POLL 4-2tb seagate drives sitting here what should I do

[KnightRid]

OK, I am stuck. I got the 4 2tb seagate 5900rpm drives that best buy had for $75 each and I just dont know what to do with them.

I was thinking of buying an external raid case but it seems the lower priced ones (under $200) use some port replicating esata thing and most of them seem to be either slow or run hot.

I have a FastTrak TX4310 in this computer now that I used to use for RAID 5 but the controller just did not like to run stable with the 1tb drives I was using. I honestly do not know if the 2tb would work on it and work better or not. Right now i use it as a JBOD controller for 3 1tb drives so I can unhook them without losing anything since there is no raid (at least I think I should be able to)

I can also just place them in a system as separate drives and use them that way with no fault tolerance.

I also read a lot of people who either love or hate raid 5. I do not have super sensitive things, mostly the HD video from my cigar reviews and event coverage, so I am not in need of running a raid 1 or 10 since i will lose a ton of space. I also want to rip some of my dvds to the hard drives that I watch a lot so I can just stream them anywhere in the house with either a computer or the Boxee box I have.

What would be your thoughts on what would be the best for me to do?

I have the poll going for 7 days because I want to get this figured out this week so I can test these drives out to make sure I dont have to return any.

[bubba]

HighPoint RocketRAID 2680 SGL http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816115096
LIAN LI PC-Q08B http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811112265
ASRock E350M1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157228
Kingston 2GB KVR1333D3S8N9/2G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820139640
SILVERSTONE ST45SF 450W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817256063


Throw in a flash drive you most likely have laying around, and FreeNAS and you got yourself a nice little box the whole house can use for $420ish shipped. Cheaper if you have an old box setting doing nothing.

Older 4bay NAS off the shelf (may be slower)
QNAP TS-410-US http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822107034 $349
Thecus N4100PRO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822102026 $349 (on sale)

And I would run RAID5, why risk loosing anything if you can help it.

Either way with the NAS you have storage the whole house can use.

[KnightRid]

HighPoint RocketRAID 2680 SGL http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816115096
LIAN LI PC-Q08B http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811112265
ASRock E350M1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157228
Kingston 2GB KVR1333D3S8N9/2G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820139640
SILVERSTONE ST45SF 450W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817256063


Throw in a flash drive you most likely have laying around, and FreeNAS and you got yourself a nice little box the whole house can use for $420ish shipped. Cheaper if you have an old box setting doing nothing.

Older 4bay NAS off the shelf (may be slower)
QNAP TS-410-US http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822107034 $349
Thecus N4100PRO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822102026 $349 (on sale)

And I would run RAID5, why risk loosing anything if you can help it.

Either way with the NAS you have storage the whole house can use.

Thanx! Yes I have a couple extra systems around here just would need the RAID card (looks to be around $100 from your link above) and brain power to set up FreeNAS

You are right, a NAS setup would be perfect for ripping my dvds to, I just still can not get over how expensive a diskless NAS setup is. I just dont get it. Yea, I am cheap.

Still looking for opinions. Don't be shy

[KnightRid]

Just noticed my Core i7 system running the DX58SO MB does RAID 5 when hooking up 4 drives. Hmm. I may give that a shot to see what kind of speeds the onboard RAID will give. Plus it will make the wife super happy with me not spending any money LOL.

I think it will be pretty slow but I also read the Thecus is VERY slow also. Oh well, as long as it can stream my dvd collection I will be happy. Well part of my collection. 800 sets including tv shows is a bit much for 4-2tb drives in raid 5 especially when I will NOT use xvid or divx since the black quality of those compressors is just awful on my beautiful plasma screen.

Just thought - I wonder if running the RAID 5 will slow down my FAH on that system - hrmmm.

[bubba]

I had an N4100Pro, I was able to stream AVIs and DVD ISO's off of it. Never had any studdering issues. It was loaded with Caviar Black drives and on a Gigga network.

I didn't try HD stuff, dont have a TV capable of playing it. Still rocking a 27" CRT type.

Its a couple year old model as well, stands to reason newer models would be faster. If you have a small box I would look at getting a RAID card and set it up as a standalone box.

[Skippman]

I'm running mine of a 3Ware PCI-X card. Which I could find a PCI-X motherboard to take advantage of the speed but it's working fine in a PCI slot. I use that to RAID5 4 1TB drives and use TVersity to stream video to my two X-Box 360's.

[KnightRid]

48% done initializing the array - like i said on twitter, they need to figure a way to speed the RAID process up because when we hit 10tb drives just building the array will take weeks!

Maybe it is slower due to using the onboard INtel raid or cause i have the 5900rpm drives but i doubt it.

If anyone is still checking this thread....what would be a good program to test the speed of the array once built?

[bubba]

The NAS I'm testing now took less than 7 hours to build 5 disk RAID 5 using 1TB drives. I started with 1.5TB (long story of why I abandoned these drives), that took less than 12 hours, maybe less. I Fully expected it to take 24 hours or more like my old N4100 Pro.

It is using a Silicon Image controller, not a Marvell. The Marvell has never been know for being a ball of fire for building a RAID.

To test.. the Intel NAS performance toolkit, Crystal Disk, ATTO. It what I use to test the NAS boxes I have used/reviewed.

[KnightRid]

The NAS I'm testing now took less than 7 hours to build 5 disk RAID 5 using 1TB drives. I started with 1.5TB (long story of why I abandoned these drives), that took less than 12 hours, maybe less. I Fully expected it to take 24 hours or more like my old N4100 Pro.

It is using a Silicon Image controller, not a Marvell. The Marvell has never been know for being a ball of fire for building a RAID.

To test.. the Intel NAS performance toolkit, Crystal Disk, ATTO. It what I use to test the NAS boxes I have used/reviewed.

Nice, thanx.

I am at 98.18% now - so about a day and a half to initialize it. Not fast but at least I did not spend any money so the wife is super happy LOL

I may end up spending some if the speed is just horrid though.

Marvell huh - was wondering what Intel used for the onboard. I know the esata raid ports were Marvell but thought they had an in house Intel raid chip for the internal stuff. Oh well, for streaming my dvd collection it should hold up ok.

[KnightRid]

Ok here is a capture for the speeds using CrystalDisk

Capture.JPG (49.1 KiB) Viewed 1250 times

Here is the C: drive on the same computer which I think is a WD Caviar Green 1TB for comparison.

Capture2.JPG (50.33 KiB) Viewed 1250 times

Let me know your thoughts - I know the write speed on raid 5 is slow but it will just be for serving ripped dvds mostly anyway (maybe computer backups too)

[bubba]

..I just still can not get over how expensive a diskless NAS setup is. I just dont get it. Yea, I am cheap.

You're paying for the small size and the bells and whistles. Most of the diskless setups are more than just a file server, they do all kinds of things from being able to host IP cameras for security to being an iTunes or media streaming server for the house.

FreeNAS is just a file server.

Building a small foot print NAS in parts can get pricy, but you have more control. This is a benefit when picking the RAID controller. If size is not an issue, then you can make a NAS relatively inexpensive.

[KnightRid]

..I just still can not get over how expensive a diskless NAS setup is. I just dont get it. Yea, I am cheap.

You're paying for the small size and the bells and whistles. Most of the diskless setups are more than just a file server, they do all kinds of things from being able to host IP cameras for security to being an iTunes or media streaming server for the house.

I wish someone would make JUST a NAS and get rid of the extra crap and bring the price down to something reasonable. Why do you need a media server on a NAS when you can just share it on the network ;)