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Storage Solutions for our OUT-OF-CONTROL iTunes Libraries

pprior said:
Are you hooking to your "unraid" via ethernet? If so, what kind of read/write speeds do you get in real life?
Click to expand...

Yes, unRAID is meant to be hooked up to your network via Ethernet and to be honest I do not know if it could be hooked up ay other way.

Once a parity drive is assigned to the array the write speeds are pretty slow; usually between 8-12 MB/s. If you are running the Pro version of unRAID then you have the advantage of the cache drive. When user shares are enabled you can set them up to use the cache drives as a temporary storage place and the data will be moved to the protected array in the middle of the night.

The read speeds are sufficient enough to get the job done. You typically get the same speed you would from reading from a single drive.
 
I'm cross eyed... lol

Being new to this forum I made sure to do as thorough a search as possible for what I think I need to do and have read a bunch of threads. This thread I actually read EVERY post... no kidding. I know exciting life I have lol.

Anyway I did so because I'm planning on upgrading from my G4 iMac - painfully slow - to the 24in 3.06Ghz/4Gb/1 TB iMac in the next week or so.

I have a Dell laptop with a WD external HD. The WD fell off a table and now my puters cannot recognize the drive so everything I have on it is in limbo. This has prompted me to look into the myriad of ways to safe guard my data. Too bad I needed to learn this lesson the hard way. So with that I searched through the forum and found this thread - perfect.

I'm thinking the new iMac will suffice for a time as I can begin adding to it when $ becomes less scarce. In that vain I want to have a plan of attack so to speak. After reading through all the excellent posts here I'm still left with some confusion. I know some to all of it is personal preference but I'll ask anyway.

Drobo vs HP Mediasmart Server vs unRAID vs Qnap vs stringing different HD together ????

I will be converting my dvd collection to digital and more than likely getting HD movies downloaded also.

So many question came up reading through but this is the general idea of what I hope to do.

Great thread everyone and glad I found the forum as well :)
 
"Drobo vs HP Mediasmart Server vs unRAID vs Qnap vs stringing different HD together ????"

Well here is my simplistic view of those choices:

Drobo
Pros: easy to use, just plug in drives (any size) and go. Moderate cost, low power use. Redundancy (one drive fails, can still maintain data)
Cons: proprietary format, if fails can lose all data, slow write speeds, limited functionality beyond storage. Added costs if wish to place on LAN for multiple machines

HP Mediasmart server
Pros: can do a whole lot more than just storage.
Cons: Have to deal with a windows machine, cost higher. Higher ongoing energy use. Basic system offers no redundancy

unRAID
pros: low cost, if you already have older equipment to use. very flexible drive useage (mix and match) and good performance. Redundancy and beyond that if array fails you only lose data on that particular disk
cons: administration and setup takes more effort/knowledge. non-mac interface. Higher ongoing energy use

qNAP
pros: redundancy, multiple machines access by default. fairly low energy use
cons: administration and setup intermediate, less than server/unraid but more than drobo. Drives must be identical, cannot mix and match sizes efficiently

Stringing drives
pros: easy to do (at first), least initial cost, drive failure only loses data on that specific drive
cons: least efficient if redundant data protection desired, can become cumbersome when multiple drives are used, can be visually obnoxious. Can't share with multiple machines unless primary computer is running

that's just a quick list off the top of my head - others feel free to correct me or disagree.

I don't think there is one right answer for everyone. As I mentioned above, I started out with a file server running Raid-6, then migrated to a NAS, and more recently use drobo. Simplicity and ease of use have been the driving force for -my- choice. As I went from PC world to Mac I began to value the "it just works" philosophy a lot more than I used to.

cheers
 
pprior said:
"Drobo vs HP Mediasmart Server vs unRAID vs Qnap vs stringing different HD together ????"

Well here is my simplistic view of those choices:

Drobo
Pros: easy to use, just plug in drives (any size) and go. Moderate cost, low power use. Redundancy (one drive fails, can still maintain data)
Cons: proprietary format, if fails can lose all data, slow write speeds, limited functionality beyond storage. Added costs if wish to place on LAN for multiple machines

HP Mediasmart server
Pros: can do a whole lot more than just storage.
Cons: Have to deal with a windows machine, cost higher. Higher ongoing energy use. Basic system offers no redundancy

unRAID
pros: low cost, if you already have older equipment to use. very flexible drive useage (mix and match) and good performance. Redundancy and beyond that if array fails you only lose data on that particular disk
cons: administration and setup takes more effort/knowledge. non-mac interface. Higher ongoing energy use

qNAP
pros: redundancy, multiple machines access by default. fairly low energy use
cons: administration and setup intermediate, less than server/unraid but more than drobo. Drives must be identical, cannot mix and match sizes efficiently

Stringing drives
pros: easy to do (at first), least initial cost, drive failure only loses data on that specific drive
cons: least efficient if redundant data protection desired, can become cumbersome when multiple drives are used, can be visually obnoxious. Can't share with multiple machines unless primary computer is running

that's just a quick list off the top of my head - others feel free to correct me or disagree.

