Educate me on mass storage

[Durka-Durka~SPARTA~]

Hi all,

It's come time where my standard tower just isn't cutting it and I need a new system to store files. My main concern is just storage and retrieval. I don't need to run any OS off of it, just need a place to store my massive image files and get to them whenever. I've heard about DROBO, but it seems a bit $teep for a box that holds a bunch of hard drives. I'm sure it does more than that, but I was hoping somebody could educate me on all of this and point me in the right direction? Please? lol.

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

You will not like what I use then...

http://www.readynas.com/?p=1431

 

Problem is storage is fine but your not paying for storage (any 4TB HD can do that).

Your paying for Redundancy, Your paying for security, Your paying for accessibility, local & online.

Your paying for Stand alone, your paying for low power consumption & reliability.

Your paying for the super U.I. & Transfer speeds, today you need dual giga LAN !!

So you can connect to internal & external NETWORKS !

 

And your paying for a system that will tell you it's going wrong before it happens....

 

ALSO get one that has DNLA support (so you can stream).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What ever you get, plug it into a UPS, not a cheap one, but one that is $100+

 

I use an APC pro550 or BR550GI (uk name / us name)

When you have your first brown out / black out or power spike you will thank yourself !!! you saved your NAS.

 

 

 

 

Anyway in 2013, you should be looking at $400-500 for a good NAS, + DRIVES !! + $100-150 for a UPS

It ain't CHEAP TO BE SECURE, PROTECTED & KNOW IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO WORK

 

I got mine in 2009 Oct & it's now 2013 !!

 

I started with 2x 1TB & expanded to 4x 1TB, then last year after one drive started to creap surface fail, I updated to 4x 3TB

thats 12 TB less 3.5TB for redundancy giving around 8TB !!! in RAID -X

 

 

good luck.

[Durka-Durka~SPARTA~]

Thanks bud. Are there options for if I just want to use it as a storage box, meaning I don't need to access it via any network except for a direct link to my computer? Would I still need a NAS or something else?

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

No you could just have a HD in a box for $100 total.

 

But you sacrifice redundancy & reliability.

You could go for 2x HD in mirror RAID & have redundancy but you sacrifice all the other options..., total around $200

There are cheaper ones but you always sacrifice something, usually access/transfer speed.

 

$200

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122098&IsVirtualParent=1

 

$300

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006519%2050001233%2040000124%204018&IsNodeId=1&name=%24200%20-%20%24300

 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Netgear-Inc-Desktop-NAS/BrandSubCat/ID-1233-124

 

 

Then you could go for other makes...

 

The point of the post is to make you aware of what you can live without, knowing fate .... strikes ...

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/test-centre/pc-peripheral/3217608/group-test-whats-best-nas-device/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Donziboy2]

Your first video the guy lost me when he mentioned the warrenty....

They used to be 3 year for consumer, but since there shit is just as cheap as everyone else they went to 2 years.

[Hunter~SPARTA~]

I also use a system similar to what NoScream has. My brand of choice is Synology instead of ReadyNAS, though. In particular, I have a Synology 411j. It is a 4 bay system. I have four 2TB drives in a hybrid RAID setup, most comparable to RAID 5. Any one single drive can completely fail and I will not loose any data. I can also modularly increase my storage as I need to and as I can afford to. If you buy a standard "external hard drive", generally speaking you have to buy a whole new drive every time you need to upgrade; plus the head ache of either transferring everything to the new drive or maintaining multiple drives.

 

There is really an immense amount of things the Synology "operating system" allows me to do, but I'll highlight a few of my favorite / most used:

1. Personal cloud storage / file sync. Works exactly like dropbox, but your files are stored on your NAS at home. No storage limits, no one can snoop through your files, and no risk of a business going belly up and loosing all your data.
2. DLNA. I utilize a lot of "trial version" of movies, tv episodes, and music. I put them on my NAS and can stream them to xbox, PS3, or any PC on my network.
3. Remote access. Similar to DLNA, but I can use a web browser from any where and watch my videos or listen to my music stored on my NAS. Synology even has iPhone and Android apps so you can watch/listen from your mobile device, as well.
4. VPN server. Also when I'm on the go, I can utilize my NAS as a VPN server. This is primarily a benefit when I'm in foreign countries, but if you're on a public WiFi, it keeps your traffic private from anyone snooping on the network.
5. Photo station. Just one of the many "packages" you can enable within the Synology OS. As a photographer, this may be of interest to you. Basically you throw all your photos into specific folders on your NAS and it creates a slick web page you can display your portfolio on; or in my case, show family all of your vacation pictures. haha.

