The 3TB Challenge
Posted by: Bert Schurink on 04 August 2015
i am now getting close to the what I cal 3TB challenge. Meaning both my NAS's the one for the NDS and the one for the Muso are getting close to the end 260GB left. So now I am left to the challenge, stay with one dISO NAS add two NAS's get a bigger one, remove music.
Removing music sounds easy as I have close to 6000 albums, but I am also not fond of removing music I barely listen or not listen to anymore.
any of you also this problems, or do you have mega NAS's or did you solve the problem differently ?
I agree it would be nice to have a search function in N-Stream so that you don't have to scroll through everything to get to what you want. Shouldn't be too difficult? Maybe one for the next app update.
The new Naim app has a spyglass icon that allows you to search. You can also search on the older n-Stream app by pulling down at the top of a list to reveal the search box.
I say life is too short to cull records.
Why spend time culling stuff when you could be spending the time doing something useful?
What a complete waste of time!
My reasoning was that its also a waste of time constantly scrolling through that many records in the app to find the ones that you actually want to play. ...
You don't actually have to delete them - just move to a secure hard drive that you can access at a later date if you really find yourself missing that certain something.
+1. Too much choice can be a bad thing.
Interesting - I will need to search for the search box!
I haven't seen a spyglass in the android version, so will look at the old nstream app on my ipod.
My setup is using a 6 bay NAS drive with 3 Tb drives, so 18tb storage, but have them set up in raid 5 configuration, so capacity is reduced.
Currently have near 10,000 albums.
i have a second nas of similar size with a full back up copy of all music.
I find having to mess around with nas units a bit of a pain (rather just enjoy the music), so chose to buy a large unit and hopefully not have to worry about your current problem.
Good luck whatever route you choose
Reviewed an option for at least some temporary relief - have about 100GB of this typical collector and best off type of stuff which I could pull off if needed. But I guess that medium term I will have to look at a bigger NAS as almost everything I buy nowadays is high resolution audio, with related file sizes.
Yeah, also keep in mind your hard drives will last longer if not filled to the brim. Anyone here use a Drobo NAS? I use a regular Drobo for my photography (and a four bay as back up). Nice thing about Drobo is you can add different hard drives and sizes as you need.
Why 2 NAS drives? Maybe your NDS and Muso are in different locations, otherwise they could share the same one.
Do you have WAVs? If so you could save a bunch of space by converting to FLAC (and transcoding to WAV on playback if you prefer).
But I suspect you already know that :-)
Thanks for the tips. But indeed I already have everything in flac, and I am having network challenges so I can't share the nas's so I have exact copies.
At least you have a backup, then! If you don't mind me asking, how do you sync the 2 NAS's?
Just by simple using the third drive as the master and I always copy 1-1 and first check the result on the main results and make the last adjustments if needed and then copy on to the 2nd NAS.
Thanks, Bert. Not sure I'd want to run 3 NAS's, though.
Chris, if you are interested I use two NAS, one prime and one back up. Once a week my backup NAS wakes up and then takes an incremental backup from the master NAS. This has the advantage that any file index system corruption in the master is not copied across to the back up.
I keep both the master and backup NAS on a UPS. I do this for both my music and all my photography master files.
Simon
My set up is same as simon above with inremental weekly back up and nas running off ups.
The nas i use are Lenova ( used to be iomega) and the ups i use is an APC unit which is an 8 port extenion lead with ups battery built in and alarm control on power loss. If the power drops the UPS carries out a controlled shutdown of the connected items ( which is just the nas in my case).
No hifi items anywhere near the nas or ups.
On Qnaps it's fairly easy to increase the size, for example take a Qnap with 2x 2tb in raid 1.
if both disk are in good order unplug the first drive insert a new 4tb disk wait for the raid to rebuild then remove the second 2tb disk and insert another 4tb.
Let the raid rebuild again once complete expand into the free space.
The same applies to larger Qnaps with 4 or more disks in Raid5 etc
The same applies to any NAS if you are running a RAID array which allows you to do this. I've doubled all my NASs capacity at least once over the past five years, some twice.
On site backups don't protect you from big disasters, unless they are in a fire safe. Cloud storage options are worth looking at. I've used Carbonite for years, and Dropbox for personal files. if I was starting again today I'd look at Microsoft Onedrive (1Tb but becoming unlimited), Dropbox and Backblaze. If all my computers were stolen/burnt/destroyed by lightning I could go into any internet cafe, or buy any old pc/Mac/phone/tablet and get at all my data in minutes. Let someone else worry.
I am probably breaking the law but for offsite backups I replicate my music folders to my brother's home over a wifi wds bridge to another qnap once a week, he lives about half a kilometre away.
The same applies to any NAS if you are running a RAID array which allows you to do this. I've doubled all my NASs capacity at least once over the past five years, some twice.
I should have stated that this applies to any NAS in my post 
I am probably breaking the law but for offsite backups I replicate my music folders to my brother's home over a wifi wds bridge to another qnap once a week, he lives about half a kilometre away.
I also have copies at friends - so in that sense I am also breaking the law.....
Bert I'd probably get one 4-bay nas, run it in some version of raid, and then you should be pretty future-proof.
Aurender XL?
Chris, if you are interested I use two NAS, one prime and one back up. Once a week my backup NAS wakes up and then takes an incremental backup from the master NAS. This has the advantage that any file index system corruption in the master is not copied across to the back up.
I keep both the master and backup NAS on a UPS. I do this for both my music and all my photography master files.
Simon
Thanks, Simon, I'm really just trying to work out what to do if I move on from my Unitiserve. Also, I want to put a second system in a room that would be rather difficult to run an Ethernet cable from my other system. Rather than trying to stream over WiFi, I wondered if the backup NAS could also function as the server/NAS for the second system.
Then again, maybe I just need to get the drill out and instal a cable, but that will be messy in a number of ways.
btrfs: add disk, rebalance, done.
I avoid NASs altogether - using Audirvana 2.2 means that I can use as much disk space as I need - Petabytes if it were necessary. I simply copy what I want to listen to into its Play Queue ....
Wat, where do you copy from? All a NAS is a network file store, and some have little apps on them as well such as media servers...
Yeah, also keep in mind your hard drives will last longer if not filled to the brim.
Really?
This could be interesting......
When they're full the platters are heavier due to all that extra data which wears the bearings out quicker... 
I avoid NASs altogether - using Audirvana 2.2 means that I can use as much disk space as I need - Petabytes if it were necessary. I simply copy what I want to listen to into its Play Queue ....
Wat, where do you copy from? All a NAS is a network file store, and some have little apps on them as well such as media servers...
Most now have USB3 or eSATA ports for adding extra storage volumes managed by the OS on your existing NAS box...also remotely mountable on your main computer and able to be included in the list of places the media server uses., or the rsync backup server copies For those thinking of moving from 2-bay raid to 4-bay, this approach is often much less expensive but comes with the overhead of managing two volumes. For those who wish to add up to petabytes of storage to their Mac or PC, this is identical to using local USB or Thunderbolt drives except for the cabling and, possibly, maximum data transfer rates. Not a bad fix really - and a two bay raid enabled external case can be had for way under a hundred dollars.
Regards alan
Personally I think the sweet spot for platter disks to be 1.5tb, touch wood I have some going on for years here where as 2tb ones for me have gone quicker. I am friends with our IT guy who anecdotally has had lots of issues with 3tb disks and wont touch 4tb+ for anything.
I wouldn't touch a 6tb one, sure you will have back ups, but what a bloody hassle and in an RAID environment the risk is so much more that another disk goes south.