Comments on: Daily Blog - John E. Johnson, Jr. - May 12, 2008: MOVING TO A NEW COMPUTER IS AS BAD AS MOVING TO A NEW HOUSE. http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blog/2008/05/13/daily-blog-john-e-johnson-jr-may-12-2008-moving-to-a-new-computer-is-as-bad-as-moving-to-a-new-house/ Secrets of Home Theater and Hi Fi Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:12:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: JEJ http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blog/2008/05/13/daily-blog-john-e-johnson-jr-may-12-2008-moving-to-a-new-computer-is-as-bad-as-moving-to-a-new-house/#comment-765 JEJ Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:37:30 +0000 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blog/2008/05/13/daily-blog-john-e-johnson-jr-may-12-2008-moving-to-a-new-computer-is-as-bad-as-moving-to-a-new-house/#comment-765 Regular Windows XP can't deal with anything over 2 TB. I would have had to install Windows Server to do that. I had the same problem with my media server too, because I installed Windows Media Center as the OS. So, for the media server, I have three 1 TB drives in RAID 5, with a single hot spare that automatically kicks in if one of the RAID drives crashes. The total space that the OS sees is a bit less than 2 TB. The OS is on a separate drive. I have not overclocked the processor yet. I used four 500 GB SATA drives in RAID 5 which means the data are spread out over the four drives, giving me more speed, but with protection if a drive crashes. RAID 5 does not have a speed advantage unless you use at least 4 drives. RAID 5 is not redundant. It is just a configuration that lets the system reconstruct the data from the crashed drive. If you go to RAID 10, you get redundancy for protection, and striping for speed. RAID 0 gives you maximum speed but no redundancy. If one drive fails, the entire array is gone. RAID 1 gives no speed increase, but does give redundancy (the data are stored in duplicate). It is sort of an automatic backup system. You have two identical sets of data. If one drive fails, you have it all on the second drive. I used RAID 5 because it has better storage efficiency than RAID 1, meaning that only the parity information is needed for reconstruction, rather than just storing two complete sets of the data. The speed suffers compared to RAID 1, unless you have at least 4 drives, which I do. Regular Windows XP can’t deal with anything over 2 TB. I would have had to install Windows Server to do that. I had the same problem with my media server too, because I installed Windows Media Center as the OS. So, for the media server, I have three 1 TB drives in RAID 5, with a single hot spare that automatically kicks in if one of the RAID drives crashes. The total space that the OS sees is a bit less than 2 TB. The OS is on a separate drive.

I have not overclocked the processor yet. I used four 500 GB SATA drives in RAID 5 which means the data are spread out over the four drives, giving me more speed, but with protection if a drive crashes. RAID 5 does not have a speed advantage unless you use at least 4 drives. RAID 5 is not redundant. It is just a configuration that lets the system reconstruct the data from the crashed drive. If you go to RAID 10, you get redundancy for protection, and striping for speed.

RAID 0 gives you maximum speed but no redundancy. If one drive fails, the entire array is gone. RAID 1 gives no speed increase, but does give redundancy (the data are stored in duplicate). It is sort of an automatic backup system. You have two identical sets of data. If one drive fails, you have it all on the second drive. I used RAID 5 because it has better storage efficiency than RAID 1, meaning that only the parity information is needed for reconstruction, rather than just storing two complete sets of the data. The speed suffers compared to RAID 1, unless you have at least 4 drives, which I do.

]]> By: Dj http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blog/2008/05/13/daily-blog-john-e-johnson-jr-may-12-2008-moving-to-a-new-computer-is-as-bad-as-moving-to-a-new-house/#comment-760 Dj Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:53:55 +0000 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blog/2008/05/13/daily-blog-john-e-johnson-jr-may-12-2008-moving-to-a-new-computer-is-as-bad-as-moving-to-a-new-house/#comment-760 @Zeh: Actually, the iMac won't be able to handle the HD video like Jej's New Machine can do (2 @ ~3.06Ghz has nothing on 4@~3.2 Ghz). Maybe the Mac Pro could spank his machine, but not an iMac. Jej: a Petabyte is what is next. That would be 1,024 Terabytes. I am also really interested in what sort of exact specs you are using. Any sort of modifications to your hardware? Did you overclock the Core 2 Quad? I see five 500 GB Hard Drives, what stopped you from doing five one terabyte Hard Drives? I noticed a RAID card, what type of RAID Array did you use and what was your reason for that? I would like to know, as a comparison for Video Editing Equipment. Thanks! @Zeh: Actually, the iMac won’t be able to handle the HD video like Jej’s New Machine can do (2 @ ~3.06Ghz has nothing on 4@~3.2 Ghz). Maybe the Mac Pro could spank his machine, but not an iMac.

Jej: a Petabyte is what is next. That would be 1,024 Terabytes. I am also really interested in what sort of exact specs you are using. Any sort of modifications to your hardware? Did you overclock the Core 2 Quad? I see five 500 GB Hard Drives, what stopped you from doing five one terabyte Hard Drives? I noticed a RAID card, what type of RAID Array did you use and what was your reason for that? I would like to know, as a comparison for Video Editing Equipment.

Thanks!

]]> By: Zeh http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blog/2008/05/13/daily-blog-john-e-johnson-jr-may-12-2008-moving-to-a-new-computer-is-as-bad-as-moving-to-a-new-house/#comment-691 Zeh Tue, 20 May 2008 14:33:40 +0000 http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blog/2008/05/13/daily-blog-john-e-johnson-jr-may-12-2008-moving-to-a-new-computer-is-as-bad-as-moving-to-a-new-house/#comment-691 Just buy an iMac. You´ll avoid all this mess. Just buy an iMac. You´ll avoid all this mess.

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