I don't think there is one right answer for everyone. As I mentioned above, I started out with a file server running Raid-6, then migrated to a NAS, and more recently use drobo. Simplicity and ease of use have been the driving force for -my- choice. As I went from PC world to Mac I began to value the "it just works" philosophy a lot more than I used to.

cheers
Click to expand...

Excellent recap - thanks :)

I suppose I can further widdle down my choice if I want it to also serve so I, or someone else, can access my files/movies/music from another location.
 
pprior said:
Drobo
Pros: easy to use, just plug in drives (any size) and go. Moderate cost, low power use. Redundancy (one drive fails, can still maintain data)
Cons: proprietary format, if fails can lose all data, slow write speeds, limited functionality beyond storage. Added costs if wish to place on LAN for multiple machines
Click to expand...

So Drobo only works by plugging it into a computer?? If I want to put it on my network so all the computers in my house can see it, I have to pay extra??
 
The "standard" drobo is a firewire or USB device - it hooks directly to a computer. Of course you could share that via the OS to any other computer but that requires the computer to which it is attached to be turned on.

Drobo makes a "droboshare" add-on which allows the drobo to function as a NAS - serving files over ethernet as a standalone unit. I don't have any experience with this device, but others here I'm sure do. The drobo site has a bunch of info on this as well.
 
Drobo-PRO dual disc redundancy!

http://www.9to5mac.com/drobo-pro-8-bay
WOW!!! $1300 Up to 256TB theoretically :eek:
Plus the iSCSI GB Ethernet. I could connect it to my AEBS N and have it as an ultimate worldwide accessible storage/back up solution for all of my MACs (4) and have enough storage space virtually forever or at least until I die ;)
What do you gurus think about this ultimate solution?
 
shelant said:
http://www.9to5mac.com/drobo-pro-8-bay
WOW!!! $1300 Up to 256TB theoretically :eek:
Plus the iSCSI GB Ethernet. I could connect it to my AEBS N and have it as an ultimate worldwide accessible storage/back up solution for all of my MACs (4) and have enough storage space virtually forever or at least until I die ;)
What do you gurus think about this ultimate solution?
Click to expand...

Forever is a long time. Wait 'til Blu-ray is replaced by 500GB holographic discs, then you will only be able to fit 500 "Super" HiDef movies on your drobo. Then you're screwed! ;) Saying 256TB is all you will every need is like those people that post about how 20 years ago they had a 10MB hard drive and didn't understand why anyone would ever need more than 100MB. We'll probably eventually find a bunch of new crap to store on our severs that takes up more space than we can dream of now.

$1300 is a lot of money for what you get. I used an old computer (PC Chips motherboard, 1.2Ghz athlon CPU, and 392MB RAM) that I built about 8 years ago to make an UNRAID machine that stores and serves data pretty well. All I had to add was a SATA Promise PCI card, a few TB hard drives, and a couple power adapters. I also just finished building an UNRAID media server for about $250 (minus the drives) that will easily accomodate 10 hard drives. I don't know Linux well at all, and I really am an unRAID noob. But I don't understand paying the bucks for a drobo. That difference in cost will almost fill my tower with drives.
 
Wow that iSCSI sounds really cool. I'd love to get my DROBO down in the basement in my server rack instead of attached directly to my computer.

Anyone know what kind of transfer speeds you can expect with iSCSI vs. FW800. Drobo speeds have not been great (I get 15-20mb/sec writes) even with FW800, certainly not saturating the interface.

I am definitely looking at this device.
 
shelant said:
http://www.9to5mac.com/drobo-pro-8-bay
WOW!!! $1300 Up to 256TB theoretically :eek:
Plus the iSCSI GB Ethernet. I could connect it to my AEBS N and have it as an ultimate worldwide accessible storage/back up solution for all of my MACs (4) and have enough storage space virtually forever or at least until I die ;)
What do you gurus think about this ultimate solution?
Click to expand...

so what exactly does 16 x 16TB mean? there are no 16TB drives
 
DAMAC3 said:
$1300 is a lot of money for what you get. I used an old computer (PC Chips motherboard, 1.2Ghz athlon CPU, and 392MB RAM) that I built about 8 years ago to make an UNRAID machine that stores and serves data pretty well. All I had to add was a SATA Promise PCI card, a few TB hard drives, and a couple power adapters. I also just finished building an UNRAID media server for about $250 (minus the drives) that will easily accomodate 10 hard drives. I don't know Linux well at all, and I really am an unRAID noob. But I don't understand paying the bucks for a drobo. That difference in cost will almost fill my tower with drives.
Click to expand...

How'd you set that up with your old computer? I have an old desktop that I want to set up for this exact purpose but I'm not sure how to set up RAID or get it to connect to my mac.
 
twoodcc said:
so what exactly does 16 x 16TB mean? there are no 16TB drives
Click to expand...

I think it means with the drobo dashboard software you can cluster up to 16 of these devices as a single volume so with 2 tb drives x 8 you would get 16TB per drobopro and clustering 16 you would get an enormous single volume, which for almost every mere mortal would be complete overkill.
 
So true

pprior said:
I think it means with the drobo dashboard software you can cluster up to 16 of these devices as a single volume so with 2 tb drives x 8 you would get 16TB per drobopro and clustering 16 you would get an enormous single volume, which for almost every mere mortal would be complete overkill.
Click to expand...

hahaha, do ya think? I can't even imagine having that much storage in a home. Actually...... that may out last me. My family could keep adding long after i was gone. :(
 
srl7741 said:
hahaha, do ya think? I can't even imagine having that much storage in a home. Actually...... that may out last me. My family could keep adding long after i was gone. :(
Click to expand...

That is what I was implying to, when I said "forever" :cool:
It is really early to even think about 500GB discs, but for my 500+ DVD and 3000+ cd collections and all the back up needs this new drobo with 8 2TB HDs will be a sweet spot of my computer universe. And with the possibility to go up to 256TB and the 2 hd redundancy level, $1300 don't seem too much. It's a great, future proof device. I look forward to read some reviews and hope that the reliability and speed will be better then the current drobo.
 
dlegend said:
How'd you set that up with your old computer? I have an old desktop that I want to set up for this exact purpose but I'm not sure how to set up RAID or get it to connect to my mac.
Click to expand...

Do some reading on the unRAID forums.

I am also an unRAID user and am loving it. There is some nice progress being made and the software is updated on a pretty regular basis. The forum community is one of the most helpful and courteous I have ever been a part of.
 
dlegend said:
How'd you set that up with your old computer? I have an old desktop that I want to set up for this exact purpose but I'm not sure how to set up RAID or get it to connect to my mac.
Click to expand...

As long as your old computer will boot from a USB device, you have a good shot of unRAID working with it. My old PC is a piece of crap! I built it on a budget 8 years ago. It definately isn't ideal for any type of server, but it has just enough horsepower to run unRAID with a parity drive. I only spent $50 on a the SATA Promise PCI card and $6 on two adapters for the newer power connector on the back of SATA HDDs. You can use the free version of unRAID with 3 drives. So I bought 3 1TB drives. One is the parity drive. So I have started with a 2TB server with redundancy for $56 (not counting the drives). I've got the parts put together for a better system that can easily house, the PSU can power, and the mobo (with my Promise card) can connect to 10 SATA drives. This cost me $200 (another $50 if you count my Promise card).

Once you get the system set up, it is a breeze to manage if you just want to run a big dumb storage box (with redundancy). There is a web interface that controls it (you access via ethernet). And people have written all kinds of scripts for it so people that aren't very familiar with Linux (like me but I'm learning) can do lots of different things with it.

It can be tricky gettings started, but it is worth looking into so you can save a lot of money and get great functionality.
 
pprior said:
I think it means with the drobo dashboard software you can cluster up to 16 of these devices as a single volume so with 2 tb drives x 8 you would get 16TB per drobopro and clustering 16 you would get an enormous single volume, which for almost every mere mortal would be complete overkill.
Click to expand...

oh ok, that makes more since. but by the time we need that much storage, they probably won't make this version of the drobo
 
pprior said:
Wow that iSCSI sounds really cool. I'd love to get my DROBO down in the basement in my server rack instead of attached directly to my computer.

Anyone know what kind of transfer speeds you can expect with iSCSI vs. FW800. Drobo speeds have not been great (I get 15-20mb/sec writes) even with FW800, certainly not saturating the interface.

I am definitely looking at this device.
Click to expand...
And I get 70MB/s out of each port of my Qnap TS-509 Pro *today*. And I have tons of services running on it, like a mail server, web server, blog server, SlimCenter feeding all my Squezebox and Transporter clients, etc. Would never think about exchanging it against a Drobo! Never! It also already has iSCSI should I need it!

And if you need 8-bay: http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=109
 
DAMAC3 said:
Forever is a long time. Wait 'til Blu-ray is replaced by 500GB holographic discs, then you will only be able to fit 500 "Super" HiDef movies on your drobo. Then you're screwed! ;) Saying 256TB is all you will every need is like those people that post about how 20 years ago they had a 10MB hard drive and didn't understand why anyone would ever need more than 100MB. We'll probably eventually find a bunch of new crap to store on our severs that takes up more space than we can dream of now.
Click to expand...
HVD is 3.9TB a disc and not 500GB, you may want to check out wikipediat at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
 
DAMAC3 said:
As long as your old computer will boot from a USB device, you have a good shot of unRAID working with it. My old PC is a piece of crap! I built it on a budget 8 years ago. It definately isn't ideal for any type of server, but it has just enough horsepower to run unRAID with a parity drive. I only spent $50 on a the SATA Promise PCI card and $6 on two adapters for the newer power connector on the back of SATA HDDs. You can use the free version of unRAID with 3 drives. So I bought 3 1TB drives. One is the parity drive. So I have started with a 2TB server with redundancy for $56 (not counting the drives). I've got the parts put together for a better system that can easily house, the PSU can power, and the mobo (with my Promise card) can connect to 10 SATA drives. This cost me $200 (another $50 if you count my Promise card).

Once you get the system set up, it is a breeze to manage if you just want to run a big dumb storage box (with redundancy). There is a web interface that controls it (you access via ethernet). And people have written all kinds of scripts for it so people that aren't very familiar with Linux (like me but I'm learning) can do lots of different things with it.

It can be tricky gettings started, but it is worth looking into so you can save a lot of money and get great functionality.
Click to expand...

It is not only tricky to get it started it is very time consuming and uncertain maintaining and upgrading it over the years. A Qnap is updated in 2 minutes and if something goes wrong it automatically reverts to its previous working OS revision. You need a lot to implement this sort of functionality. In the past I have had all kind of general purpose linux servers with up to 16 drives in them, they are all cumbersome and can't be compared with a dedicated NAS server. Qnap 509 gets 70MB/s of each of its GigE ports. This is almost impossible with a general purpose PC at least not if you don't tune the eth driver and invest a lot of time in selecting the proper Eth interface which just isn't worth the time today. Just my humble 0.02c
 
starcat said:
It is not only tricky to get it started it is very time consuming and uncertain maintaining and upgrading it over the years. A Qnap is updated in 2 minutes and if something goes wrong it automatically reverts to its previous working OS revision. You need a lot to implement this sort of functionality. In the past I have had all kind of general purpose linux servers with up to 16 drives in them, they are all cumbersome and can't be compared with a dedicated NAS server. Qnap 509 gets 70MB/s of each of its GigE ports. This is almost impossible with a general purpose PC at least not if you don't tune the eth driver and invest a lot of time in selecting the proper Eth interface which just isn't worth the time today. Just my humble 0.02c
Click to expand...

That is a lie. While unRAID is based on linux (Slackware) it is very easy to use for the basic functions. There is extensive documentation in the wiki, which you can get to through there site.

Upgrade and downgrading to a newer/older version of unRAID is a matter of copying two files (bzroot and bzimage) to the flash drive. Depending on the version you are upgrading to you might need to copy more files but in general it is 2 files. These files can be copied over the network to the flash drive that the OS is running on while the server is still running. From there all you have to do is stop the array, and hit the restart button from the web management interface.

On the easy of use front something that is prebuilt like the Qnap is going to be easier to use. On the homemade NAS front you are going to be hard pressed to find something like unRAID that will allow you to mix and match drive sizes and kinds (SATA1, SATA2, IDE).
 
drobopro-front.gif


Drobo Pro launched yesterday. Holds up to 16TB!
http://www.drobo.com
 
starcat said:
HVD is 3.9TB a disc and not 500GB, you may want to check out wikipediat at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
Click to expand...

Just making a joke. Didn't really feel the need to research.

It is not only tricky to get it started it is very time consuming and uncertain maintaining and upgrading it over the years. A Qnap is updated in 2 minutes and if something goes wrong it automatically reverts to its previous working OS revision. You need a lot to implement this sort of functionality. In the past I have had all kind of general purpose linux servers with up to 16 drives in them, they are all cumbersome and can't be compared with a dedicated NAS server. Qnap 509 gets 70MB/s of each of its GigE ports. This is almost impossible with a general purpose PC at least not if you don't tune the eth driver and invest a lot of time in selecting the proper Eth interface which just isn't worth the time today. Just my humble 0.02c
Click to expand...

It doesn't sound like you have much knowledge of unRAID or how it works. Here is a wiki page for you:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/inde...ed_with_unRAID

I would argue that a few hours or research and tweaking is worth the hundreds of dollars you save in pre-packaged hardware costs. And of course there is the fun of doing it yourself and learning something new.
 
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