<p>The Wikipedia article about drobo explains a bit about their disk layout.<br>
Also what about using raid 6 instead of 5? I think I read claims that it's not only more resilient nut could also be faster.</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 23, 2012 12:44 AM, "Ira Abramov" <<a href="mailto:Lists-Linux-IL@ira.abramov.org">Lists-Linux-IL@ira.abramov.org</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hey people,<br>
<br>
A friend of mine want to build a file server machine at home to get the<br>
benefits of a Drobo, but for 1500 NIS rather than $1500.<br>
<br>
The idea is to mix in 1T, 2T and 3T disks he already has, and on<br>
occasion grow the ׁ•torage by another disk or replace and rebalance it.<br>
He wants it to be more reliable than RAID0 but more efficient than<br>
RAID10, so RAID 5/6 are more like it.<br>
<br>
I looked around at the idea of ZFS or a distributed FS on a single node,<br>
but they are not options. I'm thinking how to do it with a block<br>
redundancy scheme, and so far I came up with this: create a RAID5 from<br>
the lower 1TB of all the disks you have, then a smaller RAID5 array from<br>
the second TB, and finally a RAID1 or RAID5 from whatever you have left.<br>
<br>
so if we say I have 2*3T and 2*2T and 1*1T, I have (5-1)*1T+(4-1)*1T+1T<br>
(the last is RAID1). now I have 8TB in three block devices, and I make a<br>
single LV (LVM2) from three extents.<br>
<br>
Is there a better solution? do note that it's not optimal for spindle<br>
activity, but this is a home machine serving two other computers and a TV<br>
streamer at the worst case.<br>
<br>
Any feedback is welcome...<br>
<br>
--<br>
Perishable item<br>
Ira Abramov<br>
<a href="http://ira.abramov.org/email/" target="_blank">http://ira.abramov.org/email/</a><br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>