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NAS or Server - Page 7

post #181 of 226
1/27/13 at 1:55pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

What did you end up buying ?
Once I get the case I will post pics. I got the 3570k i5 chip and an asus p8z77-m pro MB. 8gb of ram and a 60gb ssd. I might have made a blunder on the SSD. I am not sure the final install size of w8 because I planned to uncompress on the SSD then move to the file server drives after its uncompressed. 60gb may not be enough since some of the files might be 30gigs.
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post #182 of 226
1/27/13 at 3:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by djtoodles View Post

I might have made a blunder on the SSD. I am not sure the final install size of w8 because I planned to uncompress on the SSD then move to the file server drives after its uncompressed. 60gb may not be enough since some of the files might be 30gigs.

I just installed Windows 8 with Media Center on my laptop and I'm using around 14GB... if that helps.

What are you "uncompressing" again? BluRays? You can always map a drive and rip straight to the server... or have the server do it for you.
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post #183 of 226
1/29/13 at 7:56am
Thread Starter 
I ended up returning the 60gig drive and got a 120gig SSD. Should alleviate any issues.

I just realized flexraid has a cost to it. Is there any free alternatives?.... I Just need all the drives I add to be under 1 drive. And have some redundancy. I dont care about it doing any windows backups or anything fancy. I just need the data stored on it to have some redundancy.

Seems like my choices are...

SnapRaid
FlexRaid
Storage Spaces

Anyone have any advantages and disadvantages of them? I would prefer performance as part of the equation as well.
Edited by djtoodles - 1/29/13 at 8:25am
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post #184 of 226
1/29/13 at 9:20am
Flexraid is best. Cheaper is not better. But free can be good if your more interested in cost than features/performance.

There is no reason not to use a free alternative to flexraid if you wanted.

Personally- I find Flexraid worth the price. It's proven winner and it offers the pooling and the software parity in one package. Some products might do one or the other... so you might need two products.
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post #185 of 226
1/29/13 at 9:28am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

Flexraid is best. Cheaper is not better. But free can be good if your more interested in cost than features/performance.

There is no reason not to use a free alternative to flexraid if you wanted.

Personally- I find Flexraid worth the price. It's proven winner and it offers the pooling and the software parity in one package. Some products might do one or the other... so you might need two products.

does flexraid auto re-balance when you add a drive? it seems microsofts storage spaces does not re-balance once you get low on space and add 1 drive.

also with flexraid can i start with 1 drive and just keep adding drives? and can that 1 drive have data on it to begin with? I only have 1 3tb drive now. Wondering if i need to pony up for a few more or if i can start with that and expand the system and parity out when money permits.

It seems software raid is pretty slow from the little bit of info i read frown.gif. Guess I should have considered software raid performance before buying everything. Oh well.
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post #186 of 226
1/29/13 at 9:55am
I dont know if you are set on using Windows, but I made the switch from WHS to Unraid and could not be happier. Unraid was free for the first 3 disks so I was able to try it and fell in love so much that I upgrade to Pro.

I have both setups still running, but the WHS box has been relegated to only do backups and nothing else. Unraid has given me no problems and I had the thing running in less than 15 minutes and has been rock solid stable ever since. WHS for me was very unstable and had all types of problems, I built a new setup and installed my WHS disk onto it and had even worse problems than my original rig. So thank god I tried Unraid, mostly because it was free and I had nothing to lose.
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post #187 of 226
1/29/13 at 10:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by djtoodles View Post

does flexraid auto re-balance when you add a drive? it seems microsofts storage spaces does not re-balance once you get low on space and add 1 drive.

also with flexraid can i start with 1 drive and just keep adding drives? and can that 1 drive have data on it to begin with? I only have 1 3tb drive now. Wondering if i need to pony up for a few more or if i can start with that and expand the system and parity out when money permits.

It seems software raid is pretty slow from the little bit of info i read frown.gif. Guess I should have considered software raid performance before buying everything. Oh well.

I get fast performance.

I can stream 5 1080p movies at the same time... and get over 100MB transfer speeds over the LAN.

How fast do you need????

Flexraid does not balance anything. It just stores like a normal HDD does. It tried to keep everything together... and would only move to another drive if the first drive fills up.

Example.

You have a "folder" on one HDD in your flexraid array. Putting anything into that folder would put it on the HDD that has that "folder" on it. Once that HDD is full.. flexraid would create another "folder" named exactly the same on the drive that had the most spare space... and being to fill that. Once that HDD fills up.. it would do it again.

If you just put something on the flexraid drive or make a new folder - it usually just uses the drive with the most available space.

It does not balance or re-arrange anything though...
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post #188 of 226
1/29/13 at 10:17am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

I get fast performance.

I can stream 5 1080p movies at the same time... and get over 100MB transfer speeds over the LAN.

How fast do you need????

Flexraid does not balance anything. It just stores like a normal HDD does. It tried to keep everything together... and would only move to another drive if the first drive fills up.

Example.

