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            <title>
									Pre-Purchase: Will this setup + SoftRAID do what I want? - Hardware Compatibility				            </title>
            <link>https://forums.softraid.com/hardware-compatibility/pre-purchase-will-this-setup-softraid-do-what-i-want/</link>
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                        <title>Pre-Purchase: Will this setup + SoftRAID do what I want?</title>
                        <link>https://forums.softraid.com/hardware-compatibility/pre-purchase-will-this-setup-softraid-do-what-i-want/#post-2948</link>
                        <pubDate>Thu, 01 Nov 2018 22:18:23 +0000</pubDate>
                        <description><![CDATA[I do not like USB for RAID 5. USB is not solid under OS X, USB enclosures can be low quality and over the years we have seen data issues from USB. So I would use Thunderbolt if at all possib...]]></description>
                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[I do not like USB for RAID 5. USB is not solid under OS X, USB enclosures can be low quality and over the years we have seen data issues from USB. So I would use Thunderbolt if at all possible.

RAID 5 writes will be slower with a mini, probably 300MB/s, but that is still reasonable.

Rebuilds will still be fast, as fast as the drive can write data, say you average 150MB/s on a disk, you can figure out how long a rebuild should take.

But SoftRAID uses "fast rebuild" technology for existing volumes, so most rebuilds are only a few minutes.]]></content:encoded>
						                            <category domain="https://forums.softraid.com/hardware-compatibility/">Hardware Compatibility</category>                        <dc:creator>SoftRAID Support</dc:creator>
                        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://forums.softraid.com/hardware-compatibility/pre-purchase-will-this-setup-softraid-do-what-i-want/#post-2948</guid>
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				                    <item>
                        <title>Pre-Purchase: Will this setup + SoftRAID do what I want?</title>
                        <link>https://forums.softraid.com/hardware-compatibility/pre-purchase-will-this-setup-softraid-do-what-i-want/#post-551</link>
                        <pubDate>Thu, 01 Nov 2018 03:58:57 +0000</pubDate>
                        <description><![CDATA[Hello!

I&#039;ve just pre-ordered the new Mac Mini (woohoo!) to replace my old Mac Mini at my office, and I think it&#039;s time to replace my aging Core2Duo home server.  I intend to replace it wi...]]></description>
                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[Hello!

I've just pre-ordered the new Mac Mini (woohoo!) to replace my old Mac Mini at my office, and I think it's time to replace my aging Core2Duo home server.  I intend to replace it with my OLD Mac Mini, which is a Late 2014 Core i5 model with 8GB of RAM and a Samsung SSD installed.

I use my dusty old Windows PC as an archive/backup server.  It also handles cloud backup (I use CrashPlan Pro) duties.  Nothing on this machine is the sole copy.

I follow the 3-2-1 data philosophy.  3 copies of everything important, 2 local, 1 off-site.  (Okay I guess the '2' usually refers to '2 types of media', but, this is my version of that old rule).  For example, I have a two drive RAID0 array which connects to my MacBook Pro, and stores my library of RAW files and video.  It's mirrored using SyncThing to a single drive with equivalent capacity to the two drive RAID0.  And then, it's uploaded to the cloud.

Because this is a true backup server, and doesn't store any data that isn't already in two other places; data loss isn't the end of the world.  But of course, nobody wants data loss.  So with this switch over to my old Mac Mini, I'm strongly considering replacing the hodge podge of drives I've attached and plugged in over the years, each one intended to mirror something specific (usually existing as a 'twin' to a drive or array on a system elsewhere), with a single large, 4 drive RAID5 array.  4x4TB drives (12TB usable in RAID5) would give me enough storage to cover my current needs with a fair amount of breathing room.  

So here are my questions;

1) With a SoftRaid RAID 5 running on a USB 3.0 4 drive enclosure; would I be able to saturate a gigabit ethernet connection in both reads and writes?

if not;

1a) Would a thunderbolt enclosure help me accomplish this? (It's a significant cost increase; I'm considering USB 3.0 primarily because as I understand it, even in a RAID configuration the gigabit network connection would be the bottleneck anyway)

1b) If write performance is the issue; does SoftRAID support designating a portion of the SSD as a write cache?  Or does it only support RAM as a write cache?  (I only have 8GB of RAM on this machine).  Since data loss isn't technically critical, the 'risk' of using an SSD write cache (i.e., the data being delayed in getting onto the fault tolerant array) is not an issue, but the SoftRaid documentation doesn't appear to make mention of support for something like that.  

2) What sort of rebuild times should I expect with a RAID 5 made from 4TB drives with the Core i5?]]></content:encoded>
						                            <category domain="https://forums.softraid.com/hardware-compatibility/">Hardware Compatibility</category>                        <dc:creator>Romans5.8</dc:creator>
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