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

«‹›3 »

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I've been using a DNS-321 for a while now, and it's time to move up to something more. Is there a reason the Netgear Readynas NV+ isn't mentioned here? It's diskless, expandable, and seems cheap enough. I'd be using it mainly for home media storage, watching stuff over UPnP on PS3, photos, and music. The expandable RAID is really attractive to me, as I don't like the idea of upgrading 4 drives at a time when it's ready to move up.

I'd only be using it for home via SMB access and would likely leave it passsword-less. Is there a better device that offers similar functionality?

I don't want to build a nas PC for a couple reasons, namely complexity, size and power draw.

edit: I had been looking at HP's mediasmart WHS boxes, but since they got rid of the drive expander feature, I've lost interest.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2011 23:24

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:59

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Vinlaen posted:

What's the best 2 TB drive for around $80 to be used in an eight disk ZFS RAID-Z2 array?

I've been told that 4k drives don't work well with ZFS so I'd like something with the regular 512 byte sectors. (and not 4k with 512 byte emulation)

Anyways - I'm looking at buying eight of these:

Hitachi Deskstar 5k3000 2 TB

Are these 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM? Are they "eco" drives? (Surprisingly I can't seem to find any information on that...)

Anybody have any other suggestions? This is only going to be used for a home fileserver box.

I just picked up a pair of these, and so far, so good.
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Spinpoint-SATA2-5400rpm-HD204UI/dp/B0042SGDVG

Here's a review that paints it as a pretty nice unit, in comparison with its 'green' competition.
http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_spinpoint_f4eg_review_hd204ui

# ¿ Apr 28, 2011 04:03

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Corbet posted:

Can someone point me in the right direction as to what NAS I should buy?

I'm looking for something that will be used to stream content to my network attached TV. DLNA/UPnP is a must, along with mac compatibility (specifically, HFS+) along with USB ports for added expansion. If possible, I'd like to spend less than $200. Any ideas?

DNS-323 might work if you need an appliance, though your HFS+ is an odd request. It uses ext2, or ext3, but you can connect via SMB to the shares through a mac, so if that's what you're worried about, it works. I use mine mainly to stream movies via upnp av to my ps3.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2011 21:39

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

DNova posted:

N40l for $179.99 shipped!
http://www.pcconnectionexpress.com/...a2a5d49a2880a2b

After waiting a while for a synology box to drop to a price I was happy with, I jumped on this instead.

I'm going to rip the two 2TB drives out of my desktop to get this guy started. I've installed linux a few times just for shits and giggles, but have never become anywhere near proficient with it. Are there distros that are easy enough for the linux ignorant to use for basic windows file serving / upnp media streaming (ps3), or should I just stick with WHS2011?

I've been reading the thread on and off, and most of the ZFS/freeNAS discussion seems to be above my tech level, or maybe because I haven't bothered to practice with this stuff. Is it less complicated than I'm making it out to be?

# ¿ Mar 14, 2012 16:42

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

IT Guy posted:

$200 for 2GB drives is steep, isn't it?

I assume you mean 2TB, and it's just the going rate now for mid-performance 7200rpm 2TB drives. I bought a couple of the aforementioned 5k3000 drives early last year for something like $60 - $70/ea. They're slow, but for NAS fodder, they've been perfect for me.

It's taking a long time for prices to drop to pre-flood levels. I could use a couple more drives for my n40l, but I don't need the storage today, so I'm waiting.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2012 20:49

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Fangs404 posted:

http://www.pcconnectionexpress.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=13371257&cac=Result has the N40L for $199 again.

It was $180 when I bought one last week. :smug:

That mini-SAS connector is the worst thing in the world to remove. The rest of the hardware is really nice.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 17:54

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Fangs404 posted:

Jealous! So I've read a few people say the built-in NIC sucks? Is this true? Should I replace it?

Also, I wanna max out the memory since it's so cheap. Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G looks like the way to go. Confirm/deny?

I'm getting full speed with the built-in NIC on WHS2011. Some people go with an intel NIC for the linuxy server OS's, I think. I guess do some research depending on what software you intend to run.

I picked up a single 4GB ECC stick, adding to the 2GB it came with, it put me at 6GB at half the price. I hear you can run non-ECC if you want, but it takes a bit of luck.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 18:10

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Fangs404 posted:

OK, cool. I'm planning on doing RAID-Z with FreeNAS, and there are plenty of Newegg reviews saying it works just fine with FreeNAS, so I think I'll be fine.

I went ahead and ordered the 8gb kit. I read that upgrading the RAM is a pain in the rear end, so I figure I'll just go ahead and max it out. I went the ECC route. It's just a little extra peace of mind.

