# Need File Server...any suggestions



## TCAT (Oct 9, 2007)

I have a small business and small network which right now consists of five desktops, one network printer, and one file server. The file server is a four year old Dell Power Edge with two 80G HD on a raid controller running win server 2003. The HD on the power edge is nearly at compacity. I've got a gig left.Ineed more storage but still need to maintain access tothe files stored on the existing power edge. Any onehave any suggetions or should I go to dell and buy another power edgeserver?


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## Wharf Rat (Sep 27, 2007)

> *TCAT (3/31/2009)*I have a small business and small network which right now consists of five desktops, one network printer, and one file server. The file server is a four year old Dell Power Edge with two 80G HD on a raid controller running win server 2003. The HD on the power edge is nearly at compacity. I've got a gig left.Ineed more storage but still need to maintain access tothe files stored on the existing power edge. Any onehave any suggetions or should I go to dell and buy another power edgeserver?




I would get a new server...not necessarily a dell. You can copy over the files and file structure from the old server, rename the two machines so the new one has the old one's name and it's just like nothing changed. Disk is cheap these days and you don't really need a powerful server class machine just to be a file server. You could probably get away with using a powerful workstation with some RAID and good solid backups and be fine...save on some of the Windows Server expenses.


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## Chris Couture (Sep 26, 2007)

Are the drives in a mirror or a stripe? (do you have 80 gigs of storage or 160)?



Either way, just buy two new drives of larger capacity and replace the drives you have. You will need to look for SCSI drives with the SCA connector on them if they are the removable type (most poweredge's are).



What I would do is make an image of the server onto a removable USB hard drive. Replace the drives and rebuild the RAID and then copy your image back onto the new drives. Acronis or Ghost would work for doing this... I like Acronis better...



This will put everything back like it was but will give you all the free space for additional file storage.



If you need help, let me know! I just did this same thing on a file server with 600 gigs of data. I added 6-750 gig SATA drives (in mirror raids of 2 so I have 3-750 gig drives) and moved all data back to the proper drive letter (this is on a file server that has several mapped drive letters associated with it).


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## psalzman (Mar 26, 2008)

Do it the easy way - get a NetApp


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## John Becker (May 2, 2009)

don't know how critical your data is, but the problem with striped raids is losing a drive means losing all data. Mirror is fine but if you need speed a mirror is considerably slower. A raid 5 however is almost bullet proof and there's no need for expensive scsi drives as you can use ATA or SATA drives. Last raid controller I bought from Promise was only $125.



If you lose a drive in a raid 5 you simply yank it and replace it. Your machine will not go down in the mean time and you can even replace the drives while the machine is on.


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