Those are really just the tip of the iceberg. You can head over to the Synology website, they have a demo version of their operating system up so you can mess around with it before you invest your money into it. Also feel free to ask me here or shoot me a message if you have any specific questions.

 

 

- JHunter

[peter~SPARTA~]

How much storage do you need?

 

Drobo is very nice but pricy.

I went other way to cut cost.

On last hardware update i got motherboard with 5 sata slots. + 1x esata

Got SSD PCI and set up my system there to save one sata slot. Used one for optical drive and still have 4 to use for my HDD's

Then use 2 slots for raid 0 array to speed up gaming and temporary picture storage. (2x 500GB)

Next one is used for my 1 TB picture storage drive and other 1T drive as backup for windows and picture library.

As secoundary backup i use esata external docking station (usb/sata) where i store pictures.

This drive is is hooked up to pc only when i do backup and stored in different place then my PC.

 

For small stuff (webgalleries, text documents) i use free online google drive.

This way i can acces those files anywhere.

Its faster then any NAS and works for me.

 

I dont stream nor store movies.. Dont need acces to my pictures outside my workstation (it would be pointless to try edit them on laptop..)

And those i like to show are uploaded on my website/picasa/skydrive to show off

[Luggage~SPARTA~]

I understand why people buy NAS, but for my own personal use I prefer to go down the old fashioned server route. I feel positively ripped off to have to pay some $500 for an intelligent disk enclosure, when I can have a full fat Xeon server with spare processing power. I appreciate why this may be overkill for some, but being able to run up a server for ARMA or L4D2 or any other game is invaluable.

 

The argument, which is valid, is that a traditional server does not an "out of the box" solution make - as you still have to stick a OS onto the beast, but you can get opensource to cover that, or being lazy as I am, have Windows Home server 2011. Cheap as chips. This is Windows Small Business Server with a few restrictions, but it provides out of the box:

 

Automatic workstation backup

Media streaming

Standard Windows shares with full security

Access from the internet via a web front end

 

In addition you can enable:

DHCP

DNS

FAX Server

Print Server

and some others that really are probably even more useless to a home user!

 

 

There are third party plugins which seamlessly integrate, my favourite being Drivepool, which provides directory mirroring, and the ability make a bunch of disks into a single large disk without having to worry about stripes etc. This allows you to remove/add disks more easily as off-lining a disk automatically copies the data elsewhere.

You can get Apple streaming support and many other interesting things to play with.

 

I know that this is not for everyone, but Custard is going down this route and can comment as a new user of the software.

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

Do people still FAX ?

 

IF so I've found that fax spammer !!

[custard~SPARTA~]

Get my copy of Home Server this weekend, still haven't permission to purchase more drives though ( I would like a couple of 3Tb about £100 each at the moment)

[Durka-Durka~SPARTA~]

Man, wealth of information here, I'll have to comb through it over the weekend, haha. Hopefully I'll have more questions. I really like the idea of adding drives as affordability permits, but $400-500 seems a little steep for a box just to hold hard drives that I still have to buy.

[Luggage~SPARTA~]

Do people still FAX ?

 

IF so I've found that fax spammer !!

 

Yes, still regarded as a legal document for contracting, unlike plain email.

[Luggage~SPARTA~]

A candidate for your server here

 

Windows Home Server 2011 here

[PANiC]

Get my copy of Home Server this weekend

 

holy crap, cant believe you caved in, or did luggage hack your pc and order it for you?

[PANiC]

looking for some kind of external storage myself but for for media streaming. I can't quite decide between easy to use expensive NAS or cheap server which will take some setting up and maintaining, but your requirements are different.

 

 

as others might have said you have to look at

 

how much data?

and how important is it? (do you need a backup?)

 

 

anyway, sounds like you would like something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392056 http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/526

you need hard drives also, but you should mention how much space you need.

Edited April 6, 2013 by PANiC

[custard~SPARTA~]

holy crap, cant believe you caved in, or did luggage hack your pc and order it for you?

Nope wife asked me if I had backed up her stuff recently

 

Of course I have darling

[Durka-Durka~SPARTA~]

looking for some kind of external storage myself but for for media streaming. I can't quite decide between easy to use expensive NAS or cheap server which will take some setting up and maintaining, but your requirements are different.

 

 

as others might have said you have to look at

 

how much data?

and how important is it? (do you need a backup?)

 

 

anyway, sounds like you would like something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392056 http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/526

you need hard drives also, but you should mention how much space you need.

