NAS Recommendations?

[4wd]

People have found that NFS performs better, (less overhead than SAMBA from what I understand - someone else could probably explain better), MS didn't put an NFS client in W7 HP/Pro but I believe it's available for Enterprise/Ultimate.

There is a free NFS client: nekodrive

You said you were getting 5.5MB/s from an external drive - what type, (USB, eSATA, NAS, etc) ?

If it was USB or eSATA then that figure seems ridiculously low, which would seem to point to FreeNAS, (or it's drivers), being the culprit.

You might want to consider Ubuntu Server if you can migrate the RAIDZ1 - from other posts I've read, it's a marked improvement, (network-wise), over FreeNAS.

[Renegade]

Just a quick update on FreeNAS on my box... I have not rebooted the machine once since I turned it on. It's bloody brilliant! Just works like a charm.

It's like zero maintenance! I do nothing and it does what I want. Very happy with this little box.

[wraith808]

Mine is working well also.  I'm pretty impressed with Synology.

[40hz]

+1 for FreeNAS. Have four deployed at different client sites. They're all working splendidly.

[Chewie]

BTW, couldn't get FlexRAID to work for some reason so I went looking for something similar:
SnapRAID - Filesystem agnostic parity based data redundancy, (Linux/Windows).
Elucidate - A GUI for SnapRAID (Windows).
Liquesce - Drive pooling for Windows.

All free.

-4wd (June 15, 2012, 05:06 AM)

4WD
This is the solution I came up with for my N40L HTPC, it is almost perfect apart from one major issue which I have detailed here  http://www.tuckshots...uk/Temp/Liquesce.htm

Have you experienced missing files in Liquesce storage pools when browsing over the network?

I have since experimented with RAR files and created a folder with 500 3GB files in.  This time I could only see 453 of the files over the network

Regards
Craig

[Renegade]

I had my first problem with FreeNAS the other day when I could not login. I had used the proper user name/password, but it didn't work.

Anyways, I wrote a utility to brute force the login. You can find it here:

http://cynic.me/2012...s-user-and-password/

I've got more explanations about what the problems were, blah blah blah.

I've also released it as a NANY submission.

https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=32933.0

I know a few people use FreeNAS here, so might as well make it available in case anyone has a problem.

My first reaction was that I'm a complete moron for forgetting the login. It wasn't until after I'd finished the program that I realized that I didn't forget it, and that there was simply some kind of error.

Full source code is available and in the public domain.

[4wd]

This is the solution I came up with for my N40L HTPC, it is almost perfect apart from one major issue which I have detailed here  http://www.tuckshots...uk/Temp/Liquesce.htm

Have you experienced missing files in Liquesce storage pools when browsing over the network?

I have since experimented with RAR files and created a folder with 500 3GB files in.  This time I could only see 453 of the files over the network

-Chewie (October 25, 2012, 08:06 AM)

Sorry, I'm notoriously slow to reply to some things.

To answer the question, I don't use SnapRAID or Liquesce - all my data is transient, so I don't bother with RAID solutions, (ie. shit happens, I'll live with it).

As for Liquesce, I'm starting to think about installing it because a couple of my drives are becoming rather unmanageable as separate entities.

Sorry I can't help you atm.

[Renegade]

Continuing from another thread:

On the other hand, I am completely for offline storage. With hard drive prices going down, it is easier to download a file and store it than to rely on the cloud. I have almost completed ripping my 850 DVD collection to MP4 for storage on our media server. This will be complete once I am able to setup a Raid 1 array of about 4TB. Right now, I am stuck at 2TB on a single disk. Once I get a new enclosure, I will setup a Windows-based raid mirror (hardware raid is flaky unless you invest in a reliable controller, not those cheap promise boards).

-Josh (December 01, 2012, 06:28 AM)

Kind of OT, but... Have you looked at FreeNAS? Someone recommended it to me in another thread and it's been wonderful.

-Renegade (December 01, 2012, 06:31 AM)

@Josh - +1 w/Ren on FreeNAS. It's a great solution. Before you commit to using Windows, consider giving FreeNAS a try. It won't cost you anything other than your time to try it out. You may be surprised to find it's everything you need - plus a whole lot more.

Although I'm not too big on recommending RAID for most personal uses and/or skill levels, it does have it's place. And the software implementations of RAID running under the NIX environment have proven extremely reliable in my experience. And I do servers for a living. So I see a few more of them in operation than most people do.

Just my   

-40hz (December 01, 2012, 07:20 AM)

I'm not sure why people kind of poo-poo on RAID for home use. I suppose for more casual home use, yeah, that makes sense. However, for those of us that work at home, or do work at home, it really is more sensible.

e.g. I have data on my FreeNAS that represents thousands of hours of work.

I get a fair amount of peace of mind from it. If nothing else, that peace of mind is pretty good.

Incidentally, the FreeNAS password recovery software I wrote, I posted here:

http://forums.freena...er-name-and-password

Turns out you can *reset* the password easily enough with physical access to the machine.

So, the software I wrote is less useful, but still EXTREMELY useful when you need to RECOVER the password. e.g. I set the admin WebGUI password to the same as the machine root password... Making recovering the password a VERY valuable task that resetting does not help with, and even hinders.

Anyways, the ability to reset there is fantastic. It's a well designed system and I've been nothing but happy with it. It sure as hell runs better than either my Mac or my PC.