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BackBlaze has a blog post that describes their third-generation storage pod: http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/ 4TB drives allow for 180TB raw storage.  Total cost of $10,717.59 including the custom case, drives, etc. The trick is they can get the drives for way less than what they sell for on NewEgg. (version 1.0 of their storage pod)  Any goons ever try building one?
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Feb 20, 2013 21:27
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I hope this isn't too off topic, but what's a good high performance external hard drive enclosure that at least has a USB connection (eSATA in addition to USB would be a bonus)? Something that will be OK for frequent access rather than just for making backups and won't risk overheating the drive. I'd be using it for all my videos, music, RAW photos which require editing, audio samples, and active torrent downloads & uploads. On the same note, any recommendations for 2TB or 3TB hard drive for use in an external enclosure? I've seen a lot of talk about WD Red drives recently, but are those ideal here only for NAS? If not, something like a WD green? A 7200 RPM drive seems unnecessary for my uses and it seems like it would be bottlenecked by USB (especially 2.0) anyway, but correct me if I'm wrong.
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Feb 20, 2013 22:06
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I have three broken 2.0TB WD Greens on my desk right now.
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Feb 20, 2013 22:09
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Splinter posted:On the same note, any recommendations for 2TB or 3TB hard drive for use in an external enclosure? I've seen a lot of talk about WD Red drives recently, but are those ideal here only for NAS? If not, something like a WD green? A 7200 RPM drive seems unnecessary for my uses and it seems like it would be bottlenecked by USB (especially 2.0) anyway, but correct me if I'm wrong. The WD Reds actually consume a lot less power than WD Greens and even other 3TB drives. They also disable IntelliPark, which would park the head on drive inactivity, which is counterproductive in a NAS due to creating too much wear on its components. WD's reasoning behind 7200RPM is that 5400/5800RPM never saved that much power anyways over a proper 7200RPM one. They're newer than the Greens and I can only guess that they either dump the Greens or update them to follow the power saving route the Reds have taken if they update them.
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Feb 20, 2013 22:11
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Alright, the Green is out. Is the Red the way to go, or are there other 7200 RPM 2TB drives I should consider? I mainly just want something that has a reasonable chance of not failing within a year or two. After reading some newegg reviews, it seems like people are reporting abnormally high failure rates with the Reds..
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Feb 20, 2013 23:33
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Bob Morales posted:BackBlaze has a blog post that describes their third-generation storage pod: It might be fun to have and know you'd pretty much never have to worry about running out of space to expand; at-least for me. Besides the chasis, finding the parts to build it for less is more than doable. Now only find the $5k+ for the drives and you can store your own copy of the internet.
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Feb 20, 2013 23:36
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Bob Morales posted:BackBlaze has a blog post that describes their third-generation storage pod: 
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Feb 20, 2013 23:40
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Splinter posted:Alright, the Green is out. Is the Red the way to go, or are there other 7200 RPM 2TB drives I should consider? I mainly just want something that has a reasonable chance of not failing within a year or two. After reading some newegg reviews, it seems like people are reporting abnormally high failure rates with the Reds.. I have four WD Reds that I've been pushing pretty hard for the last two months, no problems yet.
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Feb 21, 2013 00:18
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Splinter posted:Alright, the Green is out. Is the Red the way to go, or are there other 7200 RPM 2TB drives I should consider? I mainly just want something that has a reasonable chance of not failing within a year or two. After reading some newegg reviews, it seems like people are reporting abnormally high failure rates with the Reds.. From what I gather, DoA and infant death is kind of common on them. I ordered three 3TB Reds and one was DoA. Got it replaced by WD and it works great. Lowen SoDium fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 00:22
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Splinter posted:Alright, the Green is out. Is the Red the way to go, or are there other 7200 RPM 2TB drives I should consider? I mainly just want something that has a reasonable chance of not failing within a year or two. After reading some newegg reviews, it seems like people are reporting abnormally high failure rates with the Reds.. The red drive is actually a 5400RPM drive (well IntelliPower supposedly changes from 54/72 as needed?) and it's very good at sequential read/writes and below average at random read/writes if benchmarks are anything to consider. They do use very little power and I've been running 2 of them through the wringer without issue. I'm planning on getting like 20 more so I guess we'll see how that goes.
