NAS Advice

[drvnbysound]

I will be using mine as media storage for SageTV; primarily DVD's and BluRay rips, but may also begin migrating some recorded TV to it as well. The loss of the DVD/BluRay data would be pretty substantial to me due to the time it's taken to rip the collection that I have...

 

[tmbrown97]

Maybe we should do CrashPlan's "Backup to a friend" and store a "backup" of that impressive library out here!   h34r:

 

[pete_c]

Yup; here movie rips etc use the most space; but of least concern here relating to backup stuff.
 
More important to me are files, pictures and music backups.

 

[drvnbysound]

Maybe we should do CrashPlan's "Backup to a friend" and store a "backup" of that impressive library out here!   h34r:

 
Um, no thanks:
 
Man exceeds Comcast bandwidth cap 

 

[drvnbysound]

For pictures, files, etc. I've just ordered one of these:
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153146&ignorebbr=1
 
To which, I'll have (2) drives placed in and mirrored. When they fill up, I'll keep one near my desk for archive retrieval, and the other will be stored off-site. Since photography is another hobby of mine, I'm going to start with (2) 2TB drives (which I already have) dedicated for pictures only.

 

[pete_c]

Yup relating to photography I used to keep my negatives in a notebook with a quick picture attached of all of the negatives on one page many many years ago.
 
In the 1990's a friend gave me a present of the first Casio Digital camera.  It was really sort of primitive.  For a time I did abandon my Nikon/Canon SLR's.
 
I went nuts with this Casio Digital camera even though the quality of the pictures really was not that good.
 
Never did store any of my pictures in the "cloud". 
 
That said I did lose the one hard drive that I kept all of the initial Casio Digital pictures (many of my children at the time).
 
I did keep that Hard drive; but have never fixed it.  I didn't keep copies at the time such that one day I will probably repair the hard drive just for those pictures.
 
Today I just keep multiple whole copies of the Digital pictures anyways.  They do not really use that much space. 
 
I also do utilize a very simple program to see all of the thumbnails at one time.  Its a tiny program and very efficient and old these days called Polybytes / Polyview.
 
Just looked on the web site.  Interesting news as I purchased it a very long time ago. It's free today.
 

PolyView and PolyView64 are no longer for sale and do not require the entry of registration information. Please use the button below if you wish to donate to the cause of maintaining these programs and support the cost of providing them via this web site.

 

http://www.polybytes.com/

 

[tmbrown97]

Wow - 250GB limit?  For the average user I'm sure that's fine, but I know I exceed that... just 2 months ago I know I did at least 3 transfers of a 150GB data set, aside from my normal day to day work.
 
I did pick up that SAN machine that was given to me - I was wrong - it has openfiler on it, not unraid - I'll plug it in later and take a look.

 

[NeverDie]

There is a Homeseer user out there that build a multi- motherboard tower that is doing multiple functions (NAS, Homeseer, et al).
 
Never seen this before; very unique low powered device.

Multi-motherboard tower?

 

[NeverDie]

I read about some ransom-ware that was specifically targetting synology users (http://www.anandtech.com/show/8337/synology-advises-users-of-synolocker-ransomware).  Ouch.  I guess for that reason whatever software you pick to drive your main server, you should pick something different to drive your backup server(s).

 

[pete_c]

Multi-motherboard tower?

 
Yup; thinking it was multiples of Atom based mini ITX boards.  Nope it wasn't Atom mini itx boards.
 
He is automating with Homeseer and off the grid some where desolate (or in a desert).
 

All 5 boards are Zotac 9300 G-E, Intel Q9400s-CPU's, 8 Gig of ram
boot drives are 80GB IntelX25-M SSD's
Thermalright AXP-140 CPU coolers
Thermalright X-silent 140 cooler fans

4 boards running Xenserver 5.6 bare metal with various 32 and 64 bit OS's WIndows and Linux

Board # 5 (on the bottom) runs Openfiler set up with a
3ware 9650SE-8LPML controler setup as raid 6

4- Supermicro M14T 4x 2.5" Hot-swap SAS / SATA Hard Disk Drive Trays
5- Mini Box M4-ATX -HV power supplys to power the boards
2- Mini Box DCDC-USB power supplys 1 configured 5 volt the other configured 12 volt
to power the harddrives
8- 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200RPM ST9500420AS

All stuff into a Thermaltake case with a custom case end panel and motherboard back plane built by me.

This replaced the 4 Dell PowerEdge 2600 power sucking screaming meme's I had running.

 
Found the pictures of it.  He was building a new computer in an M350 case (current car pc cases and new pc endeavor case)
 

 

[NeverDie]

Is it all crammed into one box just to save space, or is there something else going on?  Since heat is a prime enemy of hard drive longevity, I'd think doing the opposite (spreading things out in oversized cases) would be preferable--if you have the space that is.  But we all like things to be small and compact, so there's a trade-off to be made.
 
In fact, it seems most drives are commonly mounted just like you see there in that photo: mounted sideways and crammed together without much air-flow.  For my six hard drives, I'm debating whether to put them in a 12 bay case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129200&cm_re=nineteen_hundred-_-11-129-200-_-Product or possibly http://www.amazon.com/NANOXIA-Silence-Gigantic-Motherboard-NXDS6WW/dp/B00GOTL8NY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422379595&sr=8-2&keywords=nanoxia+6&pebp=1422379621345&peasin=B00GOTL8NY), to space them out, just to ensure adequate airflow so they aren't packed together and heating one another.  Would that be unnecessary overkill?  I don't have a principled argument, with facts and evidence, for spacing them out, but every time I've had a hard drive fail prematurely, overheating seemed to be a factor.
 
On the other hand, I guess I could start compact and then monitor the drive temperatures to see whether going big is necessary.  That would assume, however, that the drive's temperature sensor is monitoring the hottest spot, which it probably isn't.  
 
Anyone happen to know?

 

[pete_c]

The above mentioned Homeseer user went to tiny Atom powered mini ITX multiple boxes in M350 cases afterwards.  (his postings show).
 
Yup; here my first DIY NAS used drives mounted like that on the side with one 4 drive hot swap drive cage in the front.  At the time there was many additional fans installed in it.
 
Over the years have had one drive starting to fail and replaced it in vivo.  Just got a smartdrv email tickle.  It took a minute to swap out the drive and syncing took a few hours (didn't pay attention too much as the NAS was fine and functioning while syncing the drives).  Difficulty though purchasing a matching mfg drive.  Today keep spares of the drives around.
 
The 8 drive case is very tight but it's all hard drives.  The motherboard has a passive heat sink on it.  There are more passive heat sinks on the LSI Raid card than the motherboard.  Behind the 8 drive slots are two large very quiet fans that are just about the height of the case.  It's using a low powered energy saving 1 U mini server style power supply which I never hear unless I restart the box and only on startup.  Most of the power is utilized by the drives.  The 8 drive cage has ventilation "pockets" between, above and below each of the drives.  The back plane provides the power (not a bunch of cables everywhere) and the LSI Raid card has two connections with very thin 4 SATA drive cables which utilize no space.  Most of the cabling is just the power from the PS to the motherboard.
 
You can also go mini and micro mini NAS (using 2.5" SATA or SSD) or Maxi NAS with 3.5" 4-5 TB drives and or hybrid SSD and platter drives these days.