Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Concorde-SST on November 24, 2006, 12:13:42 pm
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Hello,
I´m an user of a Mac with OS X (Dual 2 GHz PowerMac).
I use several LaCie external HDD´s for storing my digital
archive, but frequently run into the limits of their space.
Now I´m looking for a RAID 5 NAS-System to store and
work with my archive. It should be ready to have at least
3,5 TB of memory, preferrably 4-5 TB.
Does anyone of you have a solution? Anyone with experience?
I know of Apple´s Xserve RAID, they´re just way too ex-
pensive, so I look for a more affordable solution.
Thanks!
+ happy belated Thanksgiving to all who reside in North America,
Andreas.
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Hello,
I´m an user of a Mac with OS X (Dual 2 GHz PowerMac).
I use several LaCie external HDD´s for storing my digital
archive, but frequently run into the limits of their space.
Now I´m looking for a RAID 5 NAS-System to store and
work with my archive. It should be ready to have at least
3,5 TB of memory, preferrably 4-5 TB.
Does anyone of you have a solution? Anyone with experience?
I know of Apple´s Xserve RAID, they´re just way too ex-
pensive, so I look for a more affordable solution.
Thanks!
+ happy belated Thanksgiving to all who reside in North America,
Andreas.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=86873\")
Andreas,
Although I have no first-hand experience with [a href=\"http://www.infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=ReadyNAS%20NVPlus]ReadyNas NV+[/url], I've heard good things about them. We've been using Xserve RAIDs but as you say they're very expensive and hard to justify for just one or two users. There's a long discussion on Macintouch website about different NAS systems, you can find it here (http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/topic4321.html).
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You might be able to build your own, but it is still going to be slightly expensive.
I suggest 3ware controller cards for the drives, I've had good luck with their previous models in a couple of computers running raid arrays. The biggest I have at work is 2.8TB running 16 PATA drives and old 3ware 7500-8 controllers. It's used for a video storage device running software from Avid Technologies for use with their video editing applications.
The newer 3ware cards seem to be real performers, with the speed finally up to what a SCSI array can give for sustained reads and writes. I have no idea how well the run on Mac OS, everything I've done with them has been through Windows. They do come with driver for Linux, which might be the most cost effective solution.
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Andreas,
If you're not afraid of the DIY route, you might want to look into FreeNAS -- I've not used it myself, but I know a couple of folks who do, and they have nothing but good things to say.
If you've got some old hardware lying around, it would certainly be simple enough to give it a test just to see if it fits your needs, as you really can't beat the price
http://www.freenas.org/ (http://www.freenas.org/)
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC protocols, local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.
FreeNAS support in the current release:
• Filesystem: UFS, FAT32, EXT2/EXT3, NTFS (limited read-only)
• Protocol: CIFS (samba) , FTP, NFS, SSH, RSYNC and AFP
• Hard drive: ATA/SATA, SCSI, USB and Firewire
• GPT/EFI partitionning for hard drive bigger than 2TB
• Networks cards: All supported by FreeBSD 6 (including wireless card!)
• Boot from USB key
• Hardware RAID cards: All supported by FreeBSD 6
• Software RAID 0, 1 and 5
• Management of the groups and the users (Local User authentication and Microsoft Domain)
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I would reccomend building your own. Any pre-built RAID system of that size is going to cost quite a bit more money than bulding it yourself (which will still be expensive). I would talk to the guys at MacGurus.com and ask them to help you out with building one (that's where I got my RAID system anyway).
HOWEVER, here's the problem... There is no company on the market right now (to my knowledge anyway, and believe me, I've looked) that is making a TRUE hardwear RAID card (HighPoints RocketRAIDs are NOT true hardwear RAIDs) that is both Mac OSX compatible AND fits a PCI Express slot. There is one company that I read about that is about to introduce one (can't remember the name) but the card itself is $1100. So, you're pretty much locked into using one of HighPoints cards (which I've heard absolutely nothing good about) OR using a software RAID (such as the proprietary OSX RAID controller) with a SATA card and sacrificing some speed, atleast until someone comes out with a real hardwear RAID card for your (and my) machine.