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Feb 21, 2013 01:50
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I also had a DoA 2TB WD Red. WD fixed it but they busted my balls on shipping.
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Feb 21, 2013 01:57
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The Seagate Barracuda 2TB drives are decent, bit higher on power than the Reds but generally perform pretty well. I think the warranty is only 2 years though but I bought a bunch and didn't have any DOA so I guess that's...something?
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Feb 21, 2013 04:30
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Master Stur posted:(well IntelliPower supposedly changes from 54/72 as needed?)
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Feb 21, 2013 13:03
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Splinter posted:Alright, the Green is out. Is the Red the way to go, or are there other 7200 RPM 2TB drives I should consider? I mainly just want something that has a reasonable chance of not failing within a year or two. After reading some newegg reviews, it seems like people are reporting abnormally high failure rates with the Reds.. That blog post from Backblaze that I linked to talks about their recommended HD's and the Reds are on the list of approved drives.
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Feb 21, 2013 14:40
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I think it's time to start thinking about a NAS. My friend built this eons ago. Is using Unraid. Has a faster cache drive, parity drive, and two data drives. (http://forums.redflagdeals.com/nas-alternative-my-unraid-server-build-553514/16/#post9848054) I was planning on trying FreeNAS on recommendation by you gents. Is a cache drive worthwhile? I'm aware of the fact that a parity must be as big as your biggest drive. But is there a handy way to figure out how much usable space I will get with different drive configurations? 1X3tb parity + 2X2tb data = how much space for example. And how much more/less do I get lowering the parity to 2tb or raising the data disks to 3tb.
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Feb 21, 2013 16:18
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Ziploc posted:I think it's time to start thinking about a NAS. There's really no point in using a different sized drive for parity than data. Use the same size across the board. You're limited by the size of the smallest drive in the array.
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Feb 21, 2013 16:31
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Ziploc posted:I think it's time to start thinking about a NAS. Start with a Celeron G1610 + ASRock B75 Pro3-M combo and work your way up to what you actually require, i.e. i3-3220 for a HD 2500 integrated GPU for hardware-transcoding or some i5 for VT-d. If you are just streaming media there is no need for a fast cache drive, the usual 3+ drives in a raid-z1 (or -z2 if you desire more security and have money for more drives) will satisfy your needs. For each N in -zN you will lose that drive as capacity, but gain it as security. 6x2 TB drives in a raid-z2 would give you 4x2TB usable space and a security net of 2 failing drives. For most software raids you'll end up with the common lowest capacity, i.e. mixing M 2TB and 3TB drives always nets you M*2TB capacity.
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Feb 21, 2013 16:51
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I'm having some trouble with adding cache drives to a zpool, anyone got any ideas?code:Here's a zpool status: code:code:
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Feb 21, 2013 17:25
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Never did I imagine I would spend 800 bux on deathstars but alas my E350 monster will get some more meat (4x4TB) on the btrfs volume. Also gonna turn the volume to raid 1 entirely (right now only the metadata is r1) and switching to using the mobo with internal drives on a node 304 instead of using an external port multiplier. e: wtf was I thinking adding a card to mobo with 5 SATA ports deimos fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 19:48
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Some posts in this thread make my head hurt. Which makes me also wonder if I should be building a NAS.
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Feb 21, 2013 20:22
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yomisei posted:Start with a Celeron G1610 + ASRock B75 Pro3-M combo and work your way up to what you actually require, i.e. i3-3220 for a HD 2500 integrated GPU for hardware-transcoding or some i5 for VT-d. If you are just streaming media there is no need for a fast cache drive, the usual 3+ drives in a raid-z1 (or -z2 if you desire more security and have money for more drives) will satisfy your needs. For each N in -zN you will lose that drive as capacity, but gain it as security. 6x2 TB drives in a raid-z2 would give you 4x2TB usable space and a security net of 2 failing drives. For most software raids you'll end up with the common lowest capacity, i.e. mixing M 2TB and 3TB drives always nets you M*2TB capacity. I guess for now I can start with 2x3tb reds with z1 giving me 3tb of usable space with reasonable security. I don't want to get to crazy with my budget straight from the off. With z1 and z2 can I mix \drive sizes? Is it hard to add more and change to z2 later? Or do you just end up dumping all the data, reconfiguring, and copying back?
