Recommended NAS?

[KJake]

Anyone have comments/experience on 5900RPM drives compared to 7200RPM, relative to performance?

Looking at replacing 4x750GB with at least 3x2TB...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148413

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by KJake

Anyone have comments/experience on 5900RPM drives compared to 7200RPM, relative to performance?

Looking at replacing 4x750GB with at least 3x2TB...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148413

I have 3 of these drives as well as 2 1.5TB drives in my Sage WHS server. They were all formatted to 64K blocks and work without issue. This system has been up for over a month now.

I say "go for it"

[RocKKer]

Originally Posted by KJake

Anyone have comments/experience on 5900RPM drives compared to 7200RPM, relative to performance?

Looking at replacing 4x750GB with at least 3x2TB...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148413

I don't think you will notice any performance problems in a home media streaming situation, the performance requirements for video streaming is well within the requirements of this hardware for the normal home setting.

Up to 2.4 MBps is what you need for streaming a single HD stream. My WD Green (@ sub-6000K RPM) HD's can do about 80 MBps each, I suspect the 7200RPM HD's will do more, but it is not needed for most home media situations.

I chose the WD Greens for the power savings vs the more power hungry 7200 RPM. I don't know how much power they save but I plan on running them 24X7, so that what did it for me.

[HuMan321]

Product Description Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS - hard drive -
2 TB - SATA-300
Type Hard drive - internal
Form Factor 3.5" x 1/3H
Dimensions (WxDxH) 4 in x 5.8 in x 1 in
Weight 1.5 lbs
Capacity 2 TB
Interface Type Serial ATA-300
Data Transfer Rate 300 MBps
Spindle Speed 5900 rpm
Buffer Size 32 MB

[RocKKer]

Originally Posted by HuMan321

Product Description Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS - hard drive -
2 TB - SATA-300
Type Hard drive - internal
Form Factor 3.5" x 1/3H
Dimensions (WxDxH) 4 in x 5.8 in x 1 in
Weight 1.5 lbs
Capacity 2 TB
Interface Type Serial ATA-300
Data Transfer Rate 300 MBps
Spindle Speed 5900 rpm
Buffer Size 32 MB

They sure do some nice advertising, huh?

300 MBps is the theoretical limit of the SATA-300 (aka SATA-II) bus, not the throughput of physically reading/writing to a non-solid-state HD.

A RAID situation is about the only time you might get close to the 300 MBps.

On my software RAID 5 (using 4 wd green disks) I get:
reading 262 MB/s cpu 33%
writing 141 MB/s cpu 33%

I only barely approach the SATA-300 bus limit on reading.

Raid 1 (mirrored 2 disks)
writing 86 MB/s cpu 30%
reading 85.0 MB/s cpu 30%

RAID 1 is much closer to single drive performance, I didn't test that however.

[KJake]

I just had to post and say, once again, that I love software RAID. My motherboard died and so I bought a better one to replace it, one that had more compatible SATA AHCI and more ports. I was able to connect all 11 of my drives without using any of my port multipliers and Linux didn't even sneeze at the full rearrangement of the drives; my RAID came up on first boot!

[stanger89]

No different than if you'd used a good hardware RAID controller

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

No different than if you'd used a good hardware RAID controller

cost? ;-)

[bobsj2000]

I bought on ebay the 4500mgb full metal gear server for $ 140. Just add hdisks and you're ready to go. I am running a full 4tb with no problems.

RJ

[KJake]

Originally Posted by stanger89

No different than if you'd used a good hardware RAID controller

Yeah, sorry, not going to pay for a 12 port raid controller

[PiX64]

u can always pick a perc 5/i card off of ebay which handles 8 drives for about a hundred bucks.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by PiX64

u can always pick a perc 5/i card off of ebay which handles 8 drives for about a hundred bucks.

Exactly! Picked up mine for $105. Throw in the $20 dollars for the SAS to SATA cables, and $10 for a fan (since the perc 5/i was designed for Dell servers with high air flow) and now i have a perfect 8 port hardwareRAID 5 card that can work on any motherboard with an PCIE x8 or x16 slot (or you can mod a x1 or x4 slot, but it won't run as fast). Currently it is on my AMD 780G motherboard, but I could easily move it to any Nvida or Intel motherboard down the line without having to redo my entire RAID 5.