The only difficult part of upgrading the RAM is unplugging the mini-SAS connector (the large one on the left), the rest is really simple. Unplug the rest of the USB headers, fan plugs, mobo power supply, and slide the tray out. Make sure you plug something into the onboard SATA port if you want to use a 5th internal device in the 5.25" bay while you have the motherboard out. Even if you don't have immediate plans, plug one in and snake it up to the top bay while you can.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 18:39

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Fangs404 posted:

Awesome, thanks for the advice. I already have 4 2TB storage drives, and I'm planning on using the included 250gb drive for the OS. I know a BIOS mod is necessary to use the 5th SATA port, right? Where do I get that mod?

I was disappointed that the included 250gb drive is installed in one of the bay slots. I pulled it out and stuck it in the 5.25" area in the top, and used the motherboard's SATA port to control it (no bios mod needed - boots fine). Use the 4 bays for your TB drives.

Also, not sure why anyone would bother putting an optical drive into one of these servers. Nearly every OS installs fine from USB, and you can use the top bay for one or more HDD's instead.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 19:43

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Fangs404 posted:

Oh, perfect, I didn't realize I could use the mobo's SATA port to control it. So what does the BIOS mod get you?

AHCI support for that SATA port.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 22:41

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Fangs404 posted:

Wouldn't I want AHCI support for that SATA port?

It's preferable, but I didn't want to void my warranty yet.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 23:25

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

kri kri posted:

Why does it come disabled?

There's no good reason. The port is labelled ODD, intending it to only be used for an optical disc drive, and the instructions won't even call it a SATA port for some reason.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2012 04:31

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Fangs404 posted:

I'm gonna put the 250gb drive that comes with my N40L into the 5.25" bay, but I'd like to secure it. Do you guys know of any 3.5"-in-5.25" devices?

They're everywhere. Same concept as the 3.5" to 2.5" adapters.

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/141995/StarTechcom-35in-Universal-Hard-Drive-Mounting/

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 18:29

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Prefect Six posted:

Does nothing back up NAS drive?

From what I can tell, setting up an iSCSI would not work, since I want to be able to copy files onto my NAS back up from different computers. Are there any solutions out there that I can just drag and drop files manually to be stored or is it all through some program that you have to set what to back up?

I'm running FreeNAS.

As long as your FreeNAS server is the host to the iSCSI volume, why wouldn't that work? You'd treat the iSCSI array as another storage unit, though the NAS.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 18:35

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Prefect Six posted:

From what I could tell only one PC could access the iSCSI volume, so my wife couldn't upload pictures from her laptop onto the iSCSI volume through a SMB share if the iSCSI initiator was on my PC.

This is just what I've gleened from looking into setting up an iSCSI connection, I could be completely wrong so please educate me.

Think of iSCSI as a USB connection to a drive. Connect it through the freenas machine, then share it from there.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2012 18:54

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:

I'd be all over the N40L if it wasn't plastic. And can anyone confirm the amount of HD seek noise it gives out?

Plastic? Also, it's a server - keep it in a closet or your garage or somewhere away from your desk. Still, it's a very quiet machine.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2012 04:01

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Crackbone posted:

Are N40L sales common, or was the PCConnection deal a fluke?

Looks like they come up on regular intervals. If you have the means, set up deal alerts for amazon and newegg as well.

Speaking of, I'm really happy with my N40L and WHS2011. I'm not comfortable enough with linux/solaris/bsd to mess with one of those solutions, and this has ended up being really nice as a fileserver and media server for the PS3's in my house. I was going to put PS3 media server on it, when I realized the native media sharing works perfectly already (h.264 mp4 files for video). Performance is excellent for file transfers, even if the dashboard operations are a little sluggish. But it's a low-power CPU, so I can't complain too much.

My DNS-323 is sadly neglected now until hard drive prices fall again and I think of some use for it.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2012 16:33

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I don't recall needing to install a single driver, and windows update took care of everything. I checked device manager to be sure, and everything was golden.

Really, the only difficulty I've had with the machine so far was disconnecting the mini-sas port to pull out the motherboard. Other than that, it's been one of my favorite pre-builts I've owned, and WHS has been perfect for my needs once I installed drivepool.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2012 23:23

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Bonobos posted:

Thanks for the info. Did you try Drivebender at all? I was wondering how it compares to Drivepool.

I think the only difference is in the price, $20 vs $40.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2012 00:01

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I think you're seeing the limits of your hard drives. You might get a little north of 100MB/s if your drives were a bit faster on both ends, but you're already close. Replacing your networking hardware wouldn't get you anything.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2012 17:23

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:

Another N40L question: is the 2TB drive spec a hard limit or are there ways around it?

