Not sure if this has been done yet but how to set up a RAID system would be super handy for me!

[G+_Reuben H]

Not sure if this has been done yet but how to set up a RAID system would be super handy for me! I really want to do this in my office.

[G+_Cole Brodine]

Raid for file storage? Or are you doing this for a desktop OS drive so you can get more speed?

[G+_Reuben H]

It would be storage Cole Brodine. All the data from all our current projects in our 8 person office takes up about 500-750GB. Recently the drive went down and I have Crashplan set up backing up to two external drives plus the cloud so I just replaced the drive restored the files and we were up and running. But I know that having a RAID or NAS system with a 4 drive bay would allow me to have zero down time just replacing the drives with no care as to size or manufacturer. I know Drobo and Synology make systems for this but I'm not entirely clear on all this and how to implement it into our network.

[G+_Cole Brodine]

If you are looking for easy, Drobo or Synology are the way to go for sure.  

 

If you want a DIY version, I'd look up FreeNAS.  Revision3 has a new show call DIY Tryin (similar to Know How) and their first episode is setting up a FreeNAS box.  I'm not an expert with FreeNAS by any means, but I'm not sure you can effectively mix and match drive sizes very easily.  Do some Googling on ZFS file system and RAID-Z for more details.

[G+_David Herron]

I've had a Drobo for several years, and it's been rock solid.  Had two drives die in the array (they were 2 yrs old), replaced the drives, and was good to go.