Spec Me: NAS

[Westyfield2]

I’m after a NAS for home. Currently I’m being a ***** and just using a couple of RAID1 Caviar Blacks in one of the PCs. I would like a proper NAS now, not a PC acting as a NAS (noise, size, power consumption).

The main purposes of the NAS will be:

• Serving ~30GB MKVs to the HTPC – I like to straight rip blu-rays, not compress them down or anything.
• Generic filestore for all Macs/PCs. RAW photos from the DSLR, ISOs/installers for purchased software, etc.
• Time Machine for the Macs.

The NAS I’ve been looking at is the Drobo FS. It’s a 5bay gigabit NAS with a dual core ARM processor. The Drobo FS retails for £500 diskless (I'd just stick in a pair of 2TBs to start with).
However... lots of people say that it (well the Drobo range in general) is “overpriced and slow”.

The Drobo uses some proprietary BeyondRAID system. I don’t give a **** what they call it, how it works, and whether it’s proprietary or not. What I do like however is that you can mix and match disk sizes, replace disks on the fly (pull out a 500GB and replace it with a 1TB) and expand the array on the fly. No copying of the data to elsewhere or anything, just shove in some more disks or replace current ones with bigger ones and the Drobo will sort everything out (obviously only one at a time – allowing it to automatically move the data around before replacing the next). This is good. If only it wasn't “slow”.

Soo… what NAS should I buy that does the same as the Drobo and is not “slow”? I'm not biased brand wise, Netgear, Synology, Drobo, whoever!

 

[Beansprout]

Build your own FreeNAS box is proably the reply you'll get, it's what I concluded after doing my own search

Then I ended up not building one as I don't have time to watch films anyway, let alone get them organised onto a HTPC

 

[Cycrow]

is there a reason u dont want to use a pc as a nas ?

if u use the right parts u can make a small lower powered one

a cheap mITX board, like an atom would be fine for a nas and use very little power

the size would depend on the case you chose to use, as for the noise, most of it would come from the hard drives themselves

then u could use something like FreeNAS or unraid
althou i assume ur looking at a raid 1 system ?

atom would cost about £50 if u look around, then £20 for ram
most likly need a SATA controller, as u usually only get 2 ports

so for £100 u get the base system then just find a sutible case and add the drives

 

[Westyfield2]

I've found some actual stats for the Drobo FS rather than "LOLS ALL DROBOS ARE SLOW".

Using AJA System Test with the settings at 1.0GB file size, disabled file system cache, Video Frame Size 1920×1080 10-bit, File I/O API: Unix, round frame sizes to 4 KB and enable network volumes, Timon Royer measured:

27.3 MB/s write and 39.7 MB/s read speed - with the Drobo empty.
26.7 MB/s write and 39.1 MB/s read speed - with the Drobo 40% full.

Testing it with Jumbo Frames (I'm not currently using them, and I'm not sure if I can without a separate VLAN due to 10/100 devices on the network) he got:
34.8 MB/s write and 44.3 MB/s read speed.


Whilst that won't win any awards for speed, I'm sitting here thinking even without Jumbo Frames it should be fast enough?


Another comment I read is "My Drobo FS gives me approx 25MBs without Jumbo Frames. Slow, but more than fast enough for 1080p MakeMKV videos."



Now, thinking outloud here in a very simplistic way... a Blu-Ray MKV rip is normally ~30GB and the movie is normally ~120 minutes long. 30720MB ÷ 7200 seconds = 4.26 MB/s. Surely 39.1 MB/s is ample then?

Is there a reason you don't want to use a PC as a NAS ?

Ignoring the likely higher power consumption/size/noise, in my head I've already decided that using a PC as a NAS will be a lot more effort than the It just works Drobo. But I'll take a look at FreeNAS .

One thing that Timon Royer said which I agree with entierly: "Why did I choose the Drobo FS? Well I have a business to run and while I am very techie I still do not want to spend more time than needed. The Drobo FS is a dead simple plug it in and get back to business solution. No bothersome configuration of IP addresses, formatting, choosing RAID-levels and expansion is as easy as pushing the next HDD in. It just works, out of the box with no hassles. The Drobo FS is a second to none solution and excels at this."

 

[iraiguana]

If you value simplicity, get a drobo. If you like minimal set-up, but would like more flexibility get synology or qnap type system.

If you want a complete solution which you have total control and spend time learning how it works and then being able to set-up the device how you wish, before you start using it.

 

[DIABLO]

Have you looked at the HP proliant Microserver? 1.3GHz dual core AMD processor (a netbook processor), 1GB of RAM (upgradable to 16GB), comes with a 250GB harddrive, uses less then 50w with 4 drives running. Downside maybe for you is that because it's a pc at heart it's not as plug and play as a NAS would be but it's infinatly more flexable and costa only £140. There is a big thread in the server section.

 

[Cycrow]

Ignoring the likely higher power consumption/size/noise, in my head I've already decided that using a PC as a NAS will be a lot more effort than the It just works Drobo. But I'll take a look at FreeNAS .

well, its not really true about power consuption/size/noise
i've heard that some NAS systems can infact be quite noisy

like i said, an atom based system doesn't use much power, infact they are reported to need about 14W of power, some Via ITX systems use even less than that

size depends on the case, as u can get cases that are simlar sized to a standard NAS.

and noise, well these atom/via systems dont make much noise, infact some, like mine, are completly silent
so the only noise it makes is from the harddrives themselves, which is also present in a NAS system

proper NAS solutions do have 1 main advantage thou, they are more convenient.
and NAS style pc cases tend to be quite expensive.
but if u can sacrifice the size abit, they can work out considerably cheaper