Pyrolistical's questions

I have a NTFS partition that has a folder that holds over 5 million directories. Each directory contains more directories and then files.

I am moving to SSD and I need to copy all these data over to the new drive, but I am running into issues.

Directories like this will crash Windows Explorer, so I didn't even try it.

My first attempt is robocopy, which has worked well in the past. But when I tried to do the copy it just never started, even after leaving it for days. I think it was trying to index everything before starting the copy.

How do you copy directories of this size?

Let's say there are two locations. Both locations have their own fast Internet connections. How do you join these two networks together such that every computer can see every other computer?

Do you need a domain controller, or can you do this with workgroups?

The obvious solution seems to be VPN, but can VPN be implemented on the routers only? Can the computers on the network be configuration-free?

I have a raid 1 that has failed partially. The controller tells me the raid is degraded, but does not tell me which drive is failing.

When I look in My Computer, I see that the controller split my raid 1 two the separate drives, so now I have two of the same partitions. I can read data from both them just fine. The SMART status is being dumb and says no errors.

One drive is making a clicking sound, but I can't tell which one. Can I amplify the sound some how to locate it?

What are some tricks/tips I can do to figure out which drive is failing without taking the computer down and swapping drives? I am trying to minimize down time.

I've been looking at my raid setups and I am beginning to really hate raid 1. During a drive failure, you don't know if the data on the other drive is correct or not. And what if one drive reads 1 and the other 0 without failure? How do you know which drive is correct?

Sure you could go with raid 6, but its a minimum of 4 drives. I think you can do the same with just 2 drives.

I've come up with a few raid levels, but why don't they exist?

1. Raid on a single drive that also uses forward error correction like par2
2. Like #1 but also mirrored (now you can ensure data is correct during failure)

This would require some custom hardware to perform the par2 calculation quickly. Also since its par2, for each drive you add to the array the par2 files can be smaller and smaller, since the amount of redundancy is the sum of the total size of the par2 files. See this to learn more about par2: http://www.quickpar.org.uk/AboutPAR2.htm

I am trying to see if its possible to toss all the computers in the server room and just run cables out of it.

The end goal is you just sit down at your desk and all you have is a display and peripherals. No computer can be seen or heard.

One idea is just to pass the required cables through the wall of the server room and setup the display and peripherals on the other side. But how do you do it in such a way you don't get all the server room noise? The required cables are different for every user, you can't just pass exactly what you need and seal it all up.

Another idea is just to use Ethernet for everything. You can get DVI/audio/USB over Ethernet. But then that's super expensive.

EDIT

And these computers will be used for more than just email. They will be powerful and noisy machines.

EDIT 2

My goal here is to reduce noise, reduce cleaning (of dust off computers), reduce cooling by centralizing and removing computer cases, save space, and increase security.

SSDs are rather new, so I couldn't find this information on the Internet.

Would the performance of a local hard drive connected using SATA2 get out performed by a SSD over gigabit ethernet?

In terms of both latency and bandwidth, mechanical hard drives and local networks are very similar.

The SSD would over course be SLC or Intel's MLC. Not a cheap MLC.

EDIT

As for usage, think typical computer user with some multimedia. Let's say its a regular computer with mechical hard drive vs a diskless computer that boots off a USB stick and then loads the OS off a SSD over gigabit