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Feb 21, 2013 21:35
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So, I very recently purchased these from Amazon: Synology DiskStation 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS212j (White) WD Red 2 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD20EFRX I only wanted a NAS for its ability to provide a central storage solution to stream any time to one of my various devices in the house. I hated thinking that I downloaded something on my living room's HTPC only to start it up, load up XBMC, and realize I hadn't. That was such a pain in the rear end. I received the enclosure and both drives yesterday, so I don't have a lot of usage time under my belt but hooooooooly poo poo was this thing EASY and QUICK for both setup and installation. From opening the boxes of both the NAS and my HDD's, installing both drives into the enclosure, and re-securing its lid the entire process took maybe 10 minutes. The only thing I guess I missed at some point during the software install and setup was if it asked me for a username to use, because I ended up having to search online for like 20 minutes trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do if I can't remember or find my username. I believe that was my fault, but whatever. After the two drives were installed and the initial setup finished, they were automatically assigned a raid and were quickly functioning as a sole drive. The only thing that took me a really long time to finish was the movement of all media files to an external drive, then cutting / pasting their contents to the NAS. After the transferring finished I mapped the network folders to my devices (each of which is running XBMC, including my android tablet and phone) and threw up a triumphant fist into the air as this cheap, extremely Chinese, and silly little device effortlessly streamed any movie I so desired from my NAS. Can't say the same for the Roku HD I purchased last year, which boasted all kinds of features that weren't nearly as impressive as their box advertising suggested, frequently crashes its apps, and has loving terrible buffering issues. I also purchased a Foxconn NTA-350 in hopes of replacing the full sized HTPC I had in the living room. It was taking up a lot of floor real estate due to its PC case being slightly too big to fit into our entertainment center. I also wanted to re-purpose it by swapping out the large HDD for a slightly smaller one and getting a monitor, kb+m, and mouse pad so I could give it to my girlfriend as a surprise. If anyone was looking at that Foxconn "nettop" before, let me just say: If you want it to stream or do pretty low power tasks, buy it. I purchased it on Amazon like I do with everything else, but realized earlier today that Newegg is selling the exact same thing for about 9 more dollars, but also includes a free 64GB SSD. The one caveat to this device that I found through reading reviews, but wasn't made aware of on the product page is: You absolutely must have an SSD and one stick of 204-pin SODIMM DDR3-1066 RAM (max supported: 4GB) or you'll receive a device that has no internal storage, or memory. Immediately update the BIOS after you get your OS installed because their BIOS is from like, 2011, and is apparently hosed up. But, after you get past the lack of RAM/HDD and immediate need to update your BIOS, this thing is beyond awesome. It's tiny, aesthetically pleasing, has surprisingly good on-board sound (which I didn't realize until Chrome updated one of my add-ons which apparently has a video that plays (very loudly) on install), has two USB3.0 slots on the front, a wireless card w/ antenna, and comes with a mount to secure it to the back of your TV or Monitor. I don't at all regret any of these purchases and very happily recommend the Synology DS212j for anyone in this thread who is like me: lacking in networking or NAS knowledge but wanting something that will stream media across their home network & act like a giant digital filing cabinet. Thank you guys for the help in here nickhimself fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 22:02
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nickhimself posted:So, I very recently purchased these from Amazon: Now run an xbmc SQL database off the synology, and sickbeard, and sabnzbd, and...
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Feb 21, 2013 22:12
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Muslim Wookie posted:Something funky is going on here...
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Feb 22, 2013 00:18
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Don Lapre posted:Now run an xbmc SQL database off the synology, and sickbeard, and sabnzbd, and... I don't understand about half of those words. Please elaborate on your suggested software.