Mine just arrived today.. really pleased at how small it is compared to my HTPC

The chipset supports 3.2TB HDD's. So you'll be wasting space and money if you buy 4TB drives, but 3TB drives would be perfect. If you saw 2TB batted around in N40L conversations, it was probably in reference to backup limits supported by WHS2011 - the drive will be partitioned into 2 drives.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2012 03:59

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

3.2 TB is a very odd number that I've not encountered in drive capacity limits before. How did they end up there?

Some AMD southbridge thing. Dunno. I just ran across it while reading. If it's bullshit, I'd be happy, but I'm not going to be the one to find out.

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=958208&page=316

Others speculate that if you just use a more modern SATA PCI-E card, you'll be able to use the entire thing. 2TB drives still seem to be the price/capacity king, so that's what I'm sticking with for now.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2012 04:37

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Sombrero! posted:

N40L goons: Do I have to use ECC RAM or can I just use the RAM I've got lying around/in my normal computer?

Non-ECC RAM is hit-or-miss, so you might as well give it a try with what you have. Also, I hear that Windows (home server) is a bit more forgiving than the linuxy systems with regard to non-ECC RAM.

# ¿ May 9, 2012 23:44

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/hard-drive-supplies-back-to-pre-flood-levels-but-prices-arent/

Interesting article on Ars Technica - hard drive supplies are back to normal, but prices aren't. With only 3 companies selling drives, I'm not sure that competition (and prices) will ever be as fierce as it was pre-flood.

# ¿ May 29, 2012 20:54

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Krakkles posted:

Is there any good reason to do this over a DNS-343? I'm just looking at both and the 343 is cheaper and less work.

What type of drives should I use? Newegg reviews are scary.

I've had both the DNS-321 and DNS-323, and they certainly work, but performance is poo poo, even over the GB connections. 10MB/sec on great days (gigabit network). In comparison, my N40L running WHS2011 gets about 80MB/sec, with drives I pulled out of my DNS-323.

Consider that I bought my N40L for around $200, and WHS2011 keeps going on sale for $30 (if you don't want to do freenas, etc). The Dlink boxes are certainly functional, and easy to set up, but LAN performance is lousy.

As for what drives to use, get what's cheap. Green drives are fine for this type of use.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2012 17:39

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Krakkles posted:

Ok, sounds like good points. Where on earth did you find one for $200? I'm looking and finding nothing less than ~$350. Well, Ebay has it for $255.xx +$129 shipping

Checked receipt, it was $180 @ PC Connection Express. But yeah, I've also seen Newegg carry it for around $200. If you're not in a hurry, RSS some deal sites and you'll save some scratch.

I assume you've given up on the D-link appliance. Good move.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2012 05:21

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Any reason not to use them as system drives? The MSRP is competitive with other drives, and you get high performance along with low power consumption.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2012 18:11

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

It seems like they only have issues with small files, and most of us who care about this poo poo already have a SSD for their system use.

I've moved all my >=2TB drives to my NAS, but I wouldn't mind putting a couple large drive back into my PC for storage. These seem ideal.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2012 18:37

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Thermopyle posted:

Hmm. Any known problems with these?

I need to start working on a plan to migrate my 16TB mdadm+LVM+ext4 system to something xfs based.

1 yr warranty is kind of a disappointment. Other than that, hard drives are largely similar, especially if you're just using them as server fodder.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2012 02:19

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Bob Morales posted:

Tom's Hardware has a review of the WD Red drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd20efrx-wd30efrx-nas,3248.html

TL;DR: They're pretty slow but they run way cooler and use less power than the rest of the drives out there.

The only thing they're poor at is transferring lots of small files. Most of us cram our NAS's full of mp3's, photos, and movies, in which case, the drive does just fine, and will not be the bottleneck on a gig network connection. I'm hoping to pick up a pair of 3TB reds when the prices come down a bit more.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2012 16:59

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

IT Guy posted:

Anyone see any compatibility issues with these drives Hitachi 4TB Deskstar 7K4000 in an N40L with FreeNAS?

I've read the n40l's SATA controller can't see anything bigger than 3.something tb, so you'd be paying for storage you couldn't use.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2012 07:19

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

You can buy them now, but Amazon's price isn't that great.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-WD20EFRX-Frustration-Free/dp/B008JJLZ7G

Since we're talking network storage anyway, I'm not sure why anyone would be going for super high-performance drives. My 2 year old WD green drives nearly hit the limits of gigabit ethernet.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 22:47

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

FISHMANPET posted:

I bought 5 3TB Reds from NewEgg, 1 was DOA, and another died shortly after adding it to my array. The other 3 are humming strong.

