NAS for HD content

DangerIsGo

2[H]4U
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Apr 16, 2005
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I'm looking to put together a NAS for my house (main comp and HTPC). At MOST, two comps will be accessing HD media at once.

My compilation so far is as follows:
Case:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/venus_668b

MB/CPU/GFX Combo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153126

RAID Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118011

FreeNAS: Free :)

6x1.5TB Seagate Barracuda HDDs in RAID6

My main points of selection were extremely low power consumption for MB since its really doing nothing, a case that's small enough to shove in a corner somewhere but able to hold ~6 HDDs along with an ITX, micro-ATX board, and a hardware raid card. The only card on newegg that showed up using PCI (since the board doesn't have PCIe) for more than 4 ports hardware RAID was that LSI card.

How is my comp ability with FreeNAS? Would anyone know if I will run into any foreseeable problems? What about hardware? Is this a capable system? If not, could someone point me to either a better case, MB or RAID card? Thanks in advance.
 
um...wouldn't place that order just yet....

That card you linked to is not a regular 32 bit PCI card that fits in a regular PCI slot, it's a 64 bit PCI card, also known as a PCI-X card.... if you put that in a PCI slot, your performance is gonna be... well.... like a PCI card... which will make writing to the array a performance issue for any streaming at the same time.

Good info on PCI vs PCI-X (PCI 64 bit)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect

More importantly, it probably won't fit. Yes, you can put a PCI-X card in a PCI slot (I have one in my unRaid server), but when you do, the remaining connector hangs off the back of the PCI slot - you'll need about an inch of motherboard space behind the PCI slot that does not have any obstructions. If you look at the pictures of your motherboard, you'll see something (capacitor?) behind the PCI slot which will interfere with the extended part of the card.

Last, that card probably won't fit in an ITX case.
 
I may be totally wrong about this, but isn't FreeNAS software based RAID, so why do you need the hardware RAID Card?

If you want to expand your setup, you could use a SuperMicro card that costs $100, no raid, but provides an interface for 8 more SATA drives. Connects with PCI slot, although meant for PCI-X

I would imagine, but don't know for sure, that your read speeds would be sufficient and capable to stream the HD media to two computers (I tried to find out how much bandwidth you need for that, but couldn't find it)

edit: seeing above... I guess this card wouldn't help much either for your mobo
 
Deathray - good point on the software based raid...

Danger - you could go with this Rosewill 4 port PCI card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132013

I've got one, used it for JOBD and Raid0 w/o any problems. That card and the two ports on the motherboard gives you 6 sata ports.

I don't know a thing about FreeNAS - but does it allow the drives to spin down when not in use? If all six drives are constantly spinning, you've offset a lot of the "green' that atom mobo/cpu gives you.
 
I thought FreeNAS was a linux-based RAID system to share? With the amount of storage that Is going to be available (now its going to be 6x2TB drives from WD :D), ill have a total of 8TB available, so Id like cache on board if possible to prevent read failures. Pretty much, I just want the smallest sized case w/ the most lowest powered board I can find. That's all I want in this NAS.
 
Just curious, but where are you going to put the 6th HD? It says it has 2 5.25" bays, 2 3.5" bays and a floppy bay. Are you just going to do some fancy cutting?
 
Either Scythe or Nexus make an adapter/mounting system that will put 2x3.5" in each 5.25" bay. I'll see if I can find it.
http://www.nexustechnologyusa.com/c/ntusa/nexus_doubletwin.html

Nope, its 1 HDD per 5.25 bay:

The DoubleTwin can hold one or two hard disks in respectively one or two 5.25" drive bays.

Even though there are boards with PCIexpress, they are x1, which the minimum the RAID cards I found were x4.

What does everyone think about the MSI Fuzzy series? THe ones with full PCIe x16 bandwidth? If I get that, I could get any RAID card I wanted. Which RAID card do you guys recommend to work in my situation? A hardware based and running ubuntu or something, or softwware based and running FreeNAS?
 
....

Even though there are boards with PCIexpress, they are x1, which the minimum the RAID cards I found were x4.

Isn't FreeNAS software based? If so, I'm not sure I understand your goal of using software based RAID and needing a RAID card. Software RAID just needs ports.

This card has 4 ports, does RAID10, and is PCIe x1:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102140

If you are certain you want a RAID card capable of RAID 5 or 6... Zotac has a 9300/9400 based ITX coming out (on their website) that has a single PCIe x16 slot.
 
