The Glade 4.0

It's evident that I've backed myself into a corner and I'm looking for some ideas on what to do to expand my data storage, and possibly future proof it in some form for later.

I'm running a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P Motherboard with an AMD Phenom 2 X4 with windows XP, 32 bit.

It has 8 sata ports, 2 using the Gigabyte chipset, and 6 using the AMD SB750. Both support RAID 0,1,5,10 and JBOD.

I stupidly set it up using just the 2 Gigabyte sata controllers with 2 1TB drives in RAID 1, then used the other ports for DVD/Blu Ray drives. Since then I have added a 1 TB drive and now have a 2TB external storage and I'm pretty much down to 200GB or so of storage space left.

A lot of space has been taken up by digitizing my music and movie collection and It's apparent I'm going to need much more space. I use the machine for office work and media storage and gaming (or did when I had time).

I've ran through several scenarios and I'm not sure what might be best.

1. Get 4-6 more 2 TB drives and break the array I have and move my data over to the AMD RAID set
2. Build an actual dedicated server that will host my data and allow me to add drives later regardless of the OS I'm working with
3. Upgrade this machine, install windows 7 and a Raid card, allowing me to move my data later if need be.

I've heard of problems getting the new 3TB drives recognized without workarounds, and especially on Windows XP 32 Bit. I'm not opposed of uprading to 7, but haven't just for the daunting task of reinstalling so many programs. Dozens and dozens just for work, and some won't run on 64 bit.

To sum up, all I really want is more, reliable data storage, RAID 1 or other, with the super important stuff I can backup to an external hard drive.

Sorry for the long post. I appreciate any form of input/thoughts/criticisms.

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You're going to want to upgrade to Windows 7 (or 8, if you want to wait it out and end up liking it) in the next 2 years anyways, as Microsoft will stop offering even security patches for XP sometime in 2014.

Given that, it seems like either #2 (built with a 64-bit OS) or upgrading to Windows 7 sounds like the best idea. If you upgrade to Windows 7, I'd recommend picking up a number of 3TB drives to throw into the 6-SATA chipset (displacing optical drives temporarily if need be), then RAIDing them up in a RAID 5 array and migrating all your data over there (including installing 7 on that). Once you're done with that, you can move opticals to the 2-SATA chipset.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I've been leaning toward building a stand alone server of some sort, but have had some thoughts of overall costs and power consumption. It seems like the 3 TB drives would play better that way anyway.

Between hardware options and all I've read about freeNAS/bsd/Ubuntu/windows home server/apache I'm completely lost on what might be best. I would rather not pigeon hole myself into setting up even more data and have to swap motherboards and have to somehow try to rebuild an array on a new board when I upgrade an already almost 3 year old PC.

Yeah, given that upgrading the hardware might be something you want to do in the near future, that does sound like the better option.

I've not had my hands on it personally, but all indications I've heard have suggested that Windows Home Server is a pretty decent product. I'll leave the *nix advice to people who do that sort of thing.

Hardware-wise for a file server, though, keep in mind you needn't drop a lot of money on it. CPU utilization ought to be pretty low, ditto for memory (though it's cheap, anyways, so might as well not try to push it in the first place). Storage, NIC, and power are going to be your primary concerns.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades