Cheap NAS drive options that works with Macs and PCs?

[sebalvarez]

I suggested an HP micro server. Look on ebay. Learn basic linux/docker deployment of the services you require and itll just hum along.

This is basically the openwrt linux router approach, just with faster hardware.

Yeah, no. Learning basic linux/docker deployment? Not something I want to spend any time on. At the most, I will spend an hour or two trying to research if that TP-Link router can achieve better speeds for the SSD and better Wi-Fi, because I must confess I didn't spend much time on those two things.

But if I can't figure it out quickly, or if what I already saw is the best that router can do, then it's back to what I already have. I don't have a lot of extra time to spend on troubleshooting routers.

 

[erihp]

Yeah, no. Learning basic linux/docker deployment? Not something I want to spend any time on. At the most, I will spend an hour or two trying to research if that TP-Link router can achieve better speeds for the SSD and better Wi-Fi, because I must confess I didn't spend much time on those two things.

But if I can't figure it out quickly, or if what I already saw is the best that router can do, then it's back to what I already have. I don't have a lot of extra time to spend on troubleshooting routers.

Youre wasting your time. an hour or two pouring over a guide/video to setup a DIY linux NAS will serve you much more. No point in learning TP-link specific crap. None of this is rocket science, suggesting you learn a little linux will give you a much better understanding.

If you dont wanna put the time and effort in, youll need to spend money.

I tried to help you achieve the goal of your first post and title of the thread.

but again, it sounds like you want, cheap, easy, and fast. and you cant have all three!

good luck

 

[sebalvarez]

Youre wasting your time. an hour or two pouring over a guide/video to setup a DIY linux NAS will serve you much more. No point in learning TP-link specific crap. None of this is rocket science, suggesting you learn a little linux will give you a much better understanding.

If you dont wanna put the time and effort in, youll need to spend money.

Exactly, I'm wasting my time. I don't care to spend even an hour or two, but quite possibly a lot more if we're talking about a DIY Linux NAS server running on open source code. Sounds like a rabbit hole to me, and it's not a rabbit hole I would particularly enjoy. I'm already swamped with a million things, and the way I have it setup now is the fastest of the options at my disposal without spending several hundred dollars, so it will have to do.

Now, if at some point in the future I build a new PC, unfortunately it will have to run on Windows 11, but that OS has a way to setup a NAS as far as I can tell from some videos, so I'll give that a try.

 

[erihp]

Exactly, I'm wasting my time. I don't care to spend even an hour or two, but quite possibly a lot more if we're talking about a DIY Linux NAS server running on open source code. Sounds like a rabbit hole to me, and it's not a rabbit hole I would particularly enjoy. I'm already swamped with a million things, and the way I have it setup now is the fastest of the options at my disposal without spending several hundred dollars, so it will have to do.

Now, if at some point in the future I build a new PC, unfortunately it will have to run on Windows 11, but that OS has a way to setup a NAS as far as I can tell from some videos, so I'll give that a try.

a NAS on windows eh?
the right road is long, i suppose.

hfgl

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Youre wasting your time. an hour or two pouring over a guide/video to setup a DIY linux NAS will serve you much more. No point in learning TP-link specific crap. None of this is rocket science, suggesting you learn a little linux will give you a much better understanding.

If you dont wanna put the time and effort in, youll need to spend money.

I tried to help you achieve the goal of your first post and title of the thread.

but again, it sounds like you want, cheap, easy, and fast. and you cant have all three!

good luck

Recently, the local community I'm joining are discussing about the mini PCrouter, which is basically a small PC with 4~6 2.5Gigabit ethernet ports. Prices are about 120~150$ for a barebone. It can be installed with nVME SSD, wifi card etc. I think it a viable option, but it does require some basic knowledge on router OS (Linux distro) and sometime to assemble and install all the apps necessary for it to run. So cheap and fast, but not easy... Not for a newbie to play with.

And as OP is quite satisfied with his shared drive on Windows, I would suggest he follow the path he is familiar with.
A 2nd HP SFF is just 100$ ish. add a 2.5Gb Ethernet card and you have a NAS compatible with your 2.5Gb router. The shared SSD must be installed internally on SATA port or M.2 port, to ensure the high speed. That's all.

 

[sebalvarez]

Well, in the end I bought a cheap USB 3.2 card with two USB-A and three USB-C ports. And it's testing at 410 MB/s give or take. But I also kept the TP-Link router, which has four 2.5 Gbps ports, and I bought a TP-Link 2.5 Gbps NIC for my PC. In the router configuration I confirmed that both my Mac Studio and the PC are connected 2.5 full duplex.

The weird thing now is that I still can't get file transfers to go over 120 MB/s or so. 2.5 Gbps is 312.5 MB/s, so I'd be happy to get something close to 300 MB/s, but no.

I think somebody here mentioned that SMB is not that great of a file transfer protocol. So what can I use instead? SMB seems to be what's compatible for both macOS and Windows, FTP is something I would only use if I have to transfer large amounts of files, and I'd rather not waste a lot of time with learning how to setup a server and so on. Is there anything else out there to transfer files between Macs and PCs?

 

[erihp]

Well, in the end I bought a cheap USB 3.2 card with two USB-A and three USB-C ports. And it's testing at 410 MB/s give or take. But I also kept the TP-Link router, which has four 2.5 Gbps ports, and I bought a TP-Link 2.5 Gbps NIC for my PC. In the router configuration I confirmed that both my Mac Studio and the PC are connected 2.5 full duplex.

The weird thing now is that I still can't get file transfers to go over 120 MB/s or so. 2.5 Gbps is 312.5 MB/s, so I'd be happy to get something close to 300 MB/s, but no.

I think somebody here mentioned that SMB is not that great of a file transfer protocol. So what can I use instead? SMB seems to be what's compatible for both macOS and Windows, FTP is something I would only use if I have to transfer large amounts of files, and I'd rather not waste a lot of time with learning how to setup a server and so on. Is there anything else out there to transfer files between Macs and PCs?

warned you of exactly this.

 

[sebalvarez]

warned you of exactly this.

That doesn't answer my question. If you want to transfer files between Macs and PCs, basically SMB is about it? Decades of people having to work with Macs and PCs, and nobody came up with a simple yet effective protocol for file transfer in LANs that doesn't need an enclosure, then drives for the enclosure, and so on?

I mean, you would think that if you have an SSD that can go to about 900 MB/s and you hook it up to a router with a USB 3.0 port, and said router has 2.5 Gbps ethernet ports, and both machines also have 2.5 Gbps ports, then it's not that hard, right? Files should transfer at close to 2.5 Gbps, or 312.5 MB/s. Nobody came up with an easy way to do that?

It seems to me that that's a lot of money for some company to get their programmers to come up with a better file transfer protocol that is easy to setup and use.

 

[splifingate]

why would the SSD not reach at least the 2.5 Gbps that the port allows

512MBps !== 2.5Gbps

 

[erihp]

That doesn't answer my question. If you want to transfer files between Macs and PCs, basically SMB is about it? Decades of people having to work with Macs and PCs, and nobody came up with a simple yet effective protocol for file transfer in LANs that doesn't need an enclosure, then drives for the enclosure, and so on?

I mean, you would think that if you have an SSD that can go to about 900 MB/s and you hook it up to a router with a USB 3.0 port, and said router has 2.5 Gbps ethernet ports, and both machines also have 2.5 Gbps ports, then it's not that hard, right? Files should transfer at close to 2.5 Gbps, or 312.5 MB/s. Nobody came up with an easy way to do that?

It seems to me that that's a lot of money for some company to get their programmers to come up with a better file transfer protocol that is easy to setup and use.

I will leave you with -a- puzzle piece that is semi-related to 'protocols'.

Doing a speed test on your disk (or otherwise copying a massive, single, continuous file) and observing its throughput and transfer rate will yield much different results than real world uses cases. Protocol overhead is just another layer.