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HOWEVER, here's the problem... There is no company on the market right now (to my knowledge anyway, and believe me, I've looked) that is making a TRUE hardwear RAID card (HighPoints RocketRAIDs are NOT true hardwear RAIDs) that is both Mac OSX compatible AND fits a PCI Express slot. There is one company that I read about that is about to introduce one (can't remember the name) but the card itself is $1100. So, you're pretty much locked into using one of HighPoints cards (which I've heard absolutely nothing good about) OR using a software RAID (such as the proprietary OSX RAID controller) with a SATA card and sacrificing some speed, atleast until someone comes out with a real hardwear RAID card for your (and my) machine.
He's specifically asking for NAS.
NAS is "network attached storage", so he won't be building the RAID inside his Mac.
This means he's free to build e.g. a FreeBSD or Linux system, both of which should support the more recent 9550 SX series of RAID controllers from 3ware (the current 2.6 series kernels have the most recent stable drivers bundled thanks to 3ware's excellent open source policy).
We're using these at work both for internal and NFS, and we're reasonably happy.
The 12-port SATA-II compatible version seems to be what the OP wants. Stuff it with Seagate 500 GB or 750 GB drives, depending on need and system.
But do make sure that the box that you use for the drives is extremely well ventilated. Bad ventilation will kill your drives fast, and such big drives produce a lot of heat.
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I can recommend the 3Ware Sidecar RAID 5 solution. I got one of these a month or so ago and run one maxed out with 4x750GB SATA drives to give me 2TB at Raid 5 using a single PCI Express card in my Quad G5. For the size of store that you are looking at you could put 2xPCI Express cards into your G5 and run 2 enclosures at Raid 5. This was the only game in town for my box.
Price was pretty reasonable considering the size and disk costs. NAS has traditionally been a poor solution for me as the access speeds and off the shelf hardware solutions have been poor. If you didn't want to host the storage off of your current G5 you could put together a 2nd G5 box relatively inexpensively and use this as a NAS device using standard OS X file sharing across a GB lan.
Here's a link (http://www.3ware.com/products/Ext_serial_ata2-9000.asp) to the 3Ware solution.
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I know this sounds nutty, but after having lived with a now-stable NAS solution (Buffalo Terastation) for about 6-months, I would state that the preferred solution for network storage should be a true dedicated server with a raid array. This probably adds $500 to the initial investment, but the flexibility, performance, and duarability is, to me, worth it. That will be my future architecture.
I am starting to come around to what everyone has been telling me - the commercial pre-packaged solutions make too many compromizes versus what you can build "roll your own" for the same money.
Especially if you have a team of skilled network engineers (like I do) at work that can help you set everything up. On the downside, these folks are trying to talk me into a SAN because "it rocks." They are used to spending other people's money.
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I would reccomend building your own. .....
HOWEVER, here's the problem... There is no company on the market right now (to my knowledge anyway, and believe me, I've looked) that is making a TRUE hardwear RAID card (HighPoints RocketRAIDs are NOT true hardwear RAIDs) that is both Mac OSX compatible AND fits a PCI Express slot. There is one company that I read about that is about to introduce one (can't remember the name) but the card itself is $1100. So, you're pretty much locked into using one of HighPoints cards (which I've heard absolutely nothing good about) OR using a software RAID (such as the proprietary OSX RAID controller) with a SATA card and sacrificing some speed, atleast until someone comes out with a real hardwear RAID card for your (and my) machine.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=86899\")
I use a [a href=\"http://www.3ware.com/products/Ext_serial_ata2-9000.asp]3Ware Sidecar[/url] and it most certainly is (1) Hardware RAID, (2) PCI Express, (3) for MAC OS X. It's for G5 machines only with PCI Express which is precisely why I bought it. With 4x750GB SATA II drives inside it screams. The card supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD. The enclosure was about $1100 with the card. Obviously the drives were (significantly) extra. I got mine from my local Mac specialist store but I believe they are in the channel now with the large Mac vendors like CDW or Mac Warehouse - do a google and you'll find someone.
