External storage questions - NAS

Bouncer

Bouncer

Bouncer

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Hi

I'm looking around for an external storage solution to go with an iMac. I'm sure the 500GB HD will run out pretty soon, but i don't want to have 3 external hard drives on my desk taking up all my usb ports.

I need a solution that allows me to read and write to the drives as quickly as possible as i want to use one of the drives as a video editing scratch disk.

I'm not sure how NAS works exactly, but it'll just be me using the drives (a network of one person!) I have a gigabit ethernet port on the iMac that is not being used, i use Wifi for the internet, and i'll use the USB/FW ports for other things.

I'd like a 2 drive enclosure i think, one for a 320GB scratch and another for a 750GB file store - movies/edited footage/music/files/more files!

Am i asking for the impossible?

Is the ethernet port a fast enough interface for a scratch drive?

Can someone find me a 2 drive NAS enclosure available in the UK, for sensible money?

Should i just bite the bullet and have 2 external hard drives on my desktop?

Can i put 10000rpm server class drives in the enclosure? Will this be any quicker than 7200rpm

I use Final Cut and Maya and also CS3 on an iMac, has anybody an experience/better solutions?

thanks!!
 
Nas's are great for slowish, mass storage. I wouldn't use on as temp path, they're too slow. Fitting a 10K drive would be a waste of time. Although I have a 100mps LAN so can't comment about 1gb lan.

D-Link DNS-323 is a two bay SATA NAS, got one- works fine. About £165 plus drives on top.
 
Even on gigabit ethernet NAS transfer rates tend to be slow, 20-30Mb/s is what I hear so way too slow for a scratch disk.
 
Domestic (ie cheap) NAS drives are too slow, unless you're willing to pay for commercial units.

A 10K drive might work faster in an external enclosure, but it would depend on the chipset. The fastest I've seen a USB or FW chipset is ~35MB/sec. I don't know which one it was though, I've had too many.
 
If you want more storage with fast read/write, just fit another in your computer. If you're running out of room fit in 5.25" bays, look into a new case.

I've had bad experiences with external drives, I certainly wouldn't trust data (data loss during transfers) Although hopefully being a mac, with mac approved external box should be more stable I/O protocol.

If you have more than one computer, or need to access data elseware on your LAN a NAS is great.
 
you cant fit extra drives in an iMac unfortunately!

I'm having great trouble finding any dual drive FW800 enclosures in the UK - loads in the USA though!!
 
Can a NAS connnect through gigabit Ethernet straight to a laptop, or does it have to be linked through a router?

What kind of transfer rates would you get (im not using it as a scratch disk, but if its gunna be slower then fire wire 400/usb i wont bother)
 
In theory you could but you'd need to run a DHCP server on the laptop to give the NAS an IP address so that you could talk to it.

Transfer rates are poor, 20-30MB/s as I noted earlier so less than USB and a fair bit below Firewire 400.
 
Even if you have a commercial grade NAS most of them top out at ~90MBit/s (around 10MB/s) even those with gigabit interfaces and the faster ones, capable of speeds approaching gigabit are the size of a small PC anyhow...

Usually from a single USB2.0 disc you will get as people have stated around 20-30MB/s with multiple discs on the same root hub you will usually top out at about 35MB/s when they are all in use - tho I've seen almost 50MB/s sometimes... personally I've not seen any different transfer rates using firewire to USB2.0 tho that might be different with the mac as firewire is more its thing...
 
would this be what i am after:

**LINK REMOVED**

I basically want to put 2 drives into a box, they both show up as individual drives, one a 320GB the other 750GB - I want them both to be connected to the iMac by FW800.

I don't want them to be in RAID or anything, just two separate drives connected to the computer by one cable (i only have one FW800 port).

Is 'JBOD' what i'm after??
 
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