Rebuilding sucks bad? How so? First of all, you can mix and match drive sizes, which is fantastic! Secondly, RAID 5 is great, no doubt, but it is overkill for home users.
With WHS, I have control of per share duplication and it works fine. I had one drive fail and all I did was pop in another drive, and "rebuilding" was done seamlessly and while I was still accessing my system watching BSG :) What I am saying is that, if money was no object, I would take the ReadyNAS Pro in a heartbeat, but 1000 bucks for the chassis alone is too exorbitant for my tastes. WHS is the next best thing for me. My friend bought a Synology 407e and while it's a true NAS, it is DOG SLOW! I mean copying files to it peaks at around 4-6 megabytes a second. Considering that I do a lot of file copies and on the NAS RAR decompression, that would take me eons to do with the Synology. So yes, I agree that WHS is not the most elegant solution or the best, but the best NAS'es are too expensive for me and going for a home made server defeats the purpose due to size and what not. I'd rather have a more "integrated" solution. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 3:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [H] Network Storage Problem with whs, while cool, is that it not only isn't raid or anything like it, its drive pool method is a mess. First, I hate that they use the moniker 'drive pool' when it isn't zfs or anything close to it. Its basically jbod, with some software file level mirroring.. And if/when a drive fails, rebuilding sucks bad. You lose data and getting the setup back is a pita (yes, even on the hp). On the plus side, the plugins are nice. But hell, looks like this: Support. Freenas. Whs. AFP. Yes. No Transcoding. Yes. No Torrent inbuilt. Yes. No (plugin) Apple timemachine? Yes. No Email on drive fail? Yes. Plugin... And on desktop Upnp. Yes. Yes Daap. Yes. No Hardware raid. Yes. Specifically not recommended Software raid. Yes+zfs. Yes.. Of sorts (jbod) Remote backup. Somewhat. Yes Recycle bin. No / coming. Yes Cost. 0. 150 So, I've always struggled with what benefit whs really has... Sent via BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: "Naushad, Zulfiqar" <[email protected]> Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 14:47:02 To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [H] Network Storage Drobo's aren't that good. I had one and returned it. First off they are not NAS'es because there is no network port. For that you have to get another attachment. I still think that getting a HP Mediasmart Server for his needs would be fantastic! They are running cheap these days, around 400 bucks or so. And run Windows Home Server. I've had one and couldn't be happier. It's not a RAID box per se, but it does data duplication very nicely. Right now I have 4 1.5TB Seagates in there and only have 1 TB free. Plenty of pr0n! :P -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 2:43 PM To: hwg Cc: hwg Subject: Re: [H] Network Storage If you have drives of different sizes a Drobo will work nicely. The only reason people would have to rebuild raids frequently is if drives are failing. Having a fault tolerant raid means that when this happens you don't lose any data. If those same drives are in a NAS as JBOD, they still fail and now you have lost data as well. ------- Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation Sent from my iPhone On 4-Apr-09, at 7:05 AM, Steve Tomporowski <[email protected]> wrote: > Admittedly the cheapest solution would be to use an old box, > however, I was really looking for something compact. Maybe after > hearing some real life experiences on the cheaper stuff I'd go that > way. I won't be going to a raid, the two drives that I'll be > shoving into it are not set up for raid, nor do I want to go the > gyrations and buy the extra drives to do that (drives are two > different capacities). Plus, from what I've heard, people with > raids spend a lot of time rebuilding them. Frequently. Note, if > it's once a year, that's too frequent. > > On the upside, doing an old box as a NAS let's me do all the > configuring and I don't have to worry about the number of drives. > On the down side, from what I've got, it'd be a mid size tower case > (I was hoping for smaller) without gigbit lan. > > So I'm still looking for someone with experience on the sub-$400 > units to see if it's worthwhile. I have a healthy skepticism on > site reviews, especially when they seem to be either 1's or 5's with > very little in between. > > Thanks for the info so far. I am going to look into the free NAS > software. > > Steve > > > Neil Davidson wrote: >> If you have more than one drive you are going to want to do some >> kind of >> raid, unless you are just going to have the two/three drives as >> individual >> shares. personally, I'd have them all as one network share. >> >> I have two Thecus N5200Pro's. Complete overkill for most, and they >> are >> expensive. At the time I didn't want to build my own box, I just >> wanted an >> appliance type device. However now I'm looking at building my own and >> selling the NAS boxes as my needs have changed in the past year. >> >> What I'm saying is there is a certain simplicity to NAS boxes that is >> appealing. You aren't tempted to tweak and fiddle with them like >> you are >> with regular PCs. >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Steve >> Tomporowski >> Sent: 04 April 2009 02:16 >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: [H] Network Storage >> >> Okay, I'm looking at network storage boxes. Simple needs: at >> least two open bays, 3 would have been perfect but willing to go to >> four. I have two drives that hold all my video and Dr Who stuff >> that I want to stick in it and be able to move the computer they're >> from upstairs for my son. Not planning on doing any raid, although >> I'll eventually upgrade the router/switch to gigabit. >> >> I've looked at Newegg, specifically at the Synology CS407e and the >> Promise NS4300N. Both have mixed reviews there, either really bad >> or really good. If either are noisy, I'll find a place to hide >> 'em. Otherwise I'm looking for reliable for decent price. >> >> Any suggestions? >> >> Thanks....Steve >> >> >> >