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I know this sounds nutty, but after having lived with a now-stable NAS solution (Buffalo Terastation) for about 6-months, I would state that the preferred solution for network storage should be a true dedicated server with a raid array. This probably adds $500 to the initial investment, but the flexibility, performance, and duarability is, to me, worth it. That will be my future architecture.
I am starting to come around to what everyone has been telling me - the commercial pre-packaged solutions make too many compromizes versus what you can build "roll your own" for the same money.
Especially if you have a team of skilled network engineers (like I do) at work that can help you set everything up. On the downside, these folks are trying to talk me into a SAN because "it rocks." They are used to spending other people's money.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86972\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Bob,
That's not nutty at all. One of the grips I've had with non-roll your own solutions is that you don't have visibility of what's inside the box. I have a pile of Lacie drives that actually consist of 2xdrive Raid 0 inside a single box which makes for an inherently vulnerable solution if a single drive fails (and they have, twice, which lead me down the path to hardware Raid 5). The Terastation falls into the same category - big storage using a number of internal drives but not in a fault tolerant or redundant configuration. (I don't mean to scare you ...).
Building your own storage server is relatively cheap and more manageable these days. The PC/Mac component of it is actually pretty inexpensive and you don't need a hugely powerful box to provide a NAS type of solution.
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I have a Buffalo TeraStation, and it is perfectly capable of hardware RAID5, which is how mine is configured. It's not flashy, but it is stable and offers good value for the money (~$750 for ~750GB of RAID5 storage). And it supports gigabit ethernet.
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Speaking of which, yesterday's crop of spam brought this from techonweb.com (a good vendor from whom I bought my NEC 2090uxi monitor) — the Buffalo TeraStation Pro 1.6TB-NAS for $884 (http://www.techonweb.com/products/productdetail.aspx?id=C49703&src=NL).
Nill
~~
www.toulme.net (http://www.toulme.net)
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To All,
Thank you very much for your valuable input! I´ll talk
with my computer guru about it :-)
all the best,
Andreas.
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I have a Buffalo TeraStation, and it is perfectly capable of hardware RAID5, which is how mine is configured. It's not flashy, but it is stable and offers good value for the money (~$750 for ~750GB of RAID5 storage). And it supports gigabit ethernet.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86983\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
You're right - my bad. I was confusing this box with something else ... seem like some killer deals out there for it at the moment too.
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I use a 3Ware Sidecar (http://www.3ware.com/products/Ext_serial_ata2-9000.asp) and it most certainly is (1) Hardware RAID, (2) PCI Express, (3) for MAC OS X. It's for G5 machines only with PCI Express which is precisely why I bought it. With 4x750GB SATA II drives inside it screams. The card supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD. The enclosure was about $1100 with the card. Obviously the drives were (significantly) extra. I got mine from my local Mac specialist store but I believe they are in the channel now with the large Mac vendors like CDW or Mac Warehouse - do a google and you'll find someone.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=86973\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Interresting... Can you buy the card without the enclosure though? Or is it the same as their stand alone cards just with an enclosure attached?
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Interresting... Can you buy the card without the enclosure though? Or is it the same as their stand alone cards just with an enclosure attached?
As far as I've been able to determine, only the Sidecar for the Mac has external multi-lane connectors. The controller's name is 9590SE-4ME, though, so maybe you can find it as a stand-alone product.
I'm a bit miffed that the Sidecar is PowerMac G5/Mac Pro + Mac OS X only, I think it would be a pretty easy sale for Wintel or Unix/Linux users on other hardware, too.
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http://www.cooldrives.com/hardware-raid-sata.html (http://www.cooldrives.com/hardware-raid-sata.html)
The same site has other similar units avaialble too, so spend some time looking. You'll need two units to get 4TB, but they are FireWire 800 and you should be able to daisychain them to your Mac.