 

I go through about a TB per 2-2.5yrs. I could probably draw it out to 3 if I deleted unnecessary files. And yes, it's important that I have reliable backup. I wouldn't mind something that lasted me 5-6yrs or more, so if I got something that could hold 4 drives, that would work well. (I've never liked using more than 1 or 2tb due to reliability concerns)

[niall]

as someone who's studying IT Management and trying to compile a list of things you can do to get information moving fast this is a nice bit of info!

anyone know if it would be beneficial to have a pagefile partition created on the furthest reach of the disc or even on a hdd all to itself?

[peter~SPARTA~]

looking for some kind of external storage myself but for for media streaming. I can't quite decide between easy to use expensive NAS or cheap server which will take some setting up and maintaining, but your requirements are different.

 

 

as others might have said you have to look at

 

how much data?

and how important is it? (do you need a backup?)

 

 

anyway, sounds like you would like something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392056 http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/526

you need hard drives also, but you should mention how much space you need.

Sweet. Thats somethig i was looking for and affordable. Cant find it in europe

[Luggage~SPARTA~]

as someone who's studying IT Management and trying to compile a list of things you can do to get information moving fast this is a nice bit of info!

 

anyone know if it would be beneficial to have a pagefile partition created on the furthest reach of the disc or even on a hdd all to itself?

 

Eeek don't stick it in a separate partition on the same physical, you are just asking the head to wander between potentially the two farthest, points especially on a single disk system. You will have the standup example of slowest performance

 

Stick as much RAM as you can reasonably justify, this does alter to the machine function, but to give you an extreme example, I have no page file on this workstation as I have 16GB of ram. I don't do video or photo editing. Win7 (and probably every other MS OS) will still stick stuff in a page file even when there is spare ram, so switching it off does remove waiting for slow disk I/O

 

I haven't had to look at this for a while, but the old standard was mirrored pair for OS and then a stripe for data (RAID level at your preference) , and I personally would stick the page on the stripe. But in a machine without a stripe I have used a dedicated disk to hold the pagefile to speed things up. Even an older disk dedicated to the function of page file in an uncontended role is going to beat a OS drive being asked to read data from one area, and page off data to another at the same time. However I will ask some of the server guys in work tomorrow and see what the latest vogue is.

 

The challenge is that most of the machines we use don't have hotswap on the SATA/SAS, so you have to calculate expense against decomplexifying (real word - George W Bush told me) the build and maintenance. Sorting out a failed disk becomes a nightmare because you have to get the right one.

 

The majority of the RAID that we get on the boards we use is 'fake' raid, a software hook in the OS doing the raid - hence why you are asked to load drivers at build time. I read an interesting article on Toms or similar where they benchmarked 'fake raid' against OS striping and the OS striping performed the same for slightly less CPU. For this reason I now use a pair of 1TB drives in a unprotected stripe. Even now I am not happy because I can see that one of the drives is slower than the other so is causing a delay on writes and I will have to identify the slower drive and eventually swop it out. Whilst I am not up to SSD speeds, I am definitely seeing faster load performance. To get proper RAID you are looking at £250 upwards for the card/controller

 

I have:

 

OS Two 120GB SSD in software mirror

Data Two 1TB drives in software stripe

Data One 1.5TB in standard mode

 

Oh and P always beats me to the loading, so clearly he knows more than me about this.

 

 

ps - I haven't read this is a while but I would think it will provide assistance as to when to use mirroring against stripes. My memory says small transactions favour the striping but I am sure you will correct me when you have read it.

 

wiki raid link

Edited April 7, 2013 by Luggage~SPARTA~

[PANiC]

Sweet. Thats somethig i was looking for and affordable. Cant find it in europe

 

riadsonic / icy box are euro based and do loads of this kind of stuff.

 

4 disk JBOD enclosures:

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/products/external-cases.php?we_objectID=6129

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/products/external-cases.php?we_objectID=7713

 

RAID enclosures: http://www.raidsonic.de/en/products/soho-raid.php?pid=2_7

Edited April 7, 2013 by PANiC

[PANiC]

I go through about a TB per 2-2.5yrs. I could probably draw it out to 3 if I deleted unnecessary files. And yes, it's important that I have reliable backup. I wouldn't mind something that lasted me 5-6yrs or more, so if I got something that could hold 4 drives, that would work well. (I've never liked using more than 1 or 2tb due to reliability concerns)

 

you're going to need some other external solution also. grab something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178117 back up one a week and keep it in a safe or something

 

hope i'm not teaching you to suck eggs or something here, genuinely trying to be helpful (raid is not a backup solution).