2 disk NAS RAID 1

Craig321 · 26 Sep 2008 at 16:09

I'm hopefully going to be buying 2 1.5TB drives soon for storage/backup to replace my 2 current 500GB drives.

When I do get the new drives I'll have my 2 current 500GB drives spare.

I think the best use for them would be in a NAS using RAID 1 - so a nice secure 500GB of storage.

The reason for the NAS is mainly because I don't physically have space for the drives inside my PC, so if I'm going to make them external it may as well be network storage.

If I get the NAS I'll eventually make the network 1Gbps for nice fast transfers so I can do network installations etc.

I quite like the look of this one, it does everything I need: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...e=Icy Box IB-NAS4220-B Ethernet NAS Enclosure

Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Craig.

Pandobear · 26 Sep 2008 at 17:02

I think that you will be seriously disappointed with the transfer speed from any of the NAS solutions. If I were you I would pick one that has a USB2 interface too as a minimum so at least you can get a reasonable speed initially if you have a lot of data to transfer across. If you are going to use the drives mainly on one machine then esata would be your best choice for speed.

Craig321 · 26 Sep 2008 at 18:14

I was actually looking at just buying another eSATA enclosure like I have for my current 500GB backup drive, then putting them in RAID 1 - it'd achieve the same thing but with more speed and less cost.

My original plan was to transfer all my programs/games from CD/DVD to the NAS, then I'd be able to do network installations, but it's probably going to be too much hassle doing it that way - I'd have to buy the NAS, 1Gbps cables, and a 1Gbps switch which would end up costing more than it's worth.

Not sure if I'm being stupid here, but wouldn't a 1Gbps CAT6 cable transfer at around 119MB/s which would max out the NAS anyway?

http://www.speedguide.net/conversion.php

jbloggs · 27 Sep 2008 at 02:48

Even if the CAT6 cable has a theoretical transfer rate of 119MB/s, you would have to be reading/writing from the HDD at that rate to actually obtain it would you not?

wesley · 27 Sep 2008 at 11:40

most "ready" NAS boxes are very slow, even with gigabit network, trust me, i had a play with Lacie NAS raid 1 once a while ago on gigabit network. it's very slow.

have a look at NAS speed charts at small builder net website. you'll see that windows boxes and high end NAS solution boxes (£600+) are MUCH faster than cheapie "ready" NAS boxes, due their low powered processor (less than 200mhz)

to be honest, if it was me, i'd get cheap second hand Dell Optiplex machine with 2 hard drives bay from ebay for less than £100 or brand new intel atom box which cost less than £150.

Another benefit with windows boxes that you can use it for another features such like FTP/bit torrent, usenet, XAMP and many more, with NAS boxes, very limited features.

edit: most ready NAS boxes only read at 10-18mbps, compare that to windows boxes, 50mbps+, have a look at HEADRAT's thread, he has WHS box, he managed to read at 90mbps!!!

Craig321 · 27 Sep 2008 at 12:47

jbloggs said:
Even if the CAT6 cable has a theoretical transfer rate of 119MB/s, you would have to be reading/writing from the HDD at that rate to actually obtain it would you not?

Yup.

wesley said:
most "ready" NAS boxes are very slow, even with gigabit network, trust me, i had a play with Lacie NAS raid 1 once a while ago on gigabit network. it's very slow.

have a look at NAS speed charts at small builder net website. you'll see that windows boxes and high end NAS solution boxes (£600+) are MUCH faster than cheapie "ready" NAS boxes, due their low powered processor (less than 200mhz)

to be honest, if it was me, i'd get cheap second hand Dell Optiplex machine with 2 hard drives bay from ebay for less than £100 or brand new intel atom box which cost less than £150.

Another benefit with windows boxes that you can use it for another features such like FTP/bit torrent, usenet, XAMP and many more, with NAS boxes, very limited features.

edit: most ready NAS boxes only read at 10-18mbps, compare that to windows boxes, 50mbps+, have a look at HEADRAT's thread, he has WHS box, he managed to read at 90mbps!!!

Very true, I'd probably be better of with that solution.