Typically, doing mass remote file operations to a large number of small (or variably) sized files, nested within directories all with different permissions, in a serialized fashion, with a single network socket (smb), is going to perform completely differently than what the max bus speed on the box says (or the results of the above disk test).

I feel like I've said this already.
I just not as simple as you want it to be. I dont have the will or desire to explain anything else to you.

 

[sebalvarez]

512MBps !== 2.5Gbps

Wait, maybe I got this wrong, but what I understand is that for network related speeds it's usually in bits, but for drive speeds it's in bytes, so 2500 megabits divided by 8 would be 312.5 megabytes. I mean, that's going by the basic rule that 1 byte is 8 bits. Tell me what's how it is or my whole world is going to fall apart!!! 😂

 

[sebalvarez]

Doing a speed test on your disk (or otherwise copying a massive, single, continuous file and observing its throughput and transfer rate will yield much different results than real world uses cases. Protocol overhead is just another layer.

Typically, doing mass remote file operations to a large number of small (or variably) sized files, nested within directories all with different permissions, is going to perform completely differently than what the max bus speed on the box says (or the results of the above disk test).

Yeah, I know that copying thousand of little files is going to be slower than one massive file, which is why I have a file that is about 40 GB and I use that when trying to get a more accurate network transfer test.

I feel like I've said this already.
I just not as simple as you want it to be. I dont have the will or desire to explain anything else to you.

Well, if it's such a chore, why do you? I mean, you know that nobody forced you to answer my posts, right? Am I missing something here? If I don't like someone, or that person annoys me, as it seems to be the case here, I don't spend one second replying to that person. So why would you?

 

[splifingate]

Wait, maybe I got this wrong, but what I understand is that for network related speeds it's usually in bits, but for drive speeds it's in bytes, so 2500 megabits divided by 8 would be 312.5 megabytes. I mean, that's going by the basic rule that 1 byte is 8 bits. Tell me what's how it is or my whole world is going to fall apart!!! 😂

FYI: I did not (obviously) major in math 🤷‍♂️

Different protocols require different connections, and such things are never 1:1

Overhead, latency and access claim chunks from the metrics.

For example:

I have a SATA SSD in a Thunderbolt-2 enclosure.

'Theoretically', said SSD can operate at 512MBps receive/transmit speeds, but the communication is mitigated through the TB2 interface. It's pretty good, but it could perform better via another interface.

Same can be said for my NVMe that is housed (and communicates-through) a USB 3.2 interface. Subjectively good, but not nearly so as were it directly connected via a PCIe interface; direct to the board.

Just because a highway has the potential to admit 3K cars per hour through an intersection does not mean that that throughput can happen at all hours . . . some days (because of the density of cars in-transit), it may be that only 1.5K cars can pass

No need to let any of this allow you to fall-apart!

 

[erihp]

FYI: I did not (obviously) major in math 🤷‍♂️

Different protocols require different connections, and such things are never 1:1

Overhead, latency and access claim chunks from the metrics.

For example:

I have a SATA SSD in a Thunderbolt-2 enclosure.

'Theoretically', said SSD can operate at 512MBps receive/transmit speeds, but the communication is mitigated through the TB2 interface. It's pretty good, but it could perform better via another interface.

Same can be said for my NVMe that is housed (and communicates-through) a USB 3.2 interface. Subjectively good, but not nearly so as were it directly connected via a PCIe interface; direct to the board.

Just because a highway has the potential to admit 3K cars per hour through an intersection does not mean that that throughput can happen at all hours . . . some days (because of the density of cars in-transit), it may be that only 1.5K cars can pass

No need to let any of this allow you to fall-apart!

Ive already explained this in almost exactly the same way, highlighting the same things. We need to let this guy be.

 

[sebalvarez]

FYI: I did not (obviously) major in math 🤷‍♂️

Well, neither did I, just learned the basic stuff I need. But I was asking seriously, because I was proven wrong in the past about certain things that I took for granted.