But in the end, I think Bob's advice is the best -- get a real RAID server. Dell has some great buys on refurbished units.
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Stupid question, but why do you need this to be a network appliance?
You should get significantly faster access if you pick a USB2 or better yet eSATA unit.
Buffalo has just announced a USB2/eSATA version of their Terastations. Their support center is telling me that only the USB2 connection can be used with Macs, but I believe that the eSATA connection should work with the new Mac Pro (to be tested obviously).
They claim read/write transfer rates to be 5 times faster than their NAS.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Stupid question, but why do you need this to be a network appliance?
Gigabit ethernet (which all of the TeraStations support) is faster than any flavor of USB or firewire, and is much more conducive to simultaneous connections to multiple machines.
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Yeah thats correct.
Gigabit Ethernet is about 125 MB/s (theoretical) and the fastest
FireWire I know of is FW 800 and this is "just" 100 MB/s. USB
is much slower and more cumbersome.
However for striping fast SCSI drives it may be too slow, one
can use multiple GB Ethernet ports or use fibre channel.
ciao,
Concorde-SST
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Yeah thats correct.
Gigabit Ethernet is about 125 MB/s (theoretical) and the fastest
FireWire I know of is FW 800 and this is "just" 100 MB/s. USB
is much slower and more cumbersome.
However for striping fast SCSI drives it may be too slow, one
can use multiple GB Ethernet ports or use fibre channel.
ciao,
Concorde-SST
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=87509\")
I happen to have one of these buffalo Terastations myself (TS-1), and never get even close to these theoretical transfer rates although all the components in my set up are compatible with 1 GB ethernet. It takes typically about 4-6 seconds to open a 70 MB tiff file in PS.
Buffalo themselves assess the actual transfer rate as being 13 MB/s with the older units and about 33 MB/s with the newer Gigabyte ethernet ones.
[a href=\"http://buffalo.jp/products/catalog/item/t/ts-htgl_r5/index.html]http://buffalo.jp/products/catalog/item/t/...l_r5/index.html[/url]
One the other hand, they claim to achieve about 100 MB/s with their latest eSATA offerings.
http://buffalo.jp/products/catalog/item/h/...2_r5/index.html (http://buffalo.jp/products/catalog/item/h/hd-qsu2_r5/index.html)
Regards,
Bernard
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Read or write?
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Read or write?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87538\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Jonathan,
If you check the links, you'll see that both read and write figures are included, and within 15% of each others.
Regards,
Bernard
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My comprehension of Japanese is very poor, but it looks like the maximum speed is only achievable with the eSATA connection, not USB, which is only about 1/3 as fast. Throughput with a gigabit ethernet connection should be similar to eSATA; perhaps a bit slower, but not too much, and significantly faster than USB or Firewire. I don't know why it isn't, unless the eSATA model has some faster internal components (drive controller, etc) than the gigabit ethernet model(s), or they've been using a cheap gigabit ethernet controller.
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My comprehension of Japanese is very poor, but it looks like the maximum speed is only achievable with the eSATA connection, not USB, which is only about 1/3 as fast.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87599\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Your understanding is correct Jonathan. I am not sure what the reason is.
Other ethernet enclosures from different vendors could perform better than the ethernet Buffalo offerings, but I don't remember even seeing test results of an ethernet RAID enclosure that showed figures even remotely close to 125 MB/s transfer rates.
If you know of some that do actually perfom this fast, I'd be very interested in getting some pointers to these.
Thank you in advance,
Regards,
Bernard
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Your understanding is correct Jonathan. I am not sure what the reason is.
USB isn't really well suited to these kinds of loads, because other devices on the same bus can degrade performance in a way that seems random to the casual observer.
If you mix USB 1.1 and 2.0 high speed devices, you're also asking for trouble.
