I have 2 drives dying in my system and It's time to upgrade. I have 5x 2TB drives and a 80GB SSD on the Intel ports. All J Micron ports are currently open. I also have 2 external 1TB drives.
FAEX drives are great. FASS drives are duds.
I want a RAID 5 setup since 6 as far as I know isn't an option and is rather slow.
Is the JMicron pair of ports suable for a boot drive, or should I put two drives in RAID 0 on it for backup....or just leave them open for optical drives?
If I open the Intel ports for RAID, do all the drives have to be in the array, or can I have say 3-4 Drives in RAID 5 and the SSD on its own for boot? Eventually I plan on having 2 SSDs for multi user booting (virtualization or multi-point) and a shared array for applications or media storage.
I have my eye on the Toshiba 8TB N300 drive, but it is $280 and that will add up fast if I buy the 3x minimum for RAID 5. I could buy 2 drives, use RAID 1 and keep them on the Jmicron ports, copy ALL my drives to the N300(s) and setup RAID 5 with the 3x 2TB drives that are still good + SSDs for booting on the Intel ports (if that's possible).
I have an XBONE and a Router that both need storage. The WD My Book 1TB is currently interfaced with the router, but that can be repurposed.
the reason I mention this is that I would repurpose any of my 2TB drives if possible. I do not want to upgrade my system and have drives sitting around.
I could get a USB 3 enclosure and insert a 2TB drive that I have (once backed up and formatted. that could be dedicated to the XBONE and the other two could be placed in RAID 1 on the JMicron ports. I could then buy 3x N300s after selling a kidney or two and RAID5 them on the Intel ports. that leaves me additional ports for SSDs and or RAID expansion on the Intel side if I can even do that.
I just need some help before I spend money on storage and then find out that I can't do whatever due to one limitation or another. I've already learned that the router can't handle more than 2TB drives per port, so that rules out getting a large external drive and copying everything to that, RAIDing, copying back, and then using the drive for NAS via the router.
CURRENT SETUP
- jmicron
- jmicron
- intel achi 2tb
- intel ahci 2tb
- intel ahci 2tb
- intel ahci 2tb DYING
- intel ahci 2tb DYING
- intel ahci 80GB SSD boot
- jmicron - esata port
+
- external 1TB mybook
- open router port
- open usb 3 xbone port