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Need a NAS

S

Stupid_Newbie

Gawd
Joined
Dec 4, 2005
Messages
671
Well, I finally ordered my Dune HD Smart D1. For streaming of my BD in ISO format. So im gonna need a NAS soon. I currently only have a WD Mybook Live 3TB. And as good as it is, I can see my surpassing that, as the ISOs i have ripped so far are 25-40GB each. So its not gonna take long, I might get 75-80 Movies on it, as I still have work stuff on there. So Id like to convert the MBL to strictly picture/work storage, and get a NAS for media.

Id like to be able to have good expansion options. I plan on using WD Red 3TB drives. Id like it to show up as one drive, regarless of disk count. I am not experienced with Linux etc, and was thinking of something similar to NAS4Free etc for OS. I pretty much want to stream to my Dune player. Id also have converted files of my kids movies to play on thier ATV3.

What should I be looking for? I currently have about 50 or so BD, and some DVDs aswell id like to put on the NAS. Id like it in some form of RAID, perhaps 5/6. So that if I do have a failure, I dont have to spend 10hrs re-ripping movies. My time off of work, is very valuable to me, so a little extra cost to have RAID is fine. I dont really fully understand all the RAIDs, I just want to be able to replace a disk if needed, and have it rebuild the data. And as long as the drives can supply the data to the player quick enough, i dont care about performance.

This will be a long term investment, and efficiency and low power is key (as it will likely be left on all the time).
 
If you care about your data, please remember that RAID is never a backup solution. Relying on mirrored or striped data is asking for disaster. Please make sure that you have another complete backup in a safe place.
 
ZFS is the closest thing to a backup on raid, simply due its superior nature in handling data corruption issues by NOT allowing any. However in the sense that it is a true backup it is as long as your data also resides elsewhere. But do not use a raid array or even ZFS array as your only storepoint for data. I am currently committing this very sin however I am also working to place a backup NAS in my rack as soon as some more parts arrive. I will be using RSYNC to make clones of all my files.

I would recon, based off of being a prior owner of two, QNAP is very very good indeed and rock solid. Uses traditional software raid but performance wise it will NOT let you down.
 
Well you certainly pay a premium for the Syn. But looks very easy to use. I'll search qnap pricing aswell, and see where it sits.
 
I don't know if it's fast enough for you but try FreeNAS. I have it running on an old Socket 754 single core Athlon 1.6GHz with only 1GB of RAM with two 2TB drives in a software raid. I get consistant tranfers of 400Mbps from it and I've seen burts to 900Mbps. Pretty good for an old desktop with a $10 gigabit NIC and two new hard drives.
 
Off-the-shelf NAS units are fine, especially if you want a turnkey solution in a wife friendly package.

The major downside is cost TBH - not inc the disks (which are the same price either way) you are looking at around 3x the price against a new PC based NAS (obviously depending on what exactly you opt for).
 
Billy_nnn said:
Off-the-shelf NAS units are fine, especially if you want a turnkey solution in a wife friendly package.

The major downside is cost TBH - not inc the disks (which are the same price either way) you are looking at around 3x the price against a new PC based NAS (obviously depending on what exactly you opt for).
Click to expand...

Well they are mostly fine imho, for noncritical stuff, but a DIY NAS on NAS4Free/FreeNAS/etc. has advantages like the ability to use ZFS (protects against bit rot and other things that prebuilt NAS boxes can't do), plus the ability to use ECC RAM which most (all?) prebuilt NAS boxes don't have. This is on top of big cost savings by doing it yourself. It's very easy to set up a NAS4Free/FreeNAS box once you get the hang of it... first time I did it, it took an hour or two of perusing forums and FAQs. The second time I did it, it took only 10-15 minutes. NAS4Free has a pretty easy-to-use interface imho.
 
Stupid_Newbie said:
It says max storage is 4x2tb. I'm assuming that is inaccurate, and that it would take red 3tb drives? That gives me 12TB give or take, which should be fine honestly, that's 300 movies.
Click to expand...

3 and 4tb drives work fine.

You cannot boot from drives larger than 2tb though, because the bios is not UEFI.

You will need to boot from a flash drive or a smaller hard drive.
 
So, I'm on the fence. For the price of the synology I could slap together a Xeon server (could use an i3 to save), with 10 bays, 16gb of ECC ram, and run nas4free with zfs. Of course it would be work but would outrun the synology with throughput. I would need. 50-55mbit/s, for high bit rate blu-rays (non 3d).

I'm not gonna be hurt if I lose a drive and have to re-rip my movies that were on that disk, but it would be a good chunk of time. Say 30 movies, that's ~15hrs. Let alone if I have to re-encode for my boys ATV.