Also, the max theoretical speed of USB 2.0 high speed is 480 Mbps, or roughly 50 MB/s, while SATA I is 1500 Mbps (150 MB/s) and SATA II is 3000 Mbps (300 MB/s).
Other ethernet enclosures from different vendors could perform better than the ethernet Buffalo offerings, but I don't remember even seeing test results of an ethernet RAID enclosure that showed figures even remotely close to 125 MB/s transfer rates.
125 MB/s over single 1 Gb ethernet is guaranteed to be a blatant lie.
It's just 1 Gb divided by 8. Even at optimal performance, a typical storage protocol over ethernet would not use 8 bits per byte for transfer, but at least 10. So the theoretical best you should get, would be 100 MB/s. Then there may be additional overhead.
Add in file system characteristics, and you'll never see the theoretical performance of these external drives, just like you never see the theoretical performance of your internal drives.
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Some facts about Raid 5 actual performance:
http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2881&p=12 (http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2881&p=12)
Read speed is always far below the theoretical 125 MB/s in their test as well, typically around 25 MB/s.
Regards,
Bernard
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received an email for the Buffalo 2 tera for about $1050
Does this fit in with this discussion.
Was tempted. I use Lacie and Maxtor up to 500 gb (maxtor at 300 gb) connected together. not perfect but allows for storage capabilities with backup.
http://www.buy.com/prod/Buffalo_2_0_TeraSt.../202308876.html (http://www.buy.com/prod/Buffalo_2_0_TeraStation_Pro_Network_Attached_Storage/q/loc/101/202308876.html)
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=...653&dcaid=17653 (http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=202618428&adid=17653&dcaid=17653)
The above link is the sale for under $1,000
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I'm not sure , but my guess would be eSATA
should be faster then gigabit ethernet
I have 2 SATA enclosures with inexpensive Sata drives and after some
digging on different forums I came to conclusion that for me skipping RAID 5
makes storage above all more simple and in fact IMO safer ,
as I can cheaply make Backup copies of every drive I fill ..
I can easily hot swap what ever information I need ..
( alltogether about thirty 300 Gig drives )
What I use is Sonnet SATA box ( 5 drives in it can be filled with 5 x 5oo MEgs drives )
As it is a mport multiplier enclosure you can attach like four of those to the same PCI card in my G5 .
regards
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i have a infrant ready nas (X-NAS?)...works perfectly...raid5, relatively inexpensive, gigabit ethernet....great software....also have a FW800 raid5...my next is definitely another ready nas, cheaper and much more versatile, speed is very good (not so important for backup/server anyway)....got the readynas because the buffalo is quite a bit slower (got a buffalo first and thought i was on usb 1)...google some reviews, they all say the same.....
the ready nas is limited to 4x500gb which is a little less then 1.5TB in one case (RAID5).... they also have some rack mounted solutions.....the best thing about the ready nas is the expanding raid....get the box with one drive, add a second, add a third, add a fourth, the raid expands automatically...
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Take a look at http://www.2degreesfrost.com (http://www.2degreesfrost.com). They have an Etherenet attached NAS or, optionally, SAN fron 1 TB up to 13 TB. JBOD, RAID 0,1 and 5. Multiple boxes can be cascaded for larger storage sizes.
Prices are much less than XServe RAID with or w/o XSAN.
I saw them at MacWorld2007. The hardware and SAN software are established Linux products, recently migrated to OS X.
Speed on Gigabit E'net seem to run around 85% of theoretical since it is just Ethernet, no IP or TCP involved.
I have an evaluation unit coming. I'll update the post once I've had a chance to test it.
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Infrant Technologies (http://www.infrant.com/) is another company you might want to look at. No personal experience but I've heard good things...
Mike.
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Infrant Technologies (http://www.infrant.com/) is another company you might want to look at. No personal experience but I've heard good things...
Mike.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=96710\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Just in case, anyone is interested about Infrants Ready NAS+ and Max OSX combo...
I installed one to our network to serve as archive with Portfolio software.
In the infrants userforum was some questions about transfer speeds (with different setups) so i made some tests with 100Mb files.
