Best NAS solution? (1 Viewer)

[Guzzi]

Agreed too ;-)
there is is currently just one point for me (beside the question of how mature a product is): Resyncing instead of online parity updates gives some disadvantages for "powermanagement": especially in a home environment you want to save energy - so one of the reasons I moved from win raid5 to unraid is the advantage to only spin the drives that are required. If I sync everything every 2 hours, I will loose this. Will see, if flexraid will solve this also in the future - updating parity while writing to the livesystem - this is the last thing missing for me personally.
anyway, I hope that flexraid will be further developed - there was also a time period, where development was completely stuck - but it definately would be a great product for home use (like WHS)

 

[NLS]

Well to be honest if someone sets resyncing once a day, is normally good enough (again for a home solution).
If a disk dies then that you lost the last 24 hours (statistically about ~12 hours in fact) of data is not much of a problem.
If that is still a problem, a 12 hour resyncing must be good enough. We are talking about statistics and balancing what you loose with what you gain.
Now if you also set your disks to sleep in 30 min (my setting in unRAID also), you are very "green".

WHS manages single disk spinning well (as different shares go to different disks automatically) and AFAIK uses a better directory caching mechanism than unRAID (which is known to spin up disks just because you wanted to see a folder's contents).

Anyway, it's nice to have a choice.

(might wake up Tom too)

 

[Guzzi]

Well, synching once a day is not an option (for me) - synching today takes approx 15 hours - so there is only some hours without synching available plus there is additional powerconsumption when all drives are active and under load.
I think I will do some tests with WHS - didn't do that yet - to get a bit familiar with it.
btw - use Joe's dir_cache script - in my opinion this is essential for unraid operations (directory caching). When I first used unraid with MP I was very disappointed about performance accessing directories - this script solved it plus keeps the drives spun down. should be part of the base system imho ...

 

[NLS]

Syncing takes 15 hours?
You mean re-syncing all drives from scratch.

This is not what FlexRAID does!
If you have 3GB new data, then those 3GB will be added on your existent parity data.

 

[Guzzi]

Syncing takes 15 hours?
You mean re-syncing all drives from scratch.

This is not what FlexRAID does!
If you have 3GB new data, then those 3GB will be added on your existent parity data.

Wow, I didn't know that - this makes the approach of "synch-update-per-day" an acceptable solution. I think I will have to do some more testing ;-) - Thanks for clarification!

 

[gorman]

I can point you to my blog, but it's in Greek... maybe you can get a rough idea of what I am saying using one of the cr*py online translators:

NLS's Pit

...check the two last articles.
(if I see enough interest I might translate them myself)

Wouldn't mind seeing it in English.

 

[NLS]

Well first I am gonna write a third article on how I decided to kill one of my PCs (that I rarely used) to actually upgrade my whole NAS setup.
An unbelievable torture that will take days to accomplish.

Before suffering the actual torture, I will translate the three articles.

 

[Moonracer]

I'm at the point that I'm seriously contemplating the building/purchasing of a NAS solution. I plan to use Cat6 with GB Nic's. I have heard nothing but good things about Synology's products and I also like the price of the pre-build cases of unRaid.

I currently have two 2TB Western Digital Mirror edition drives. I use both in RAID 0 but only one is active and the other is my backup drive(s) due to the build in Raid controllers in these units not handling (throughput/badwidth) some BD content I have. I have a third 2TB WD Mirror edition in Raid 1 for DVDs and other files. I just added yet another 500GB drive for backup images of the OS drive and as a scratch drive to hold BD rips and to mux them.

My concern is this. Does unRaid or Synology in a Raid 1 configuration in conjunction with Cat6 and GB Nics, have problems playing BD content?

I like unRaid, the Synology solutions and thinking about building my own Linux NAS. The advantage of building a Linux NAS is that I can use an old case with plenty of room for hard drives, Raid is not necessary nor do I take the hit in performance from Raid 1 over a single drive (Raid 1 being slower than Raid 0 or a single drive). I have setup two Linux Nas servers and use a cron job to sync them nightly (or as often as I like). This way, the backup drive is not being written to constancy, doesn't require a lot of processing power (CPU or controller) for software RAID and is easy to setup.

Any information on using unRaid or Synology products for transferring BD/HD content via the network?

Thanks!
mr

 

[NLS]

I use both in RAID 0 but only one is active and the other is my backup drive(s)

what does this phrase mean?

Any information on using unRaid or Synology products for transferring BD/HD content via the network?

at least my unRAID setup was a bit problematic with large file transfers (like HD streaming) - but your mileage may vary
it depends on your hardware first

 

[Moonracer]

I use both in RAID 0 but only one is active and the other is my backup drive(s)

what does this phrase mean?

Any information on using unRaid or Synology products for transferring BD/HD content via the network?

at least my unRAID setup was a bit problematic with large file transfers (like HD streaming) - but your mileage may vary
it depends on your hardware first

My 2TB externals are two 1TB drives running in RAID 0 to utilize both drives as a single partition. I have one 2TB that is in use all the time and one that is not powered up and used as a backup only. Just in case I have an electrical problem or virus that spreads to my externals, I have one drive not connected.

I hope this makes sense and thanks for the reply!

mr