This is something I see constantly. The funny thing is that Newegg reviews mention a ton of DOA drives (3/5 stars), but the Amazon reviews are almost immaculate (4.5/5 stars). I was thinking of picking up a couple of 3TB reds to replace some of my should-be-dead-by-now 2TB green drives, but this makes me curious.

# ¿ May 15, 2013 21:21

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

kill your idols posted:

Synology DS212j or DS112j and WD Red's. Should come under $400 shipped from Amazon for the 1-Bay unit. I've had the DS112j, DS212j, and DS713+; all have been great pieces of hardware. The GUI is straight forward and set and forget.

HOWTO: http://www.synology.com/us/solutions/backup/time_machine/time_machine.php

Such a solid unit. Someone asked me to set up a "server" for them, and I went with a DS212j and a couple 3TB reds for them. After using a few other nas appliances in the past, the Synology unit was worlds ahead in all aspects.

Rolling your own seems to be the popular option in this thread, but for nas appliances, Synology is amazing. Great balance of ease of use and tons of features.

# ¿ May 20, 2013 16:53

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Crackbone posted:

Looking for some advice on which drives to buy. I'll be doing a Windows-based set up with Drive Bender, probably just mirroring two drives. This will be strictly for media storage. Is there anything in the 3 TB range that's considered a best buy?

http://www.amazon.com/WD-Red-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLW4M/

WD Red drives are the usual go-to recommendation, due to their suitability to this type of usage, low power consumption, reliability, and warranty.

Get them from amazon, apparently Newegg drop-kicks theirs into the UPS truck.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 16:37

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

5436 posted:

I'm looking into this (RAID 1 (mirror)) for my NAS( http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Network-Attached/dp/B005YW7OLM/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1378843534&sr=1-4 )

Its the Synology DiskStation DS212j. I'm just doing movies, tv shows, pictures, documents, and pictures. Any concerns buying this? I was thinking of dropping 2-2TB drives in there.

It's awesome hardware, I set one up for someone earlier this year. But you might as well spend $20 and double the RAM by getting the 213j instead.

I like Synology enough that I'm considering moving from my n40l (whs2011) to a 4-bay synology unit. Does anyone know what their update schedule is like? I'd hate to buy a DS412+ or DS413 and have a new model come out a few weeks later.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2013 21:16

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

parsleyc posted:

Does anyone have an opinion on the Toshiba PH3300U-1I72 3TB drive?

It's one of Shell Shockers at NewEgg today.

At $40 less than a 3TB WD Red with a similar 3-year warranty, it seems like a great deal. I'm thinking of purchasing getting a couple for my UnRaid setup.

Cool, I picked up 2 to replace 2 greens in my NAS that are probably living on borrowed time.

I should unload these puppies on craigslist before they start spitting out errors.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2013 20:25

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Gozinbulx posted:

So any comments on these large 3tb and 4tb drives? Is 1tb per platter good or bad? Seagate or WD Red? Really wanna make a purchase soon.

No one seems to have problems with the large drives. WD Reds are frequently recommended.

Speaking of, Newegg had 3TB Reds for sale for $115 or so this morning, so I grabbed a couple. The general recommendation is not to use Newegg for drives, though. They have an absurd amount of failures, while Amazon users seem to be pleased.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 20:40

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Gozinbulx posted:

Any particular problem with the 4 TB's as opposed to the 3 TB's? I'm trying to find reviews but Amazon has the stupidest approach to reviews ever, grouping all WD Red drive reviews (2, 3 and 4 TB) all together.

While it is stupid, I don't ever recall drives of increasing capacity ever causing issues. Things like WD green failing and the old Deathstars were either due to lovely firmware or read head operation, and never due to increasing platter density or number of platters. And who knows what the hell is up with Newegg's WD Red drives. We've all just attributed it to shoddy handling.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2013 17:05

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:59

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

teamdest posted:

This really has been a persistent thing for YEARS now. I remember ordering hard drives back in... 2005 or 2006 to build a computer, and 3 or 4 out of 5 were DOA. It's down to their lovely packing, mostly. UPS is rough on packages by nature, and newegg just doesn't acknowledge that issue in their packaging. Ordering from Amazon has been 100% success rate for me.

I've ordered 4 drives from Newegg this week, and they all shipped via Ontrac, which is what Amazon uses most of the time (for me).

I have Prime and prefer Amazon because they're generally awesome for everything, but Newegg had some serious sales, so I went with them. And they've always had excellent customer service as well. Not as good as Amazon, but better than shitbuckets like Tigerdirect.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2013 20:10

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

«‹›3 »