You have a "folder" on one HDD in your flexraid array. Putting anything into that folder would put it on the HDD that has that "folder" on it. Once that HDD is full.. flexraid would create another "folder" named exactly the same on the drive that had the most spare space... and being to fill that. Once that HDD fills up.. it would do it again.

If you just put something on the flexraid drive or make a new folder - it usually just uses the drive with the most available space.

It does not balance or re-arrange anything though...
really? So how does it have parity then? If i lose 1 drive I lose everything on it?
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post #189 of 226
1/29/13 at 10:29am
With unRaid the parity rebuilds itself at scheduled intervals, you can also do a manual update at any time. I'm sure flexraid has the same option.
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post #190 of 226
1/29/13 at 10:31am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dropkick Murphy View Post

With unRaid the parity rebuilds itself at scheduled intervals, you can also do a manual update at any time. I'm sure flexraid has the same option.
I will look more into it. The reason I didnt use unraid or zfs is because I wanted to use a HTPC and fileserver in one device. I dont want to manage multiple things.
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post #191 of 226
1/29/13 at 12:30pm
Flexraid is closest to raid 4

Every file is completely written to one disk, not spanned across multiple disks.

This gives you the best read performance (maximum read of existing hard drive, no software raid calculation to logically rebuild each block before reading)

If you used this with real time raid, you'd have pretty poor write performance since everything you write is redundantly written to a single parity drive.

To make the best of this, it's often suggested in these forums to use a snapshot mode where the parity rebuilds on a schedule and any new data added between rebuilds is "at risk" of being lost in the even of that disk failing.

This is one of the tradeoffs you decide when choosing realtime or snapshot, and I'd take the improved write performance and stability of snapshot mode every time. Most of my data is already written, so any new data written within 24 hours shouldn't be that hard to recover.

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/11/raid2-raid3-raid4-raid6/
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post #192 of 226
1/29/13 at 12:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by djtoodles View Post

I will look more into it. The reason I didnt use unraid or zfs is because I wanted to use a HTPC and fileserver in one device. I dont want to manage multiple things.

Well, you don't really manage Unraid, you just set it up and forget it until you get an email that a drive has died. Flexraid has almost every feature that unraid does and some that it doesn't. They are really on fairly even footing. Flexraid + WHS costs about the same as Unraid pro.
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post #193 of 226
1/29/13 at 1:33pm
Right^. Both previous posters have good insight.
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post #194 of 226
1/29/13 at 2:50pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

Flexraid is closest to raid 4

Every file is completely written to one disk, not spanned across multiple disks.

This gives you the best read performance (maximum read of existing hard drive, no software raid calculation to logically rebuild each block before reading)

If you used this with real time raid, you'd have pretty poor write performance since everything you write is redundantly written to a single parity drive.

To make the best of this, it's often suggested in these forums to use a snapshot mode where the parity rebuilds on a schedule and any new data added between rebuilds is "at risk" of being lost in the even of that disk failing.

This is one of the tradeoffs you decide when choosing realtime or snapshot, and I'd take the improved write performance and stability of snapshot mode every time. Most of my data is already written, so any new data written within 24 hours shouldn't be that hard to recover.

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/11/raid2-raid3-raid4-raid6/

So say I have a drive failure that means everything on that drive is lost? ... Maybe I am confused. There is no redundancy on it? as far as I know of snapshots if i am snapshotting 5tb of data i need 5tb of space for a snapshot. I was looking more or less to have x amount of drives and if one fails i can just replace that drive and have it rebuild that data. and also be able to easily add drives to make the pool bigger. I i thought that was the parity part of it. seems like this is not achievable with flexraid?
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post #195 of 226
1/29/13 at 2:58pm
No all your data is safe even if a drive fails. You can rebuild that drive with parity
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post #196 of 226
1/29/13 at 3:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

No all your data is safe even if a drive fails. You can rebuild that drive with parity

so everything is safe from the previous parity snapshot just no changes from the previous snapshot to when the failure happens right? and if I want to store 5tb of stuff I need to have 5tb free for the parity snapshots?
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post #197 of 226
1/29/13 at 3:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by djtoodles View Post

So say I have a drive failure that means everything on that drive is lost? ... Maybe I am confused. There is no redundancy on it? as far as I know of snapshots if i am snapshotting 5tb of data i need 5tb of space for a snapshot. I was looking more or less to have x amount of drives and if one fails i can just replace that drive and have it rebuild that data. and also be able to easily add drives to make the pool bigger. I i thought that was the parity part of it. seems like this is not achievable with flexraid?

If you have 5 2tb drives then 1 drive would be used as a parity drive. You end up with 8TB of storage all protected.
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post #198 of 226
1/29/13 at 3:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by macks View Post

If you have 5 2tb drives then 1 drive would be used as a parity drive. You end up with 8TB of storage all protected.

