Good RAID for my audio collection

QNAP TS410

And seagate barcudda 1.5tb drives.

Hi AMA,

I won't suggest RAID10 for file storage purpose. You don't need that extra speed. There's no need to make sacrifice on storage space, and the extra money for RAID10 which you can make some better investment or just save it. A RAID5 is more than enough.

Wow thats unlucky I have been using WD drives for as long as I can remember with no issues at all.

I use WD RE2 green raid drives - but I am guessing this is a no go for you.

I personally use RAID5 which works a treat, but I have an additional backup (weekly manual backup) on another machine as I always worry about the raid controllers giving up too....

quote:

Originally posted by Occean:
Wow thats unlucky I have been using WD drives for as long as I can remember with no issues at all.

I use WD RE2 green raid drives - but I am guessing this is a no go for you.

I personally use RAID5 which works a treat, but I have an additional backup (weekly manual backup) on another machine as I always worry about the raid controllers giving up too....

Many NAS run Linux on them and Western Digital Caviar Green Drives have been known to cause time delay problems with their IntelliPark feature on Linux OS's.
Western Digital does not help you because they don't support the Linux OS.

IMO, it is best to stay clear of Western Digital for NAS purposes, I run all my drives on the NAS now with Samsung EcoGreen drives and they do it marvelous on Linux.

-
aleg

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
QNAP TS410

And seagate barcudda 1.5tb drives.

Garyi, QNAP is around 450$.

I add 4 seagate drives (say 150 $ each) and get 6 Tb which in RAID 5 mode will give me 3 Tb effectively at total cost of 1050 $. Is that correct?

I assume QNAP supports 7200 RPM?

quote:

Originally posted by AMA:
I assume QNAP supports 7200 RPM?

AMA, speed of the disks in a NAS for audio is pointless. All large modern drives run at FAR faster speeds than you can pull data across even a 1Gbit wired ethernet port. I'm getting 60Mbytes/sec on my 5400rpm drives between PCs here and stream multiple movies off the very same drives simultaneously to different PCs in the house. Audio streaming (even at high def) is no more than a couple of Mbytes/sec. The drive I store my audio on is a low power drive designed for use in set-top boxes and has a very long seek time (think it's 24ms seek) and I have had no problems with that (all my music/movies are shared via windows shares).


As has been said above, I'd be more worried by disks spinning down than raw drive performance

quote:

Originally posted by AMA:

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
QNAP TS410

And seagate barcudda 1.5tb drives.

Garyi, QNAP is around 450$.

I add 4 seagate drives (say 150 $ each) and get 6 Tb which in RAID 5 mode will give me 3 Tb effectively at total cost of 1050 $. Is that correct?

I assume QNAP supports 7200 RPM?

I would go for low speed drives.
As Andy says you don't need high speed drive for audio and video replay.

Besides, high speed disks make a lot more noise, which you wouldn't want.

And the EcoGreen-type drives are also lower in power consumption which for 24/7 NAS use also helps financialy.

-
aleg

4 x 1.5 tb at raid five gives you 4.5 tb of storage, this protects against drive failure.

I recommened the TS410 because its really good. it has twonky built in and an itunes server built in. Its very well built and has been rock solid for me (touch wood)

As mentioned don't use western digital for raids, something in the way they work makes the whole system unstable as hell. Seagate work just fine.

I assume you would be placing the NAS somewhere sensible, ie as far from the hifi as practical. Mine is in the garage so noise is not an issue.

Thanks to all -- very valuable information (that's why I love this forum).

I'm a bit skeptical on small HDDs. I forgot to mention that two years ago I bought WD black slim USB drive 250 GB which failed after 6 months -- but that was a drive fail not electronics and I lost huge amount of data. BTW we were four persons who bought the same WD 250 GB and ALL of them failed after 6 months within one month difference. So my black score against WD is already 3 fails for the last two years. I guess WD runs a super-talented marketing if they stay on stream for so many years with such a shitty product.

I would like to go for a robust solution with hot-swap functionality, on-screen alarm, big fan (I live in a hot country ). The power consumption is not a big issue (I live in energy abundant country ).

I need reliability. Is that all QNAP? Possibly Seagate build their own NAS?

Rip nas are supposed to be good as well. I am only speaking from personal experience.

Also in my personal experience, don't buy drobo

ripnas looks as if it is built ok ,quiet ive not had any problem ripping my collection of 2800 cds. linn recommend it ,passed naim test ,check it out i tera £850

I have ripped all my collection already.

The new CDs will most probably go through UnitiServe which I'm waiting for.

So i think rip nas is not for me and I need a regular (but very reliable) NAS.

quote:

Originally posted by AMA:
I have ripped all my collection already.

The new CDs will most probably go through UnitiServe which I'm waiting for.

So i think rip nas is not for me and I need a regular (but very reliable) NAS.

I use a QNAP myself (not for media BTW) and it is very good albeit a bit noisy with its fan.