I think for now to keep things cheap and fast I'll get an enclosure for my 2nd 500GB drive, then RAID1 both of my eSATA 500GB external drives which will give me what I want with a good amount of speed.

I've already got an old IBM 1.5GHz running torrent/usenet/Lighttpd/MySQL/PHP/FTP etc. which is actually going really well, so I think I'll keep that as it is now (it could do with being a bit faster though).

Eventually I'd like to do as wesley suggested and get a computer and stick my spare 500GB drives in there to replace my current 1.5GHz server

Thanks for the help and replies everyone,
Craig.

hernaldo · 27 Sep 2008 at 12:55

Just to clarify...

The NAS you need to get anywhere near enough speed to do any number of "network installations" is going to cost you...

£450

just for the NAS.

Those cheap ones for consumers transfer data at a maximum speed of around 10mb a second or a bit less.

THEY ARE PURELY FOR STORING MEDIA FOR STREAMING TO XBOX360\PS3\MEDIA CENTER (etc).

Sorry for caps....just I think you might be in cuckoo land if you think you'll be maxing out a 1Gbps CAT6 connection...That is just interface that is used....

Much like USB2 is 480Mbps....There is no digital camera that will transfer pictures at that speed over it to your computer! (My panasonic Lumix TZ3 does it at about 700Kbps)

Ya with me?

hernaldo · 27 Sep 2008 at 12:56

Ooops....Sorry looks like its been expalined already

Pandobear · 27 Sep 2008 at 13:55

The WHS server route is a good one, particularly as you could replace your old server with a new one. The HP and Fujitsu dual core servers can be had for less than £150 new, and will be a lot faster, and probably use less power than you older server whilst also giving you the cross network storage speeds that you require plus a lot of other really useful features.

Craig321 · 27 Sep 2008 at 16:20

Pandobear said:
The WHS server route is a good one, particularly as you could replace your old server with a new one. The HP and Fujitsu dual core servers can be had for less than £150 new, and will be a lot faster, and probably use less power than you older server whilst also giving you the cross network storage speeds that you require plus a lot of other really useful features.

I'll check those out, thank you

Pandobear · 28 Sep 2008 at 12:21

I think that that the Fujitsu Primergy 100 was about the best value that I could find, I have one running as my media server right now, and a couple of spare ones in the attic. They were £125 each when I got them, the S1 is a dual core pentium 4 3GHZ, the S2 a E2140. You then have the cost of the OS, though Microsoft are doing a 120 day free trial on WHS, so you can try before you buy. If you don't like it, you can always run one of the free NAS Linux distributions, or whatever you are running on your current server.

I have run Vista Ultimate on one of the S1s, with a 7800GTX, as they have a x8 (x16 socket) PCIe slot, so run pretty well as a PC, very quiet also.

dipper17 · 30 Sep 2008 at 10:01

Have look at competitor website. They specialise in soho networks etc and have a series of articles on NAS with lots of data. Help to take away some of the myths you hear about being slow.

RSR · 1 Oct 2008 at 15:36

Craig321 said:
I was actually looking at just buying another eSATA enclosure like I have for my current 500GB backup drive, then putting them in RAID 1 - it'd achieve the same thing but with more speed and less cost.

My original plan was to transfer all my programs/games from CD/DVD to the NAS, then I'd be able to do network installations, but it's probably going to be too much hassle doing it that way - I'd have to buy the NAS, 1Gbps cables, and a 1Gbps switch which would end up costing more than it's worth.

Not sure if I'm being stupid here, but wouldn't a 1Gbps CAT6 cable transfer at around 119MB/s which would max out the NAS anyway?

http://www.speedguide.net/conversion.php

1Gb = 125~ MB/Sec

However there are a few other caviats that you may stop you getting near that sort of speed such as PCI bus etc...

Its not the cable that going to be limiting performance, its going to be the NIC and other factors. Cat6 can be used up to 10Gb connections.

Also more often then not systems such as the Qnap etc.. are going to be very slow roughtly around 15MB ~ sec

Also USB2 is 480Mb/sec = 60MB/Sec ~

Andy