eSata Storage Enclosure

ginjaninja · 5 Sep 2011 at 08:43

I am considering an 8+ bay storage enclosure.
Any brands or products to consider like EdgeStore DAS801T.
Need a living room device.
Need at least compatibility with sata3 drives (if not support for sata 3 bandwidth if only a future upgrade*).

*if this isnt currently realistic any suggestion on brands to look out for.

thanks

ginjaninja · 5 Sep 2011 at 19:05

Skidilliplop said:
For 8 drives you'd be better off going down the NAS route as SATA only connects a single device, thus you'd need 8x eSATA ports or two mini SAS connectors. This is tought to achieve without shelling out a lot on HBAs.
8 drives is a lot number for SOHO application. How much storage space do you realistically need?

Pretty sure i dont want a nas, its bad enough to limit 8 disks effective 800mb/s down to single channel sata 2 speed. Gbit ethernet would be even worse!

unfortunately if it was just a one time write and read during view then fine, but HTPC software needs to regularly reindex content etc plus i have to back up that 12TB to a duplicate every so often. So Gbit ethernet is no good.

Need it for an HTPC, currently at 12TB need 16 in short term. (Blurays take up 25-40GB each, a lot of space).

The hbas are not the problem. Non Raided super micro with 2 SAS ports and a couple of SAS-4xSata cables <£100 unfrotunately u need windows home server for software raid 7 which i dont have.
Even a reaonable high point 8 port rocket raid is <£200. The problem is the computer chasis. No one sells a normal atx chassis with a storage backplane. By the time you have spent a bit more on a larger psu, all the the data and power cables, karger case, a controller, then you are close to just buying an £350 8 port external enclosure (with all its advantages (management, leds, hot swap, portability) and disadvantages (single sata II channel))

ginjaninja · 5 Sep 2011 at 19:08

Trifid said:
You can get DAS bays with a esata port multiplier built in. My understanding is they are not very good though. I'd probably look into a couple of Drobo's if I were you.

I think i want DAS bays with esata port. Ive looked at drobo pro but at £1000, i would just stick to hdds in a large case, with a bigger psu and some fans.

ginjaninja · 5 Sep 2011 at 19:13

PhillyDee said:
As for living room, more than 1 or 2 sata mechanical drives make more noise. Is there any reason why you would need to have it in the living room?

You could save money by just buying a nice big tower such as the antex 1200, and a board with a load of sata ports. Are you really going to be hotswopping drives all the time?

Skidilliplop - The edgestore linked inclodes a pci-e cardfor the unit, so you just need a computer.

I find modern HDDs effectively silent (at least in my p183 case), the fan on the psu of enclosure would be noisier? (im expecting to have to change it).
needs to be in living room to have the DAS quality bandwidth to the HTPC. either way it needs to be quiet. c. '25' dbs is what my projector and HTPC produce from their spec sheets (anyways they are silent).

hotswap is not essential..a nice by product of paying a bit more for an enclosure.

yes i do plan to add to an HTPC.

ginjaninja · 5 Sep 2011 at 20:45

Myocardial Inf said:
How many things are you actually moving about at any one time?

Why would you need to backup 12TB each time? Why not just do incremental changes, that way you only backup the changes after initially backing up the 12TB. As I assume you're saving rips, how often are you actually going to be changing/moving files other than when you initially rip them? Similarly you could team multiple connections together both ends and increase your bandwidth I'd have thought.

I've bought a HP Microserver and am intending to install a PCI-e 1x HBA to attach a DAS to increase the amount of storage available. This connects to my HTPC in the living room and I don't really have any huge issues although I don't rip blue rays as I'd just play a DVD or blue ray direct if I'd purchased the disk.

I dont want a NAS primarily because you pay more for less bandwidth. I dont want to pay more for less, even though in practise as you say it would provide a workable amount of bandwidth in most instances.

please explain "Similarly you could team multiple connections together both ends and increase your bandwidth I'd have thought." dont follow this suggestion.

does PCI-e 1x HBA offer enough bandwidth not to choke performance of a 8 raid 5 array on at least sata 2. Do HP micro servers offer a cost effective 8 port chasis?

re: mount a bluray each time: i cant think of anything more tedious than not having all media online to browse / watch at any tv / projector in the house.

ginjaninja · 7 Sep 2011 at 19:34

Thanks for advice,

i have read the thread on avsforum and this is my inspiration for a BYO solution. He does not quote costs but i suspect its a bit more expensive than my solution so far below.

I could be swayed on the NAS that a few are suggesting, but by my reckoning they are more expensive and slower option, albeit fast enough. Unless i find a good value NAS it wont win over DAS (as long as i can find a quiet one) or BYO.

Just realised that my maximus formula x38 has a spare x16 PCI2 slot, so i have quite a lot of bus bandwidth.