In this case, I'm not doubting that 1 byte = 8 bits, but when it comes to the conventions used in the IT industry, storage sets increments as 1024 whole they use 1000 for networking, correct? Meaning, in storage 1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes = 1024000 bytes but in networking 1 megabit = 1000 kilobits = 1000000 bits.

I mean, that's the way I learned it over twenty years ago and kept it that way. That's the way it is, right?

 

[sebalvarez]

Ive already explained this in almost exactly the same way, highlighting the same things. We need to let this guy be.

No, I think YOU need to let me be. As in, please don't reply to any posts I make in the future. You're like an annoying summer gnat. Like when I'm outside trying to have a conversation with a few people, and there's this annoying, arrogant gnat who thinks has the right to get in front of my eyes, then go to my ears, produce that annoying buzzing noise. I could ignore the gnat, but it's rather impossible because that buzzing is so annoying, and also the gnat speaks, and every time one of the people tells me something, the gnat keeps yapping annoyingly that "Hey, hey, look at me, I know it all, I gave you the best solution, you shall listen to my advice, take for granted that it's the best and apply it step by step to your current problem, including spending hours learning how to build a NAS with Linux on it!! Because I'm an IT genius, and I build these things with my eyes closed, so naturally, I assume that everybody can do it as well!! And if the OP doesn't follow my advice, I shall annoy him to death with passive aggressive little comments like "warned you of exactly this." or "I feel like I've said this already. I just not as simple as you want it to be. I dont have the will or desire to explain anything else to you."

All the forums are the same, most people give good advice, but there's always an arrogant gnat that can't take it when the OP doesn't take his advice as the golden truth. Go away!! I already told you once, you don't like me, you think you're miles above me. I couldn't care less. The only thing you managed to do is annoy me, like the gnat or a flay that you keep swatting and it doesn't go away.

To the rest of you, thank you, your advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[erihp]

No, I think YOU need to let me be. As in, please don't reply to any posts I make in the future. You're like an annoying summer gnat. Like when I'm outside trying to have a conversation with a few people, and there's this annoying, arrogant gnat who thinks has the right to get in front of my eyes, then go to my ears, produce that annoying buzzing noise. I could ignore the gnat, but it's rather impossible because that buzzing is so annoying, and also the gnat speaks, and every time one of the people tells me something, the gnat keeps yapping annoyingly that "Hey, hey, look at me, I know it all, I gave you the best solution, you shall listen to my advice, take for granted that it's the best and apply it step by step to your current problem, including spending hours learning how to build a NAS with Linux on it!! Because I'm an IT genius, and I build these things with my eyes closed, so naturally, I assume that everybody can do it as well!! And if the OP doesn't follow my advice, I shall annoy him to death with passive aggressive little comments like "warned you of exactly this." or "I feel like I've said this already. I just not as simple as you want it to be. I dont have the will or desire to explain anything else to you."

All the forums are the same, most people give good advice, but there's always an arrogant gnat that can't take it when the OP doesn't take his advice as the golden truth. Go away!! I already told you once, you don't like me, you think you're miles above me. I couldn't care less. The only thing you managed to do is annoy me, like the gnat or a flay that you keep swatting and it doesn't go away.

To the rest of you, thank you, your advice is greatly appreciated.

you should change the title of the thread

another oddity. my posts have thumbs up for being helpful. interesting.

 

[splifingate]

I was asking seriously

Of course; and I hope my responses are in-kind

Life has me by the tail (as it often does (for us all)), but I truly have lost-grasp of the thesis that you're trying to form 🤷‍♂️

So; it's So.

"inexpensive" is entirely subjective, albeit appropriate (I get it); still, not an adjective I would normally apply to "NAS"

I've invested over USD1,2K in 'NAS' hardware (enclosure+storage); all of which communicates via 1Gbps ~USD1,8 in networking hardware.

Bespoke; totally-fantastic; specific; janky; entirely satisfying.

When it breaks, everything is broken.

Everything.

Seriously.

SO...

a) What do you intend to do
b) What is your budget
c) Can {I==You} accomplish a) with b)
d) *paRty* | *crY*