Right. You use one HDD for parity and it can back up the others.
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post #199 of 226
1/29/13 at 3:29pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by macks View Post

If you have 5 2tb drives then 1 drive would be used as a parity drive. You end up with 8TB of storage all protected.

perfect. so basically I can lose one drive and be ok. THats exactly what I was looking for smile.gif so then flexraid is the recommended option? I see he is working on nzfs which should be out later this year and will have an upgrade from flexraid to it.

last question hopefully... If i already have a 3tb drive full and that is my initial drive to setup with flexraid will I lose the data? Or is it ok to start with 1 single drive on flexraid and add later with content? That way I know if i should bother with flexraid now or when I go to purchase my 2nd 3tb drive.
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post #200 of 226
1/29/13 at 4:13pm
You can use Flexraid with empty or full drives

You won't lose any data.
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post #201 of 226
1/29/13 at 6:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by djtoodles View Post

I see he is working on nzfs which should be out later this year and will have an upgrade from flexraid to it.

I'm a little biased, but if you want ZFS like features, go with the real ZFS. I do own a Flexraid license, but honestly, it scares me to trust my data to it. I know you will only lose "one drive" of data beyond the parity disk, but I don't want to lose one drive. I had a drive fail last night on my ZFS system (my fault, it was an old drive, that I knew better than to trust.) Slapped a new drive in and it resilvered 5TB of data in less than 3 hours! Now that's performance! I had a drive fail on Flexraid a year ago and it took over 24 hours. That made me nervous.

Anyway, rambling aside...Flexraid is a good product, and the standard pooling/snapshot parity scheme is pretty mature, but I was looking for even more security.
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post #202 of 226
1/29/13 at 7:12pm
No issues at all with FlexRaid. Been using it for almost a year and I tinker with it and the settings constantly.
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post #203 of 226
1/30/13 at 11:28am
Thread Starter 
Here is a strange question... my case has a 5 pin card reader on the front but nowhere on the MB do I see any usb plugin that is 5pin. I got the Asus P8Z77-M PRO. any ideas? Also The case came with a 3 pin fan but the mb only has 4pins. Do i just skip that fan? I havent got my PSU yet. Should be here tomorrow. Will that have 3pin?
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post #204 of 226
1/30/13 at 12:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by djtoodles View Post

Here is a strange question... my case has a 5 pin card reader on the front but nowhere on the MB do I see any usb plugin that is 5pin. I got the Asus P8Z77-M PRO. any ideas? Also The case came with a 3 pin fan but the mb only has 4pins. Do i just skip that fan? I havent got my PSU yet. Should be here tomorrow. Will that have 3pin?

Did a rebuild of my parents HP m7760n, and it had a 5 pin card reader coming from the front of the case. I added used one of the available usb headers. They are 9 pin, with a keyed block on the 10th space, so just use the side with 5 holes smile.gif

3 pin fans work in 4 pin connectors. You can power them from the PSU or mobo. The 4th pin is speed control, they connectors are keyed and the 3 pin standoff on your motherboard should have a plastic "male" standoff to correctly connect the "female" fan connector
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post #205 of 226
1/31/13 at 7:43am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

Did a rebuild of my parents HP m7760n, and it had a 5 pin card reader coming from the front of the case. I added used one of the available usb headers. They are 9 pin, with a keyed block on the 10th space, so just use the side with 5 holes smile.gif

3 pin fans work in 4 pin connectors. You can power them from the PSU or mobo. The 4th pin is speed control, they connectors are keyed and the 3 pin standoff on your motherboard should have a plastic "male" standoff to correctly connect the "female" fan connector

Good to know about the 5pin. I figured it wouldnt work. So does the 3 pin to the MB work the same? Does it matter which way i plug the 3pin fan into the 4pin mb?
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post #206 of 226
2/8/13 at 7:12am
It should be clear it fits one way by the way the plastic matches up.
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post #207 of 226
2/20/13 at 8:48am
Thread Starter 
Hey guys question... BTW i got my setup working great. Just adding the 3rd and 4th 3tb wd red drives this week.

What is the cheapest setup you can think of I can get a HTPC setup that will run flawless 1080P with the aeon nox skin? this is going to play files off the network so so smallest form factor is fine and preferred. I was thinking raspberry pi but they have problems with DTS audio and need a lower end skin. I would be ok running something like reFocus skin wise but would prefer a nice one like aeon nox.
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post #208 of 226
2/20/13 at 9:52am
$200 for full featured pc.

You run openelc ? Or windows?
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post #209 of 226
2/20/13 at 11:09am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

$200 for full featured pc.

You run openelc ? Or windows?
I would run windows. I can get free copies at work. 200 aint too bad i guess. what would I need to buy for that price point?
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post #210 of 226
2/20/13 at 2:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by djtoodles View Post

I would run windows. I can get free copies at work. 200 aint too bad i guess. what would I need to buy for that price point?

Ivy bridge CPU - $40
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=G1610BOX

+ something like this for simplicity

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119079

If you did not want the barebones h67 system you could go seperate components for a little more.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811154087 $39
or

http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx?cm_sp=ShellShocker-_-11-237-026-_-02202013_3 $29

+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157329

+ $25 stick of ram kit
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