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Feb 22, 2013 02:31
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nickhimself posted:So, I very recently purchased these from Amazon: Glad to see the good review. I just pulled the trigger and decided to treat myself to the USB3.0 model.  http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Attached-DS213/dp/B008U68UHG/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1361499996&sr=8-6&keywords=synology
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Feb 22, 2013 03:27
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nickhimself posted:I don't understand about half of those words. Please elaborate on your suggested software. Setup a mysql server for xbmc to use and install/config sickbeard and sabnzbd to automatically search for and download ya 
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Feb 22, 2013 05:32
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nickhimself posted:I don't understand about half of those words. Please elaborate on your suggested software. Setup up phpMyAdmin for the mySQL database, Sickbeard for managing/processing TV, sabnzbd to download from usenet, CouchPotato film equivalent to SB, and Maraschino as a web gui front end. You can find them all at this repo (you add this in Package Center): http://packages.synocommunity.com The best guide I could find for doing this my first time was this one that is slightly outdated but specifically made for Synology. Do a bit more googling and you can basically figure out the rest for yourself. The fact that it's one or two clicks to install all of those packages makes the whole process incredibly easy. Once you realize how easy it is it's pretty difficult to ever go back... and how easy it was to setup in the first place.
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Feb 22, 2013 06:03
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dox posted:Setup up phpMyAdmin for the mySQL database, Sickbeard for managing/processing TV, sabnzbd to download from usenet, CouchPotato film equivalent to SB, and Maraschino as a web gui front end. You can find them all at this repo (you add this in Package Center): http://packages.synocommunity.com So without the setup instructions and package names, this can essentially automatically search for and download tv episodes for me as soon as they become available and place them in their correct folders? I've never worked with servers outside of just plugging things up and making it run before, so these instructions for SQL and phpMyAdmin are entirely new territory for me so I apologize for asking seemingly dumb questions right out of the gate.
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Feb 22, 2013 16:11
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adorai posted:You added the wrong partition. I did the exact same thing the first time I did this, my small partition was made first, so I assumed it was the lower number, but it was actually the higher number. I hear ya but I don't think that's the case - I've removed all cache and write log devices from aggr0 and then gone back and attempted to add <diskdevice>p2 and still get the same I/O error. I've tried this as both cache or write-log, though that shouldn't really make a difference. <diskdevice>p0 refers to the entire disk so I can't use that.
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Feb 22, 2013 17:26
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nickhimself posted:So without the setup instructions and package names, this can essentially automatically search for and download tv episodes for me as soon as they become available and place them in their correct folders? Not sure what you mean by "without the setup instructions and package names"-- but yeah the whole process is very straightforward. The TV business is handled by Sickbeard, which Thermo so eloquently described in the Usenet thread: Thermopyle posted:1. Sickbeard finds episode you need. Then after that, I have Sickbeard notify XBMC of a new episode, it is automatically added to my mySQL database and every XBMC device in the house can easily access the newly added file without having to ever touch a button. Honestly, if you want to learn just dive in headfirst and you'll realize how simple/easy it is.
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Feb 22, 2013 17:36
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I currently have a combined HTPC/torrent box/media server at my house and am looking to add redundancy. Computer specs: Phenom II x4 3.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Radeon HD 6570 1 GB, 40GB Intel SSD boot drive, 3x2TB hard drives (1 of these just died actually, which is the motivation for redundancy), Windows 7 64-bit. Typically videos are downloaded straight to this computer and watched there. While it technically is the media server for the house, it's very rare for anyone to actually stream videos over the network to another computer in the house (no one wants to watch stuff on a laptop or desktop screen when it could be watched on a 73" TV). Media is also generally found using Windows Explorer rather than something like XBMC. What are my options here? I'm thinking it's between adding a hardware RAID card to the computer or getting something like a 4 bay Synology, but let me know if I'm missing anything. Initially I was leaning toward a RAID card since I figure performance will be better having the disks connected to the computer rather than going over the network and that it would be significantly cheaper than a Synology (I'm looking at the DS413j @ $380). However, after looking at the cost of RAID cards, it doesn't look like they're much cheaper than a Synology (though I'm not really sure which RAID card I'd need). I'm liking the idea of a Synology since it seems like it will require less setup and maintenance time, and with their hybrid RAID can have more space with mis-matched drives (e.g. 7TB of space w/ 2x2TB and 2x3TB verses 6TB w/ RAID5). Anyone have any thoughts on or pros/cons of these options?
