Partitions with Raid5? Also, thoughts for a new machine...

[Mosin]

Hi guys,

I'm one who doesn't like to change computers often, so my practice has been to build a very good one for longterm use. Last time, 2002, I built a server grade machine. It was the cat's meow back then, but it is barely functional now because the processors lack SSE2, which is necessary for streaming these days, not to mention that the machine has totally inadequate memory.

My intentions are to not only build a modern machine, but one that will last for many years. Old habits die hard.

Budget: 5K

Intel E5-1650 3.5 Ghz.

16 meg. fast ECC Ram

300 GB SAS 2.5" HD X 3 + a spare

Now, the question with some background. In the past, I have used small partitions for the OS plus others to compartmentalize things like CAD and Mail with a large partition for storage. Is this advisable when employing Raid5? Or, will it work just as well with a single partition?

Then again, maybe I should just use Raid 1 with the same drives? I don't really need on-the-fly rebuilding, and Raid 1 is faster.

Thanks for any opinion and experience you can give.

 

[amirm]

Is this just for serving up audio or everything else? For audio, I would optimize for reliability, noise and power consumption. There, Raid5 is inappropriate since it is made for speed and forces all the drive to spin up to read anything. I also would not put the system partitions on it because that would keep it spinning too. Instead, put in an SSD, make an image backup of it and put it aside and let her run quiet, fast and cool. For CPU, I would opt for low-speed Core i3 and such. 3.5 Ghz is way, way too fast and power hungry.

Now if you are going to be re-encoding video on the fly to stream and such, that is a different story .