that I'm removing the oldest drives most of the time, as I've always bought the drive with the lowest cost/mb for the new one, so as a bonus, I'm removing the oldest drive in the server each time I upgrade.

ASSUMING a relatively even MBTF, every time I put in a new drive, I improve the odds of my data remaining safe heh....

[x88x]

Heheh, nice. :D I'm actually still sitting at 6.8TB on mine, with 1.8TB still free. Haven't been filling it up nearly as much in the last year or so as I did before. It is very nice though, to know that I have plenty of space no matter what I want to do.

[slaveofconvention]

My biggest problem now is that I have to remember to add a new drive while I still have enough free space to safely remove the smaller drive - I almost missed it today as I only had 6GB left after removing the first 500gb drive

The next problem is going to be one of diminishing returns - after this swapout today, the smallest drive left in the server other than the OS drive is going to be (I think) 750gb - swapping that out for a 2tb is going to mean I "only" get 1.2tb extra from the swap. I may have to end up looking at either deleting stuff (shudder) or go with a full system upgrade to properly support 3tb+ drives

EDIT: Never mind lol - a quick check and I still have 2 500's left, then 3 750's. By putting 2TB drives in place of those will give me 10TB in place of 3.25TB so still a decent improvement.

[Fuganater]

Very Nice dude. I will be ordering a 2 or 4 more 2TB drives for my server once it gets closer to completion. Then I am an official member with a single PC. Right now I have over 5TB with all PC's combined.

[slaveofconvention]

Over 3 hours for the second 500gb drive to be removed. I was hoping it'd be quicker than the previous one as there was so much free space to play with. The reason it took longer, I can only assume, was that it was 99% full whereas the first one was "only" 78% full....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/9tb.JPG

Should hopefully keep me going for a while lol....

On another note, this whole advertised vs formatted capacity is really starting to bite. The server contains 3x2tb, 1x1tb, 3x0.75tb, 2x0.5tb and 1x0.32tb drives for an advertised total of 10.57tb and formatted, I have 9.62tb - that's almost 1tb lost to marketing!!! lol

[Fuganater]

God I can't wait to start using WHS....

[x88x]

Eh, I like my method better. ;)
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/x13931x/dfWin.png

[Fuganater]

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a190/Fuganater987/Storage-1.jpg

I win? :P

[OvRiDe]

I win? :P

Nope.. you've got quite a ways to go! :whistler:

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showpost.php?p=280090&postcount=12

[Stonerboy779]

Nope.. you've got quite a ways to go! :whistler:

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showpost.php?p=280090&postcount=12

Mouth drop....... And dropping.............................. Still dropping.....


My god that is slot of storage space, what does he want to do? Download the Internet?

[Fuganater]

Balls..... What case is that?????

Max for my case right now is 10HDDs so I'm 1/2 full. I may re drill my rails so that I can almost double that.

[OvRiDe]

Balls..... What case is that?????

Max for my case right now is 10HDDs so I'm 1/2 full. I may re drill my rails so that I can almost double that.

Pure custom... http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18606

Quite the work of art!

[x88x]

Heheh, yeah, gravaeg does some pretty sweet stuff. His 4th and 5th gen...and now 7th gen I see :D are worth checking out too.

[Cale_Hagan]

Nope.. you've got quite a ways to go! :whistler:

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showpost.php?p=280090&postcount=12

:bowdown:

man, that's exciting. 'scuse the language, but ill be right back. gotta change my trousers... :whistler:

[AmEv]

...Does this count?

http://i.imgur.com/om65J8X.png