Oh and my CPU usage while accessing my RAID: 1% (and that might not even be the RAID's fault!)

If anyone wants some good reading material on the Perc 5/i: http://www.overclock.net/raid-contro...card-tips.html

[reggie14]

I'm thinking about putting my tax refund towards a NAS. I want to move most, if not all, of my ripped DVDs/Blurays/Handbrake encodes/music to the NAS, and I want to use it for backups of my other computers. So, I'd like it to be at least 4 drives, preferably 5 (6 would be great, but probably outside my budget). I also want it to have pretty good performance. I want it to be capable of around 40MB/sec writes to a RAID5 array. Somewhat surprisingly, that seems to disqualify a bunch of them.

To complicate matters, I live in an apartment, and probably will for a while. Space is limited, and I can't run cat5 cable around my apartment. So, the NAS would probably end up in my living room. In other words, I want one that is reasonably quiet. I already have my server in the living room, and I haven't gone to particularly extreme measures to keep it quiet. So, I'm not looking for a NAS that is silent, just one that is quiet. Basically, from 12 feet away I want to just barely be able to hear it.

There's a pretty good deal on the 4-bay ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer right now. It's only has room for 4 drives, but I can live with that for its $600 price. Performance-wise it looks pretty good. But, reviews suggest that it is pretty noisy. Does anyone have any experience with that device? Alternatively, there are some 4/5-bay Thecus and QNAP devices. From what I understand, the Thecus devices are sometimes a bit slow, and often fairly noisy. QNAP seems to have some good ones. The TS-509 looks pretty good, but its $400 more expensive than the ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer.

I don't think I'm interested in building one. I don't really have the hardware to do it, so I'd pretty much have to buy everything new. I could maybe be convinced, but I think I'd rather just buy a off-the-shelf device.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

To complicate matters, I live in an apartment, and probably will for a while. Space is limited, and I can't run cat5 cable around my apartment.

FWIW, when I lived in an apartment (in college FWIW) I ran the cat 5 along the baseboard, and/or up over the doorways. Stuck them too the wall with Command Cord Clips. It works very well IMO. You end up needing a lot of cable, but well worth it IMO, and since you can run it on the wall (not on the floor) and along the edge, it's not intrusive or anything, especially if the cable is roughly the same color as the walls.

So, the NAS would probably end up in my living room. In other words, I want one that is reasonably quiet. I already have my server in the living room, and I haven't gone to particularly extreme measures to keep it quiet. So, I'm not looking for a NAS that is silent, just one that is quiet. Basically, from 12 feet away I want to just barely be able to hear it.

There's a pretty good deal on the 4-bay ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer right now. It's only has room for 4 drives, but I can live with that for its $600 price. Performance-wise it looks pretty good. But, reviews suggest that it is pretty noisy. Does anyone have any experience with that device?

I've got an X6 that I've been quite happy with, but it's not terribly quiet.

Alternatively, there are some 4/5-bay Thecus and QNAP devices. From what I understand, the Thecus devices are sometimes a bit slow, and often fairly noisy. QNAP seems to have some good ones. The TS-509 looks pretty good, but its $400 more expensive than the ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer.

I don't think I'm interested in building one. I don't really have the hardware to do it, so I'd pretty much have to buy everything new. I could maybe be convinced, but I think I'd rather just buy a off-the-shelf device.

How much space are you really looking for? You can get 6TB (redundant) on an NVX, the Pros aren't a lot more, like $300 and you could get 10TB in one of those today.

[Fuzzy]

Is there something you are really eneding a NAS specifically for, or can it be attached external storage on your already 24/7 server? You shouldn't have any bandwidth problems running an external enclosure conencted to a RAID5 card in your server with multi-lane SATA.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

FWIW, when I lived in an apartment (in college FWIW) I ran the cat 5 along the baseboard, and/or up over the doorways.

