Newbie RAID question

Hey everyone I am pretty new to building my own PCs and I am still trying to understand some things. Right now I am building a HTPC/NAS combo. I am using the ASUS P8Z77-V LGA mobo in a large silverstone case. The mobo supports RAID 0,1,5,10. I eventualy want a SSD for the OS and four 3TB drives running RAID 5 or 10 for media. I am not wealthy so buying all four HDDs at once will be difficult.

1. My question is if I only have two drives to start with, and I run them in RAID 0 or no RAID at all, can I just add the other two drives when I can afford them and change the RAID setting to either 5 or 10. I mean if I did that would the computer just make the adjustments and spread the data out on all the drives without a problem or am I looking at a possible disaster buy not just starting with all the HDDs?

2. I also have a question about which SATA sockets to plug everything into. The board has 4 Intell SATA 3.0, 2 Intell SATA 6.0, and 2 Asmedia SATA 6.0. I will have 1 SSD, 4 HDD, and an optical drive. I'm thinking the 4 HDDs in the 4 Intell 3.0s, and the SSD and OD in the Intell 6.0 sockets. Is that best?

3. And my last question is where do I plug in more HDDs if I ever need to add a fifth or sixth HDD? Can I just plug them in the Asmedia sockets or will I need a RAID card?

Using on-board RAID (short of RAID 1) is unreliable and risky for information that you care about. You will be locked into the RAID controller the motherboard uses and it may not transfer to another board without losing information (even swapping like boards, in the case of an RMA). You will also be limited to the number of ports that are available, which is usually four to six. I have not heard of a non-enterprise/server grade motherboard that would allow you to expand a RAID array or convert between RAID levels. Most RAID cards don't even do the latter.

When you create an array, you have to initialize the disks, which wipes the drives. So, if you buy a drive first, fill it up with data, then buy two more drives in a month, you'd have to transfer all your data from the first disk, then create the RAID array. Since you can't buy all the drives at once, you would be better off simply uses the drives individually and skipping the headache this would surely cause you.

Thiddy I am also looking into setting up a HTPC/NAS box, I didn't realize that if you use the onboard RAID that if your mobo dies or you switch them you may lose the information. Is this the case if you did raid 0? Correct me if I'm wrong, isn't RAID 0 a mirror copy of your 1st drive, if you are using 2 hdd's? If losing the data is a possibility does using a Raid Controller card do away with that situation?

RAID 0 is the opposite, it splits all the information across two drives. Roughly doubles performance, but a little less than double the chance of failure, since if one dies you lose the information on both drives.

What you described is RAID 1, which I think would be okay. (I don't actually know myself, but the first sentence in thideras' post seemed to imply that.)

RAID 0 is not a copy, RAID 1 is. If you did RAID 1, then you could hook the drive up either with RAID disabled or on another system to access your data.

I would suggest checking out the Storage Megathread for more details. I've put a lot of good information in there.

EDIT: Knufire beat me to it.

Thanks for the info. I was under the impression hardware RAID was the best way to go. I just figured software RAID was so popular because its cheaper or free. So I take it software RAID is the way to go? Freenas or Unraid?

The problem with hardware RAID is that you are locked into certain vendors, which could be costly, especially if you need to upgrade hardware. Software RAID can be read from any machine that has the software loaded and has enough ports for the drives. For home use, there is no performance benefit for hardware RAID.

Between FreeNAS and unRAID, I would go with FreeNAS because of the cost.