I am currently considering 2xSAT3540U2E (4 port sata II chasis) on a cheap and cheerful (throwaway) RocketRAID 622 (not decided on controller).
with 1 RAID *5* array and a couple of startech 1m esata cables.

this comes to £310 delivered (not including 8x£55 disks).

My hope is that each enclosure would not max its sata II cable rating on Raid 5 reads. And given 8 x 2TB Spin Point F4s, then in a straight line i would get c. 400Mb/s read (200 from each enclosure/sata channel) and 100mb/s write.

There would be a little head room in the sata II connections, so i dont need to be too disgruntled with buying a sataII enclosure when i should wait for sata III (when good value/faster sata 3 disks come out, the potential performance of the enclosure will increase). The controller itself has a pcie limit of 500MB/s (PCIE2x1) but it is not as massive cost.

Would such a setup/controller yield such read/write speeds, is the bottleneck the controller?

I hope that the enclosures will support >2TB disks ..but at £300 it would not be as painful when it becomes obsolete as £1000 say of a drobo pro.

ginjaninja · 10 Sep 2011 at 10:09

Thanks RB

You do need to be a bit careful with compatibility though. I have a lot of hard won personal knowledge in this area and 4 motherboards sitting on the floor .

my current understanding is that PCIe x 1 slot or x 4 slot will fit in x16 slot.is this correct in most instances?

and that PCIe1 and 2 are interchangable albeit 2 would run at slower speed in 1.
is this correct in most instances?

As you mention 1 raid 5 array, does that mean you will also be booting from this array as well as using it for data storage ?.

nope..will be booting off ssd..not array.

Nope the enclosure only supports up to 2TB (well according to the PM chipset specs that is).

i have seen the manufacturers confirm that up to 2tb is supported. but was assuming that >2tb had not been tested. Are you saying that the low level specs confirm that support for >2tb is impossible or v. unlikely. I would prefer an enclosure that does not limit disk size, otherwise i will have no where to go when 2k+ resolutions come out.

ginjaninja · 14 Sep 2011 at 08:57

thank you.

There are people on internet stating that the startech enclosure works with 3TB drives....thats good enough for me.

People have mentioned that a rocket raid raid controller is v. slow at rebuilding raid arrays. I am interested in array expansion. I might start with 3 + 1 parity in an enclosure, and then buy another enclosure later with some more harddiscs and expand the array as i go. This would allow me to convert my current stand alone disks 1 by 1 into the array.
If not the rocket raid controller what is the next value point up to support two+ external esata chassis. Bear in my that the 622 is only £42. Sinking a lot more £ into a controller that might not work in my PCIe2x16 slot may not be realistic.

How bad is the 622 compared to more expensive products at rebuilding arrays, any experience out there?.

I do have a concern that whilst the 2tb spinpoint f4 are excellent value their performance sucks to the point that even watching a film whilst copying data to a drive can judder. I would not want the array to become unusable whilst the array is rebuilding especially if it takes a much longer time than the raw speed of the disk suggests it should.

ginjaninja · 18 Sep 2011 at 15:52

A friend needed storage before me and ask me to build -so i got a get out of jail free (build his first and see how it goes)
He opted for a 10 bay netstor, with 8 2tb samsung f4s and a Highpoint Rocketraid 622. £950 delivered.
will feedback performance in raid 0, 5 read/write/rebuild.
The 10 bay netstor is 20% more than the 2xstartech bay for bay but is most portable, probably more energy efficient, possibly quieter and cheaper in the long run if a 9th or 10th disk is required.
The 622 specs suggest it can support 10 disks (so matches the netstor better than 2.5? startechs). and also that it supports online array capacity increase.
two 622s cost less than 1 644 so as long as you have 2 pcie slots and not doing massive data transfer between the two cards, or need a 20 disk array, are probably as good.

ginjaninja · 19 Sep 2011 at 09:03

thanks

The case is just a 'dumb box'

my reading into this, is that the dumber the box, the less likely there is to be an artificial ceiling on the disk size supported? wishful thinking? The manufacturer states no maximum disk size in their specifications.

When i am playing around benchmarking rebuild speeds, comparing raid 0 and raid 5 (haven't decided whether i want the parity or not yet), do i need data populated across the entire array to properly test the speed or is rebuild speed of an array independent of the data on the array? As long as the raid 5 read/write/rebuild isn't diabolical i will probably go raid 5. What benchmark tools are best ive seen atto being mentioned most recently.

