UserOfHalde,
The more you write here, the less sense you make. The configuration you're proposing involves at least three hard drives--one (or more) for the SME server, and one additional for each of the two users. This will use more power than the two-drive solution I propose (though only marginally; the idle power consumption of a 3.5" hard drive is negligible*)--so power consumption does not favor your solution, as minuscule a factor as it is anyway.
As far as mainboard connections, the solution I propose requires two SATA ports on the mainboard. No doubt there are boards out there with only one, but they're few and far between--and boards that would be suitable to run a server, with only one port, are rarer still. Your solution requires at least one port, plus a means of connecting two additional drives. If these are to be mounted internally, then you require at least two SATA ports, at least the equal of my proposal. If externally, your options are eSATA or USB. eSATA works pretty well, but it's a rare board that will have two ports (SATA port expanders are the very work of the devil; don't even consider using them if you value your data at all). USB works very poorly in terms of long-term stability and reliability, and doesn't perform very well either.
With respect to your remark of "two cheap drives, or one that works"--I really have no idea what you're trying to suggest. My proposal involves setting up a RAID1 array, which would have two mirrored disks. To lose your data, both of those disks would need to fail near-simultaneously. For a single external disk to have a lower chance of data loss than this, it would need to be at least an order of magnitude more reliable. Sure, if you spend six figures on a SAN, you might see that kind of difference in reliability--but you won't see it with individual external drives.
As to your pathological aversion to RAID, I don't know what to say. If you care about your data, RAID is the best way going to protect it while in use (offline backups are also a very good idea, and protect against things that RAID doesn't, but recovery from them is often more involved). To be sure, there can be catastrophic failures that will result in data loss on even the best-designed array--but they'll be much less common that the failures that will destroy data on a single disk. I'd also point out that your SME installation, unless you've taken affirmative steps to the contrary, is already set up as a (degraded) RAID1.
Of course, it's your server, and you can administer it however you want. Janet's given you links to documentation on how to do what you propose. But you appear to have your heart set on a design that:
- Consumes (marginally) more electrical power
- Provides lower performance
- Is more complicated to configure
- Is less well supported
- Provides less (really, no) protection for your data
This has a few of us scratching our heads and wondering why.
I've lost data to drive failures before. It sucks. I don't want it to happen again. That's why my SME server runs on RAID1, it's backed up to a multiply-redundant RAID array, and that's backed up offsite.
* A WD Red 4 TB, to use one example, consumes about 4 watts at idle, which works out to 35 KWh/year. Power costs vary widely, of course, but with what I pay, this is less than US$5/year.
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