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Feb 22, 2013 20:39
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Streaming is peanuts in terms of bandwidth for a halfway decent network (Gbps and Cat5e), a raid card and physical drives on the same room as your TV will introduce noise and heat. Personally I'd use a Synology or a custom low-power box somewhere to hide away the cruft. You don't really need a RAID card, just a card that can hold the drives and do software raid, but since you're talking about 4 drives you can just use even the simplest ITX board to drive a storage machine. If you're proficient with this sort of stuff or want to experiment it'll run you about $200 for a standalone box that can run your drives and share them on a network vs whatever for a synology you might be looking at. ZFS or the experimental btrfs setups here really shine with a bunch of mismatched drives; I get roughly 400MB/s RW out of a btrfs volume running on a E-350 ITX board (ASrock, ~$110) with 4GB of ram (2x  ), OS on a USB stick, in a rather snazzy case (Node 304, ~$90). It doesn't do decoding itself but it probably could do it rather easily along with managing the btrfs cluster since it has a Radeon HD 6310 and some decoding goodies shoved in the package.Where the synology shines is for doing things "clean" and not having to get your hands dirty with the nitty-gritty of the OS/environment. deimos fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 22, 2013 |
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Feb 22, 2013 22:03
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Splinter posted:Anyone have any thoughts on or pros/cons of these options? You are not required to get a raid-controller. If you have enough Sata ports available on your MB you can just stick a bunch of new drives in there and use a software raid available on windows like snapraid. If not, replacing the MB for one with more ports will likely be cheaper than to get a good raid controller or a NAS box. e:f;b
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Feb 22, 2013 22:04
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dox posted:Not sure what you mean by "without the setup instructions and package names"-- but yeah the whole process is very straightforward. The TV business is handled by Sickbeard, which Thermo so eloquently described in the Usenet thread: Sorry, I meant without referencing any of the apps or for steps to do it. Just wanted to be 100% certain learning about all of that would accomplish what I would like it to. You did answer my question though, so it looks like it's time to figure this stuff out! Thanks!
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Feb 22, 2013 22:25
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deimos posted:Streaming is peanuts in terms of bandwidth for a halfway decent network (Gbps and Cat5e) What if I don't have that because I access my server through a wireless network? I was thinking that for a 1080p mkv file, something with a bitrate of say 20Mbs, I'd need transfer speeds of about 2.5MBs as my absolute minimum. Is my math about right here?
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Feb 22, 2013 22:44
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Biggest human being Ever posted:What if I don't have that because I access my server through a wireless network? I was thinking that for a 1080p mkv file, something with a bitrate of say 20Mbs, I'd need transfer speeds of about 2.5MBs as my absolute minimum. Is my math about right here? If you're doing wireless then Wireless N with few LoS issues should net you about 100Mbps easily, GigE is more for streaming pure BD rips.
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Feb 22, 2013 23:15
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deimos posted:Streaming is peanuts in terms of bandwidth for a halfway decent network (Gbps and Cat5e), a raid card and physical drives on the same room as your TV will introduce noise and heat. Personally I'd use a Synology or a custom low-power box somewhere to hide away the cruft. You don't really need a RAID card, just a card that can hold the drives and do software raid, but since you're talking about 4 drives you can just use even the simplest ITX board to drive a storage machine. yomisei posted:You are not required to get a raid-controller. If you have enough Sata ports available on your MB you can just stick a bunch of new drives in there and use a software raid available on windows like snapraid. If not, replacing the MB for one with more ports will likely be cheaper than to get a good raid controller or a NAS box. Thanks for the help guys.
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Feb 22, 2013 23:42
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Are there online backup solutions particularly well-suited to backing up the contents of a NAS? My plan was to get something like a Synology and use it for storing media as well as local backups of the computers on the network. I considered SpiderOak, but they claim that NASes don't have enough power for their encryption stuff, and I'm not sure what would be a better option. I also looked at Crashplan, but people seem to complain about them a fair amount (it would be cheaper than SpiderOak though). I'd estimate that I'd want to back up, say, 500 GB to a remote site. (Anything else should be fairly easy to restore, or unimportant enough that I'd only want a local backup on an external drive or something.) Oh, and if it helps, I'm enough of a dorkus that I could handle hacking around with setup or building a NAS from scratch, though I don't particularly look forward to doing either. Avenging Dentist fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Feb 23, 2013 |
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Feb 23, 2013 08:37
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For NAS backup you could try rsync.net or backblaze. Or you could dick around with AWS and Glacier (1 cent per gig per month is a very attractive price if you can wait 3-4 hours to get your data back).
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Feb 23, 2013 09:02
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