Given the constraints of the pci bus and the 2esata cables, and the application i am happy to go cheap on the raid card. For fun i am guesstimating average MB/s across 8 disks as Raid 0: 300 read, 250 write, Raid 5: 300 read, 125 write; i will be pleasantly surprise if i get any where near the 500mb/s limit of the bus or more impressive raid 5 performance. (and disappointed if i cant sustain the native speed of an equivalent single disk ie 75mbs r/w).

any experience on using flexraid rathar than hardware controller?

ginjaninja · 19 Sep 2011 at 12:32

good point, wont be able to test speed without a faster 2nd storage destination. rebuild performance will be interesting none the less.

ginjaninja · 19 Sep 2011 at 12:44

Yamahahahahaha said:
8 drives in RAID5 is risky enough.
8 large 7.2k RPM drives in RAID5 is pointless. You will get corruption during the rebuild window (24 hours for 1TB, 48 hours for 2TB as a rule of thumb).

precipitated by the risk of 2nd hdd failure, or is there a more common corruption in the normal course of storage?

ive only ever had one hdd fail ever on me, and that was a beat up external drive. they dont fail that often?

ginjaninja · 19 Sep 2011 at 16:43

thanks for advice,
the raid 5 parity is a 'near-line' piece of mind level of redundancy. I will have other more drastic options if i ever lost the entire array.
the 622 supports hot spare, so the risk window will be minimised to c. 10 hours at 200gb/hr rebuild. The risk of two hdd failures/cost to mitigate is too small/large compared to effort of rebuilding, so i can live with that.
smaller arrays soak up additional parity disks, hot spares and drive bays, so again given the risk/cost balance i think i will go with one. I wont come crying to you when it goes wrong :-)

i have been warned.

ginjaninja · 19 Sep 2011 at 18:15

might have to go with two arrays, 5 of my disks are samsung f4 203 and 3 would be samsung f4 204s, dont want to mix hdd models do i?

ginjaninja · 19 Sep 2011 at 21:15

any recommendations on formatting settings /disk / array settings for a raid array on a 622.
dont know all the options, but recall there be choices in the os (sector size, mbr or gpt) and raid bios settings (stripe size).

im thinking maximum stripe size supported by controller in array as 99% (by MB stored) of the stored data will be in files > 5GB. not sure about cluster size of partition in os.

ginjaninja · 20 Sep 2011 at 20:35

i sense an 'i told you so' moment.
Turns out the netstor literature on a quiet device is rubbish.
The device is a little too noisy for a living room device. There are no other products that come close to its price point other than the startechs i can see.
Price for the sole uk distribution has jumped 48 pounds.
Looks like i will have to build my own.
The 622 seems good enough, I can copy at 75mb/s second, whilst the array is initialising and watch a film without stutter. Hoping the performance will increase once the array has initialised..says it will take 24hrs to initialise the 16TB array!

ginjaninja · 21 Sep 2011 at 11:42

Maybe take a look at some cases like the "CF-1091 Black Steel" (9 bay 5 1/4" bays)

see this one has a 80mm fan too.

Apparently the fans on the netstor are very accessible with a standard 2 pin connector. Are there adapter thats could run them at a lower rpm? or perhaps its just cheaper/easier to replace with quieter fans...any suggestions?

ginjaninja · 22 Sep 2011 at 07:52

Netstor chasis- 8xSamsung F4 HD204UI - Rocket Raid 622 - (64KB blocksize, 4kb sector on 622, 4kb cluster / GPT on OS) read and write is between 140 and 160 mbs according to hdtune accross the entire 14tb raid 5 with a 16ms access time. So not as fast read as i was expecting but faster than a single disk. Since the values are so close, perhaps limited by the controller or the chasiss port multipliers.

The heat is non existent (disks are at 82F) when the disks are running at full tilt, so will try disconnecting some of the hotswap fans before replacing them for quietness.

ginjaninja · 22 Sep 2011 at 19:18

that was a bust, the noise is coming from the psu and the air draw it produces. I removed all the hot swap case fans and no change to the noise so the case fans are quiet it would seem. The psu is not. looks like a 25 mm fan on the psu, Need to find a quiet 300w ipc form factor psu!
room is too cramped for larger case fans but this doesnt seem to be the issue.

ginjaninja · 24 Sep 2011 at 10:13

couldnt find a quiet psu for the netstor. decided to change tack for my build
All prices inc Vat
SFF8087 to 4 Sata QTY 2 = £24.96
RocketRaid RR2720SGL 8 Port SAS/SATA III RAID Controller QTY 1 = £125.98
Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 750W PC Power P9 BN174 QTY 1 = £137.57
Fractal Design Define XL Full Tower Case QTY 1 = £104.99
Total = £393.50.

Controller only has 8 ports (but controllers start getting a lot more expensive after 8 ports)
Case doesnt support hotswap, led indicators (not really required as long as i label up)
i am pretty sure Case will be silent.

Phase 1 - run htpc and storage case at same time, feed 1m sas/sata cables to storage case from controller.

Phase 2 - use the new storage case/psu for a new build i was planning anyways. save £250

all i need now is a good value/quiet 5.25 bay to 3.5 hdd converter to support a bit more HDDs storage in the fractal design, when required, given a future motherboard will support a 4-6 disk raid 5 array as well and the fractal design only has 10 bays.

any thoughts please, will these parts work together?
Any other good quality cases with 10+ hdd bays?