Hard drive/storage solution help wanted

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by ZedMan

Note that that enclosure is eSATA only and uses port multiplying, so it requires that you have an eSATA port that supports multiplying, and unless you have a 3rd party eSATA card your port(s) probably don't.

Corrrect - You would need to get something like http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16816321012 for $29.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

A very simple but economical and elegant in my mind solution. The biggest downside is the drives are accessed individually but for a media server/NAS, that should be no problem right?

And there's no USB or network option. Won't really work unless I'm using a computer as a front end. Unless Boxee or some other media device works with eSata

[cKy]

Originally Posted by kunkstyle

And there's no USB or network option. Won't really work unless I'm using a computer as a front end. Unless Boxee or some other media device works with eSata

I got the Boxee and WDTV Live, and as far as I can tell, no eSata support. They only have the USB plug. Unless you use some crazy adapter or something.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah I've got a 411j as well, not the fastest drive out there but fast enough to serve media and stuff. Would hold 8TB with 4x2TB drives without any RAID

Just looked it up and it looks like the 411j will also be compatible with the WD30EZRX 3gb drives (Currently $130 at ME), bringing this to a 12GB max capacity.

I went with the SHR RAID option for this reason - so I can mix and match my different sized HD's easier. I miss the old Drive Extender that WHS had for this reason.

I forgot to mention one of the big reasons why I went with the Synology - great power management features. In addition to drive spin down you can actually set an on / off schedule by day & hour to really minimize power on time.

[photon]

Originally Posted by GoFlamesGo89

Just want to follow up on this point-- does it require the hack to allow OSX to see network drives for time machine or is the disk visible by default? I have a Dlink NAS which time machine doesn't see natively (at least in snow leopard, haven't checked lion), and I'd be tempted to look into this unit if it was bait smoother.

Yup it's native, no hacks in OSX required. For Lion I had to update my 411j to the newest version of the firmware since Apple changed something apparently, but it just shows up in time machine with no modifications for OSX required.

Originally Posted by SebC

Worth mentioning that some 3D stuff on the web has double the bitrate of 1080p60. Still seems to play fine of externals though.

I don't think RAID5 would ever be the bottleneck (not sure why it would be slower - I guess the parity calculations are slower than than writing to disk?). Would RAID ever be slower than USB?

I guess in theory it could be slower than USB depending on what was doing the calculations but that would be pretty darn slow. RAID5's just slower because it has to do parity calculations for every write in addition to the write itself. The quality of the RAID controller can have a big impact of course, and a good RAID controller costs more than these whole enclosures. But RAID5 still should be lots fast compared to going through a USB bottleneck.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by Rathji

- plug in one (or 2)of these external raid enclosures with a couple of these 3 TB drives in each, you can set those drives as RAID1 (or a couple more like RAID0 or JBOD that you wouldnt really want to use) with toggle switches, so it is VERY easy.

Just picked it up with 2 3TB WD drives.

I can easily see USB being the big bottle neck. Estimated time to 0 one drive is 23 hours. (Edit - scratch that. I didn't hit reset after setting the jumpers. Now that it's seeing 1 6TB drive it's estimating 2 days, 7 hours.)

I figured if it works well enough connected to the router, great, I've saved some cash. If it's too slow I can still use the HDDs in 411j and I'm only out $100 for the enclosure.

Thanks to everyone for the help. I'll report the findings when I connect it to the network and test it out in case any one else is interested in a similar setup.

[DownhillGoat]

Update:

Got it connected. Had some weird issues with the Mac saying it can't recognize the device and needs to be initialized, even after it was initialized. However I can still read/write to it.

Connected it to the airport extreme and everything works smoothly. No lag/freezing issues while streaming, and copying files seems to be no slower than via USB.

Works great thus far for standard def stuff.

Still may go with the 411j route down the road, but this seems like it'll work well for what I need so far.