Would going zfs be beneficial over synology? Cost really isn't an issue, and I will be buying through my company.
 
Stupid_Newbie said:
So well worth the 100 extra?
Click to expand...

If cost is not an issue, pay someone to set up a system for you. Synology seems to do that for you. You could even hire a neighbor kid to do the work for you.

But your needs don't appear to be urgent. Very few people fill up TB sized disks overnight. So you could shop around for parts, assemble something in your spare time, and have a more capable machine for the same price.

Your choice.
 
Well, now that I am getting my player in a few days, I'll start ripping my movies. But I do have a 3tb my book live. I figure I got 2 or a bit better of movies to rip. so it's tight, but not bad. Though I will start buying more here soon, so I will out grow my needs in the next few months.

Yeah, I could pay to have it setup, but I do enjoy building pcs, but I may need help with zfs, so may have to farm that out. But I wouldn't mind taking a kick at the can.

I just wonder if it's worth it to buy a smaller synology, for plug and play, vs building a more powerful, easier to repair server. If they are the same price.
 
I had a freenas ZFS raidz1 setup when I was using 4x2TB drives it worked decently well. Speeds were OK, management was a but confusing at first. I ran out of space.

I set up a Synology 1812+ at work for a temporary back end for some VMWare servers until our SAN gets here. I loved the interface and how easy it was to setup and use. Performance is great, but at $1000 for a diskless box it's expensive.

I bit the bullet and bought a Synology 1812+ for home. For it's size and features I couldn't convince myself to do a DIY. I used to love to spend days tweaking the setups and getting it exactly how I want. Right now, not so much. I have a lot less time to spend on my PC stuff and really don't want to deal with my wife asking when her movies/music/tv/etc will be back.

I was tempted to go cheaper and buy the 5 bay (1512+) but the price difference between the 5 and 8 bay is not huge and 5 bays would only give me ~8TB vs 16TB in the 8 using 2 disk protection (raid 6/shr2).

There seems to be a lot of complaints of slow speeds with the Synology. I was getting slow 50-60MB/s speeds over gigabit connection until I put a Intel Pro nic in my desktop, now I am getting 100MB/s. Realtek nic's on most boards are junk.
 
Is there anyway to get an accurate data transfer rate. I am organizing my data, off my WD, to my spare 1TB drive, and it says im doing 55-75mb/s, but if I watch the data left to transfer, as it goes down, its about 5-7mb/s.

WD MBL 10/100/1000
Realtek 8111E 10/100/1000 (registering as a 1Gbps connection)
Hitachi 7k1000D, on sata6 connector (like it matters)
Through a D-link DGS-1005G
 
Stupid_Newbie said:
Is there anyway to get an accurate data transfer rate. I am organizing my data, off my WD, to my spare 1TB drive, and it says im doing 55-75mb/s, but if I watch the data left to transfer, as it goes down, its about 5-7mb/s.

WD MBL 10/100/1000
Realtek 8111E 10/100/1000 (registering as a 1Gbps connection)
Hitachi 7k1000D, on sata6 connector (like it matters)
Through a D-link DGS-1005G
Click to expand...

Are the files small? My transfer speeds even internally from drive to drive slow down a lot when I am copying over my c# source code files.
 
@OP
copied from another thread from a few months back:

Netwerkz101 said:
I don't own a Synology, but do own a NAS device from a Synology competitor as well
as a "whitebox" FreeNAS system.

Either will work fine.
I only run NFS on both.

Benefits of a dedicated NAS:
- set it up and forget about it
- things go wrong ... you have a support option
- usually quieter, cooler, less power draw (depending on parts used compared to the whitebox build of course)

Benefits of a Whitebox NAS:
- build it with the hardware you want/need
- likely to be cheaper to start off with and upgrade when desired


My "whitebox" NAS is a Dell PowerEdge T110 with
8 x 2.5" drives on a PERC H700 + 4 x 3.5" drives on motherboard SATA.
1 x dual port Intel Gb NIC

Populated with 8 x 2.5" drives, It cost ~$200 more than my 6-bay dedicated NAS device _empty_ !

I can easily increase the number of NICs in it or upgrade to 10Gb NICs
I can add a second controller (which I initally had 2 H700's for 16 drives)
I can increase memory to 16GB for better caching

... just things to think about ... ultimately it will come down to your use plans.
Click to expand...

I don't think I have powered on my Poweredge T110 Storage (FreeNAS) box since I wrote that post.
It was built for performance, but with 12 mechanical drives, it's not as quiet, nor is it as power efficient as my purpose built NAS.
 
I plan to have it in my mechanical room/av closet. With the D1 right next to it. I will then be streaming around my house via HDbaseT Via HDanywhere's multi room+ 4x4 (can't justify 10k for an 8x8)
 
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