For me the speed is enough since we don´t use NAS for anything else than archieve.
Set:
Ready NAS NV+ (4x750 Barracuda ES)
RAID5
1 GB Ethernet (2 routers / 8 macs / 3 printers...)
G5 Quad
OS X 10.4.8
NAS config:
only AFP
Jumbo frames on
all journaling disabled
G5 Quad to NAS 100MB file 18 sec.
G5 Quad to NAS 1GB file 3 min 11 sec.
NAS to G5 Quad 100MB file 6 sec.
NAS to G5 Quad 1GB file 50 sec.
sami
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My main workstation is a MacPro 8core with 4 tb internal drives (2 in RAID 0 configuration for photo and video storage). I have an external 1.5TB Iomega UltraMax FW800 connected to back up the internal RAID.
This week, I just installed a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ on my LAN for network accessible storage and archiving. I purchased the empty box from Newegg.com and 4 separate 1TB Seagate drives. Doing it this way saved over $1,000 compared to purchasing the unit with the drives installed.
My plan is to reduce the clutter around my MacPro by backing up to the NAS. I use a MacBook Pro as a desktop replacement for my financial planning practice. I have created different shares on the NAS volume for photos and business related files. When the ReadyNAS starts to get filled, I can connect Mac formatted USB drives to any of the 3 USB ports on the device. That's where I plan to move my Iomega UltraMax box from my MacPro work area.
I have a wired gigabit LAN. Using iStat on my MacPro, read/write speeds to the ReadyNAS average 22-26 MB/sec. These speeds are more than twice the speed of my Apple Airport Extreme USB drive. So far so good.
Cheers.
Bud James
North Wales, PA.
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Can't believe no one has mentioned Drobo, yet. With their new DroboShare you can make into a NAS. Don't know what limitations there are to its capabilities as I'm not interested in its networking capabilities.
Drobo relatively new start-up, but reviews I've read claim that the product is already ready for primetime. Nevertheless, I'm impatiently waiting for Drobo 2.0, as I don't beta-test products.
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NAS with its "overhead" never tops 30MB/sec in the real world.
Gigabit ethernet (which all of the TeraStations support) is faster than any flavor of USB or firewire, and is much more conducive to simultaneous connections to multiple machines.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87508\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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Drobo is not beta by any means, it's been around about a year and works 100% perfectly!
I use one for backup and to store my movie collection, using 4 1TB drives.
It's fine for streamsing DVDs but not as fast for use as primary storage of working files for my photo work. My primary storage is still my 2TB RAID array inside my case.
Drobo does have a $200 add on unit to link up to two drobo units and turn them into one big NAS through ethernet - however the transfer speeds are still limited to USB2 speed because that's how the ethernet unit attaches to the drobos.
If you don't mind the hit in speed, using them as a NAS is a very cheap alternative. You can currently have a 6TB useable space NAS, fully protected, for $3000. As larger drives come out that figure will go way up of course. Right now only 1TB drives are out, but the 1.3's are coming out in a couple months.
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Has anyone tried one of these?
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storag...0-e/ss4000e.pdf (http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ss4000-e/ss4000e.pdf)
It does say the drive limit is 500GB but I understand there is a firmware upgrade that allows it to take 1TB drives now.
They are a little less than $500
Mike
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That is simply a low power linux box running samba.
It requires all the drives to be identical, you can not change or upgrade the configuration (true of just about all RAID arrays), and if you have a drive fail but can not get the EXACT same drive to replace it later (model, and firmaware) you will suffer a performance loss using the device.
It's important that if you build a RAID array that you purchase spare drives while you can. You also have to buy the maximum configuration you will ever use with it, at the time you build.
You can build that yourself for about $150, it's just a case, low end MB/CPU/RAM, power supply and a free OS.
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My main workstation is a MacPro 8core with 4 tb internal drives (2 in RAID 0 configuration for photo and video storage). I have an external 1.5TB Iomega UltraMax FW800 connected to back up the internal RAID.
