NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

I'm not sure I'm in the right thread; feel free to send me elsewhere.

I need a network storage box to run Plex, a torrent client, and host a lot of music and video files. It's replacing an ancient PC whose Ethernet and USB sockets are dying, and in any case does not support USB-3. The obvious choice would be to buy a consumer box, but Plex can't transcode on the fly on any of the consumer NAS devices I can find. I also need a box that can run a browser so I can use it to print files on Unix Cloud Print.

I can use Emacs and the Unix command line and can install packages on Ubuntu. I'm not a sophisticated sysadmin, nor ever have been.

A consumer NAS won't work; a Windows box won't work, because I'd rather sysadmin Ubuntu than Windows. Which thread should I go to for a cheap build-your-own Unix-based media server?

(e: Also feel free to tell me why I should use Windows.)

edit edit: All my music files are in FLAC, so an MP3-only streamer won't work.

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Jun 13, 2016

# ¿ Jun 13, 2016 19:17

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:31

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Plex also has a matching app for my Roku, so that it's trivial to stream to my TV from my existing setup.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 15:23

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

I have a My Cloud PR4100 8TB arriving tomorrow. I went for the 4-bay model because it has upgradable memory. I'm planning on using this as storage for my Plex library and all the music files from my Olive Symphony. Short term, I'm going to plug it into my Linux box running Plex; long term I'll probably buy something to use as the server head so that the transcoding problem is addressed.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2016 05:12

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

I'm working on getting my entire music library on to my WD Mycloud PR4100. For complicated reasons (@#$@#$@#$ Olive Musica) what I have is a tarball that will need to be unzipped on the far side.

For anybody else with a Mycloud, you can SSH into a Unix shell on the machine; I believe it's running Debian Wheezy. To do this, you have to turn on ssh, which is a hard-to-find setting. Details are here.

At that point, you can walk around the file system, run commands, and in general ~~wreak havoc~~ do what you need. Moving files doesn't void the warranty, but messing with the OS in any way does.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 20:01

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Twerk from Home posted:

Why not tape drives? LTO-6 stuff is really widely available now, and for the quantity of backup he's having to do the 6.25 TB compressed capacity on a single tape would take the sting off.

"Forever" means "readable in 50 years", which means you need a format that you are absolutely, positively sure you'll be able to find working readers for. Blu-Ray is a lot more likely than a tape drive.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 16:45

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Twerk from Home posted:

Yeah, tape's a bad call for putting it in a vault. You're right. Will burned blu-rays last 50 years though? I've had burned CDs and DVDs die of old age already!

I hate to call for punch cards, but a REALLY BIG VAULT might do. Say Cheyenne Mountain.
e: Archival digital storage is a really, really hard problem, and both the British Library and the Library of Congress are sweating over it. (A few years back somebody had to hand-build a wire recorder to read WWII stuff, because there were no working wire readers left.) You'd want to do a literature search.

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Aug 1, 2016

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 16:49

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

PerrineClostermann posted:

They should've just called up this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ihiTwJPCc

I misremembered. This is the best cite I could find.

quote:

What can be done when old devices and software are
eclipsed? Electrical engineer Charles Mayn, 63, has
spent his career answering that question.

He runs the preservation lab of the National Archives
- a museum of archaic wire recorders, Dictaphones and
wax cylinder players - where movies and audio files
are transferred from obsolete to contemporary media.

Mayn's toughest challenge was 11,000 hours of audio
recorded in Germany after World War II. It contained
thousands of unique interviews of war-crime defendants
and witnesses, such as assistants to the Nazi doctor
Josef Mengele, who conducted horrific experiments on
death-camp inmates.

"Mengele was wanting to find out what happens to
pilots if they fly too high, the air's too thin, they
come down too fast," Mayn said, referring to one
recorded interrogation. "So the technician helped with
experiments on prisoners in pressure chambers."

The interviews, which contain crucial details
otherwise lost to history, were recorded with a
"Recordgraph," on 50-foot long, one-inch wide, nested
plastic belts. The device cut grooves into the plastic
much like those on an old vinyl record.

Not a single working Recordgraph machine could be
found to play the interviews.

So Mayn built two from scratch.

Over a decade, the interviews were moved to
quarter-inch audiotape. Kept cool and dry, tape can
last 50 years. But soon after the job was finished in
the mid-1990s, the last factory making quarter-inch
tape closed its doors and players are no longer made.

Today, everything the Archives rerecords is going
digital. The old media are dead.

Mayn said that like the Recordgraph and quarter-inch
tape, he's among the last of his breed. No one could
build a replacement DVD player from scratch, because
there's no reasonable way to resurrect the software
once it is lost.

"Someone a few centuries out who found a [Recordgraph
belt], can kind of figure it out - put a needle on it
and get sound back," he said. "If they find a CD,
there's just nothing there."

A fast Google on the Recordgraph boils down to "For God's sake, don't try to play loops back on an actual Recordgraph, because it will destroy them."

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 18:05

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

D. Ebdrup posted:

So while you're burning the discs and until they're in the safe, make sure they get as little as possible/no exposure to sunlight, and consider having a few new (unopened) disc readers in there as well.

And that does you no good without compatible software...

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 18:40

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

I just had a very annoying week with being unable to change files on my WD My Cloud PR4100. Let me save you the hassle. If you use either ssh or sftp to your MyCloud, the files will be written with different permissions than those used in the web interface.

By default, the MyCloud creates files owned by admin in group share. By default, the ssh and sftp logins create files owned by root, group root. Admin can't change files owned by root. This can cause problems if, say, you've transferred a massive tarball over to the MyCloud and then untarred it. All those new files and directories can be read but not changed by remote machines.

So, if you're using ssh and sftp, be sure to chown admin everything and chgroup share everything. Then your life will be smooth and serene. Probably.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2016 04:16

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:31

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Captain_Person posted:

For the past few years I've just been using your typical external hard drives to store all of my movies and music on, but I've recently begun looking at getting a NAS to share everything across my flat.

I don't have any grand requirements for capacity - 2 or 4 TB would probably be more than enough - and I don't need anything too meaty or expensive either. I've been looking primarily at the WD My Cloud line, but I'm not sure if that'll suit my requirements.

I currently have a TV with a PS4 and a Chromecast hooked up to it. I'm also using Plex to stream movies stored on my laptop to my PS4. I'd like to be able to play whatever videos I have stored on whatever device I get easily on my laptop and on my TV, and play music across both as well. If I'm able to download (not stream) music to my Android phone that would be an added bonus.

Does anybody have any suggestions or what to get, or how to get this set up? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The Mycloud runs Plex natively, so you can stream to whatever you want. It also gives you full access to the file system, both from your OS and through your browser, so it's trivial to copy files up and down.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2016 04:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of