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[benn600]

**you may want to skip to the good part, denoted: **..**
You may remember me from a while ago.  I was talking about how I was using Western Digital My Book's as Raid-5 over USB.  You all kept telling me sooner or later I would write in saying that I lost it all and am starting to re-rip my 900 CDs.  I'm happy to report that has not happened.

Finding a good "total available space" stopping point is tough.  If I need to expand the array, I have to delete both the main and backup array (separately, lol) then add a drive (or two) and start the rebuilding process which basically means copying all my data over the network twice...  The backup and main arrays should be the same size so there isn't any concern for running out of backup space.  I was at 2TB for a while but then decided at the last minute to go to 2.5TB.  I'm currently at about 1.4TB but have big plans to scan in our hard-copy photos from years ago and slides, too.  At around 3-5MB apiece, that can add up.  I currently have two large totes full of photos and the knowledge of tens and tens of slide carousels...Probably around 20,000 in the totes and another 10,000 in slides--those are complete guesses, though.  30,000 * 4MB = 120GB and adding another 100GB for new photos and music for the next year or two gets me to almost 1.7TB--that's dangerously close to the 2TB capacity.

With 2.5TB, I'm only running a bit over 50%.

**May want to skip to this**
Now to the fun part.  My server has 5 WD My Book's (500GB) hooked up via USB and setup as Raid-0.  This allows fast reads and writes.  With Raid-5 on the server, I noticed slow writes that were annoying.  There is a good chance I may want to dump miniDV video directly to the array if I have lots of it and I would need better write speeds for that.  This drive is shared by root with permissions to my four users + administrator.

The backup side is a little safer.  It is running 6 more WD My Book's (500GB) in Raid-5 mode.  This way, I have the redundant backup.  The only drawback is that I need to keep everything backed up to it because if the main array fails (one drive goes), then I will lose all additional files or modifications since last backup.  I was copying around 16GB/hour to the Raid-5 backup so it took a few solid days and at about 90%, the usb messed up so it lost its connection.  After regenerating for a day, I finished the backup.  I always do my best to shut the computer off before unplugging the Raid-5 drives and I don't usually plug in more usb devices while the raid-5 array is plugged in to avoid messing the connection up.  It is not nearly as reliable as SATA but I knew that going into it and it has worked great so far.

[joshhuggins]

If your really wanting to get this involved, setup a switched gigabit network, and get a pair of large upgradable NAS units. Create a couple of simple scripts using Roboycopy or something to keep things up to date. When you need more space, pickup a pair of drives. Install the first one, run your script, to update the first unit and then install the second and run the second script. I ran several Raid 0+Raid 5 NAS systems in the last few years and it's ends up more headache eventually than it's worth, especially with standard NAS storage so cheap. Even with your USB drives in a Raid 0, I think your gonna hit a speed limit of about 80-90Mb per drive due to USB 2.0 bus limits. NAS is just a better way to go and should cost less in the long run with less headaches IMHO.

[johnnyboy]

Glad to hear it's working so far.
Sounds complex but if it does the job, that means its the right solution for you

Thanks for keeping us updated and glad no major issues yet!