This week, I just installed a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ on my LAN for network accessible storage and archiving. I purchased the empty box from Newegg.com and 4 separate 1TB Seagate drives. Doing it this way saved over $1,000 compared to purchasing the unit with the drives installed.
My plan is to reduce the clutter around my MacPro by backing up to the NAS. I use a MacBook Pro as a desktop replacement for my financial planning practice. I have created different shares on the NAS volume for photos and business related files. When the ReadyNAS starts to get filled, I can connect Mac formatted USB drives to any of the 3 USB ports on the device. That's where I plan to move my Iomega UltraMax box from my MacPro work area.
I have a wired gigabit LAN. Using iStat on my MacPro, read/write speeds to the ReadyNAS average 22-26 MB/sec. These speeds are more than twice the speed of my Apple Airport Extreme USB drive. So far so good.
Cheers.
Bud James
North Wales, PA.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=183699\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Be careful. Neither NAS or RAID 5 is suitable for backup. These systems are not archival. They are convenient when they work properly, but there are several failure modes the manufactures do not discuss, including failures of the redundent power supplies. Doesn't happen often, but when it does it's a real mess.
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Be careful. Neither NAS or RAID 5 is suitable for backup. These systems are not archival. They are convenient when they work properly, but there are several failure modes the manufactures do not discuss, including failures of the redundent power supplies. Doesn't happen often, but when it does it's a real mess.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=184031\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Archival and backup aren't necessarily the same thing.
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Be careful. Neither NAS or RAID 5 is suitable for backup. These systems are not archival. They are convenient when they work properly, but there are several failure modes the manufactures do not discuss, including failures of the redundent power supplies. Doesn't happen often, but when it does it's a real mess.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=184031\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Thanks for the tip, but I do have individual drives that I archive to in sections due the space limitations of the drives. These are kept offsite to protect against perils at my home or theft. I used to archive to DVD's but I stopped doing that about a year ago.
Bud James
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Thanks for the tip, but I do have individual drives that I archive to in sections due the space limitations of the drives. These are kept offsite to protect against perils at my home or theft. I used to archive to DVD's but I stopped doing that about a year ago.
Are these individual drives based on magnetic harddisks?
If so, why?
Don't you think you'll have archival needs beyond ~5 years?
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Are these individual drives based on magnetic harddisks?
If so, why?
Don't you think you'll have archival needs beyond ~5 years?
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Yes they are. I didn't know that there was any other kind except for new and outrageously expensive solid state drives (ala Mac Air).
These drives are rotated through and each update is verified.
From what I've read and heard, the likes of Schewe and Reichmann use only hard drives for permanent storage. I have also read in these forums and others about the problems of reading RW+ CDs and DVDs (dye based technology) that are not permanent either.
What are you using?
Bud
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That is simply a low power linux box running samba.
It requires all the drives to be identical, you can not change or upgrade the configuration (true of just about all RAID arrays), and if you have a drive fail but can not get the EXACT same drive to replace it later (model, and firmaware) you will suffer a performance loss using the device.
It's important that if you build a RAID array that you purchase spare drives while you can. You also have to buy the maximum configuration you will ever use with it, at the time you build.
You can build that yourself for about $150, it's just a case, low end MB/CPU/RAM, power supply and a free OS.
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Thanks for that, I did not know of those limitations.
Mike
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That is simply a low power linux box running samba.
It requires all the drives to be identical, you can not change or upgrade the configuration (true of just about all RAID arrays), and if you have a drive fail but can not get the EXACT same drive to replace it later (model, and firmaware) you will suffer a performance loss using the device.
It's important that if you build a RAID array that you purchase spare drives while you can. You also have to buy the maximum configuration you will ever use with it, at the time you build.
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Things are changing quickly, though. You can throw a drive of any size at a Drobo from any manufacturer, and upgrade accordingly as you wish. The same might be true (with limitations?) with some of Infrant's RAID(like) products, also.