I've done a little of that already, between my office and bedroom. And then I have a wireless link between my office and my living room. It's not as easy to run a cable between my living room and office. But, there's a halfway decent way that I could do it with about a ~150ft run. My girlfriend isn't a big fan of that idea though. I've been getting by pretty well with my 802.11n bridges, but I'd want something faster between the NAS and my Sage server.

A bit of fan noise doesn't bother me. I have my TV set up in a corner, and there's plenty of room behind it for a NAS. No matter what I get I'll probably try to keep it back there, but running cable is potentially an option. If I do it when she's gone there's a good chance she wouldn't notice it.

How much space are you really looking for? You can get 6TB (redundant) on an NVX, the Pros aren't a lot more, like $300 and you could get 10TB in one of those today.

I'm not entirely sure. In the past when I've gotten hard drives for computers I've always tried to estimate how much I would use, and then I've doubled it. And, at some point I always end up filling them up.

The NAS would basically replace 4.5TB of space in my Sage server, which is only about half full right now. So, 6TB is probably enough, but doesn't sound like a ton of space (which seems ridiculous when I think about getting by with just a 160GB drive when I started using Sage in 2003). The main thing that worries me is that I've just started buying and ripping blu-rays, which burn through hard drive space pretty quickly (~25GB/each).

I guess I can always keeping using my server for storage too. I'd probably keep the stuff that's a little less of a pain to get back on the server, like ripped DVDs. I'd put Handbrake encodes and blu-ray rips on the NAS, since those take more time/effort to rip and/or encode. The Pro Pioneer is tempting, but I'm not sure how much I'm willing to pay for it. I think there's a $200 mail-in rebate on it right now, which brings its price down to $800.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Is there something you are really eneding a NAS specifically for, or can it be attached external storage on your already 24/7 server?

That's potentially an option. I know several people use a Perc 5/i card, but it's my understanding that that needs an 8x pci-e slot, which I don't have (I do have a 4x on my A8N-E motherboard). I would also need an external hard drive enclosure, which don't look very cheap. I'm willing to consider that route, but it would have to be significantly cheaper than just buying a NAS for me to want to go that way. I'd appreciate any recommendations.

[Fuzzy]

There's nothing that an 'external drive enclosure' offers that a cheap microATX computer case and power supply doesn't... just a pointer.

This RAID5+S capable port multiplier looks great, but I haven't seen any benchmark results to see how well it fares performance wise. The cost ($95 i think) is certainly REALLY good, as you can pretty much use a single SATA port on the motherboard to an eSATA adapter. the other advantage being that since the RAID is done in the multiplier, you can move the array to different systems, and it still shows as a single drive, without any extra configuration.

[DigitalMan]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

There's nothing that an 'external drive enclosure' offers that a cheap microATX computer case and power supply doesn't... just a pointer.

This RAID5+S capable port multiplier looks great, but I haven't seen any benchmark results to see how well it fares performance wise. The cost ($95 i think) is certainly REALLY good, as you can pretty much use a single SATA port on the motherboard to an eSATA adapter. the other advantage being that since the RAID is done in the multiplier, you can move the array to different systems, and it still shows as a single drive, without any extra configuration.

Indeed. A while back I took an old case I wasn't using anymore and cut out out all the drive bays and the front, then riveted mesh in where the bays were (cut from server cabinet doors that were thrown out). It can hold 3 3x5 hot-swap racks, for 15 drives.

I used an addonics eSata x4 card with that for a while, with their SATA port multipliers in the external case and it was ok, but not very fast. Comparing it to more expensive raid cards isn't really fair however. I used this for a couple years without any trouble before upgrading to newer stuff when I bought a new server.

[fresnoboy]

The best off the shelf "consumer" NAS system out there (in my opinion) is the Intel SS4200-E, which you can get for around $135. It has space for 4 SATA drives (not hot swap though), boots from flash, and runs a Linux based software raid system. It's very fast. Most consumer NAS systems have trouble filling a 100 mbps ethernet pipe, but this one is very fast.

All admin is done though a web interface and it is easy to set up raid5. 4 2TB drives in raid5 will yield about 6 TB in usuable space, which is pretty good. It's small and relatively quiet too.

I recommend it to storage "civilians" all the time.