RAID enclosure to Unityserve
Posted by: analog414 on 14 December 2013
Has anyone had success connecting a RAID 1 (mirror) enclosure to the Unitiserve? If you have had success doing this, please give the model number. My Nexstar MX enclosure will not work. 
When you say 'connected to' I'm not sure what you mean. A NAS needs to be connected to the network, and you then set the Serve to backup to it. You don't connect the NAS to the Serve directly. My Synology 213j works fine, and has two discs which I run as a mirrored pair using Synology Hybrid raid.
The vast majority of my music is live music. I only have a NAS to rip the occasional cd. I have three other HDD plugged into the serve that work great. In fact, if I move a ripped cd from the NAS to an external HDD I think it sounds better. But yesterday I tried plugging a simple volume HDD (RAID Enclosure) and it will not show up. I would much prefer having a RAID enclosure HDD. I'm just not sure if it's this particular enclosure or all HDD RAID enclosures will not work.
I use a Synology NAS which is configured to do Raid 1 and it works fine too.
"I have three other HDD plugged into the serve ..."
Out of curiosity, how do you do that, exactly?
"I have three other HDD plugged into the serve ..."
Out of curiosity, how do you do that, exactly?
USB 3.0 cable plugged right in the back of the Unitiserve. There is 4 ports
4TB externals work great plugged in the serve but 4TB RAID mirror appears not. This just means I need to buy another 4TB external.
I'm not a computer expert, but I believe a host computer needs a driver to interface with external storage configured as a RAID. I know I had to load QNAP software onto my PC to enable it see a QNAP TS-212 configured as RAID 1. In this case, the host computer is the UnitiServe which lacks the necessary RAID driver.
You'll find a NAS drive runs an operating system - usually Linux based, and expects to connect to a network. An external HDD doesn't run such a sophisticated operating system - it can't 'think' for itself (wheras a NAS can). Your u/serve is happy to talk to the basic interface presented by a USB or an external HDD, but can't speak with a Linux device plugged into its USB ports. If it were able to do that we'd all be waiting decades for a u/serve software update !!!
You're stuck with connecting your NAS into your network, I'm afraid... not that I personally can tell the difference between a USB source and a NAS (UPnP) source (although some others here will join you in saying they can).
Its not a nas its a das, direct attached storage, with raid capabilities. As mentioned though i think th. Computer it connects to needs the necessary driver.
I will stick with external drives for playing my music. The NAS will be used just to rip my cd's then I will move to the external drives. Like I said way at top, 80% of my music are live BWF from the SD-722. It seems official though, RAID configured enclosures will NOT work. 5 different enclosures failed.
The UnitiServe was designed for the occasional usb flash drives. Naim has no support for mass external drives. With that said, I'm lucky a 4TB external will work. 