For my audio and video streaming I use a home made NAS based on Ubuntu and on a Big Tower case with low power and low noise components.

This is also very reliably for me, but (because I didn't install them) there is no MediaServer (à la Twonky or iTunes Server).

I don't need these with my current mediaplayer and won't need them either with my future mediaplayer (UnitiServe if it is good, but I hardly have any doubts about that).

Just simple and reliable network shares to a Samba File Server or a NFS File Server and no unreliable UPnP varieties like the Twonky.

-
aleg

Wanted somethink moderate with some features to star so did some research and ended up opted for Synology ds210j and a couple of 2TB Samsung drives. Drives look solid from reviews and the synology has some very nice features for my use. Fan could be quieter but it's not bad.

js, Synology seems to be very cost-friendly option. I wonder how does it alarm if some drive needs replacement?

quote:

For my audio and video streaming I use a home made NAS based on Ubuntu and on a Big Tower case with low power and low noise components.

Aleg, one of our Company office built a 1 Tb NAS 6 years ago -- based on Windows 2000 Server and 6 drives. They bought a regular PC with big case and big power supply and bought a PCI card with drivers and manually installed 6 drives -- all after reading instructions to the PCI card.
After 3 years the system alarmed for replacement of one drive. They stopped a server and replaced a faulty drive -- with a different brand and capacity. Everything has worked just fine. Other than this 15 minute service the hand made NAS was working flawlessly for 6 years and keep working at the moment. I always keep this option in mind -- but I'm curious if something simplistic has already been designed to avoid computer knowledge for installation and swapping.

I've been using the D-link DNS 323 (naim approved) for music storage only. 24/96 at this point as I haven't filled up the HDX HDD yet.

Set up as 2 TB Raid storage (1 TB each drive).

Alert to email if system shuts down or drive fails.

Good buy: NAS about $165 and each 1.5 TB Seagate drive about $135. Good VFM

quote:

Originally posted by AMA:
js, Synology seems to be very cost-friendly option. I wonder how does it alarm if some drive needs replacement?

It's slower than better hardware based NAS's but plenty fast for this or what I would transfer files from. I'm sure pro's think these toys. I believe it will email a failure besides it's local warning. Have already copied files to it via the front usb by pushing one button without it attached to a network. I'm under $440 all in as all happened to be on sale when purchased. D-links are even cheaper and good if you don't need the USB. 321 if you don't need UPNP, torrents, print server etc. and 323 if you want more goodies. A hair slower still but again, plenty fast enough I think. Also a bit more quiet.

I should imagine most nases can be set to send an email, I have mine set to do that if anything tragic happens.

You can also set up so it sends log files to some client, but have not got my head round that.

Hi,

I use 4 x Seagate 320GB in Raid 0 but with a backup to a seperate linux box.
Have had dozens of Seagates over the years and only ever trashed one, probably because I kept trying out different OS'es on it and switching it between machines!.

Best VFM seems to be the 1TB or 1.5TB at the moment.

I have used Raid 5 in the past but came unstuck when upgrading operating systems and, from memory, motherboards as they are not always readable on different systems. Not used Raid 10 but after my experience with Raid 5 I prefer old fashioned backups. To this end I use syncback SE which is freeware, runs schedules in the background and can be set to not compress if required, (one of my bugbears with windows backup)

Hope this helps

I'm using QNAP TS419P with 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas and have been for some time, all very stable and really easy to set up.

Have also used it with SqueezeCentre Server but searching is a bit slow when library gets above 10,000 although I understand it can be tweaked to improve things

Definitely recommend, also worth considering Thecus.

Jack, I plan to use NAS with Logitech Transporter through Slim Server.
You say that search is a bit slow in big libraries (like mine). I wonder if 7200 RPM drives help in this case or not?

Hi AMA -

Have had a 2TB Buffalo Linkstation running for 2+ years without a hiccup. Two 1TB drives configured for Raid 1. Am also at 700GB, so likely to upgrade to their two 2TB model this year.

I like its web interface, and also have it configured to send me an email each evening to report status.

For fear of controller failure, in addition to the mirroring, I also run Second Copy software on one of my laptops, and create a 3rd copy of the disk on a USB-attached 1TB WD Mybook.

I keep thinking I should also have a 4th copy in a safe-deposit box, but never seem to get around to doing that...

Oh well, so far, so good....knock on wood.

Hook

AMA

The Seagate Barracuda drives are 7200 spin rate. I don't think its anything to do with the drives as when I access the same data through my PC using Foobar then I can search the library really quickly. It could be the processing power of the QNAP when running the SqueezeCentre software. I did some searching a while back on the Slim Forum and it appears as though there are certain tweaks to the database that will speed things up. I've moved away from SqueezeCentre for the moment to give Foobar a whirl and I'm quite please other than having a large PC close to my hi-fi!

Jack

Why using RAID? I cannot see any advantages, it is a waste of money and resources.
I just would have a main drive and a backup drive which is a clone of the main one. You can set up some procedure so that data (music) can be backed up now and then.