Which RAID scenario would be better for my situation, since the array is so massive? Software or Hardware? If software, would FreeNAS be the best way to go? And if I do that, then would all i need is a PCIe card with 8 ports?
And what about hardware? If I go hardware, I would need a minimum x4 PCIe slot, correct?
 
I'm a bit biased when it comes to home RAID... I generally do not see the "return" for spending $$$ on an expensive card. Software RAID solutions tend to be flexible. I'm not too familiar with FreeNAS, have read some on FlexRaid and WHS. I use unRaid and am very very happy with it. You'll need to do your home work here as each has its pluses so you need to determine which fit your needs.

I think software Raid works well for the home for a machine that typically is written to rarely (which is where software raid is weak) and is read (streamed) often - so typically media servers. HiDef doesn't need a large Raid5/6 with a high end card with all drives spinning at 7200rpm just to stream one Blu-Ray movie.

Staying with the home scenario, just because an array is massive, does not drive the configuration. Mine is now over 6TB (all but one are 5400rpm WD GP drives), and starting to grow like made since I've started getting Blu-Rays. There are folks on the unRaid forums running 15TB+ arrays with unRaid, and some are anxious for 24 hard drive support in a future relase (current limit is 15 data drives and 1 parity).

A need for a good performing hardware Raid is doing "a lot" with the array often, or satisfying your ePeen.

Your words: "At MOST, two comps will be accessing HD media at once" - to me, this screams software raid, not "high priced raid card".

If you go with third party software package like FreeNAS, you'll have to get smart on that package before you buy a single part. I liked unRaid's ability to use different drives of different size and give real-time fault protection (I've streamed movies off a failed drive and copied files to the same failed drive - that's unRaid!), the ability to replace (upsize) a drive with minimal downtime, and for spinning drives down that are not in use.

Most of the software Raid packages will allow you to use both motherboard and add-in card ports together. I know of no hardware raid solution that will do this. With many ITX boards, you can get 4 motherboard ports and add a card for 4 more, and there are plenty of inexpensive 4 port (pcie or pci) cards that will work here. But once you go past 4 HD, you kinda defeat the purpose of ITX as it is hard to find a case to fit ITX + 8 drives. You may, may be able to go with 6 drives in an ITX and stay fairly small. (http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/cases/mini_itx) The 2TB may be out soon, so a 4 drive, 8TB ITX may work for you.

Again, your words "...extremely low power consumption for MB since its really doing nothing, a case that's small enough to shove in a corner somewhere but able to hold ~6 HDDs along with an ITX, micro-ATX board". imho, any Raid solution (hardware, WHS, etc) that requires all hard drives to be spinning all the time is inconsistent with "low power". A typical 7200rpm HD uses around 7w spinning - so 8 of those really add up. If they are spun down when not in use, then they are using <1w each.
 
Thanks for responding. When mentioned FreeNAS, it was the only pure software raid OS that I knew of so I stated that. I didn't know there were others. So with that, I can assume that I just need a software based RAID system? I read somewhere, I forgot where, that as HDDs get bigger and RAID arrays get bigger, theres a better chance of failures and rebuilding, which is why I was aiming towards a raid card with onboard cache to minimize that.

I found this on Newegg: Good?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115026

Or are there better? Ideally, I'd like to find a mobo w/ RAID card and CPU for my current task.

What about this case:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/venus_668b
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811204034 (albeit a little bigger)

This MB:
http://www.itxdepot.com/xcart/product.php?productid=1885&cat=32110&page=1

and the RAID card noted above? Does that work?
 
Yea, as arrays get bigger, rebuilding it gets riskier - but imho, this is not a selling point for hardware raid, but for software raid.

In most Raid5 configurations, I bet if there is a problem re-building the array, you lose the whole thing, but I have no experience to confirm this. In most hardware Raid configurations, you lose two drives at the same time, you lose the whole array. I know with WHS and unRaid, you only lose the data on the drives that fail, I can't speak to FlexRaid or FreeNAS on this point.

I like the parts, but prefer this for the motherboard if only because it has more capability which would allow you to re-purpose it.

http://www.zotac.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=300&Itemid=425

The card you linked to looks good - but I can't speak to its Raid capabilities. Highpoint does seem to have a good rep.
 
Thats just it, Id want it to pull as little watts as possible..since ill have 6 HDDs pulling ~7w each for almost 50w of extra power, so if I can get a board that pulls less than 20w, that'd be excellent.

You have factor in the wattage load at startup from the hard drives. Generally, hard drives take up around 20W to 25W at startup. After startup then they'll be at 7 to 10W. So for 6 hard drives, that's 150W of power at startup from just the hard drive.
 
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