[zybar]

As I am approaching 2000 cd's ripped, I think it is finally time to move away from my collection of internal/external HD's and go with a NAS device.

Most likely I will go with an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+

(http://www.infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=ReadyNAS%20NVPlus)

What RAID Level do people suggest or use with their NAS device?

The NAS device will be used primarily for audio streaming via Slim Server software, but will also have some home movies and pics on it. 

Thanks,

George

[bpape]

To me, RAID 5 is the best combination of safety and space usage.  To have any data loss, you have to lose 2 drives at the same time.  However, you get SIZEOFDRIVES * (NUMBEROFDRIVES -1) capacity.  The other 'gotcha' is that all drives have to be the same size.  Otherwise, they all operate at the size of the smallest drive.

If you want more safety than that, you can mirror the RAID 5 array in a RAID 1 configuration.  In that case, assuming 5 400 GB drives for the first array, you'd need 10 400GB drives to get the capacity of 4 400GB drives - but you'd have to lose the same 2 drives on both sets of 5 to not be able to retrieve it.

Bryan

[zybar]

To me, RAID 5 is the best combination of safety and space usage.  To have any data loss, you have to lose 2 drives at the same time.  However, you get SIZEOFDRIVES * (NUMBEROFDRIVES -1) capacity.  The other 'gotcha' is that all drives have to be the same size.  Otherwise, they all operate at the size of the smallest drive.

If you want more safety than that, you can mirror the RAID 5 array in a RAID 1 configuration.  In that case, assuming 5 400 GB drives for the first array, you'd need 10 400GB drives to get the capacity of 4 400GB drives - but you'd have to lose the same 2 drives on both sets of 5 to not be able to retrieve it.

Bryan

Thanks Bryan.

With the Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ I actually don't have to have all drives be the same if I want to use their X-RAID technology.

George

[boead]

You realize that those external boxes are noisy?

I have a few in my office, horrible beasts. The HD’s get VERY hot, especially in carts like that and all in a single enclosure?? Without sufficient circulation they won’t last a year.

Good luck finding ones that are quiet, I don’t think any exist.



http://www.vantecusa.com/

I use External eSATA RAID with one internal and one external. The external drive enclosures are VERY quiet, or at least as quiet as the hard drive itself. Samsung and Maxtor are of the quietest.

[JEaton]

RAID 5 is really the only practical answer to once you get past two drives, unless speed is a greater concern than cost.  If the device supports it, RAID 6 is even more redundant and allows you to lose up to two drives.

Two critical things to keep in mind:

• What do you do when you lose a drive in your RAID 5 array? When you lose a drive, the array is in a degraded state.  It's still operational, but an additional loss of a drive means losing all of the data.  You don't want to leave it like that while you wait around for an RMA on the failed drive.  You either need to keep a spare drive on hand (a 'cold' spare) or employ the use of a hot spare, which designates one of the drives as a replacement should another in the array fail.  In a typical consumer four drive array, having a hot spare in RAID 5 means you lose the capacity of two of the hard drives.  This somewhat defeats one of the main reasons of having the array, which is to create a large storage space.
  
  
• What are you going to do for backup?  Once you're feeling all snug and cozy with your big 2 terabytes worth of RAID storage, realize that RAID is not a backup solution.  You could lose all of the data on the array in a heartbeat.  Now figure out how you're going to easily back it up.  The only _easy_ solution is another device of similar spec.  The harder solution may be a pile of hard drives that you shuffle in and out to create your backup, a little like in the days of backing up to floppy disks. Ughh.
  

[boead]

What lots are doing is a 2 drive RAID-1 with a third swappable for backup. Each time you swap a drive the array will be-build over the older drive. In this case you have a three drive redundancy. It’s the lest effective for space [(3) 500Gb drives = 500GB] but it is fool proof against a lost drive AND a failed array (lost partition) that can effect BOTH drives in the redundant array.

[JEaton]

What lots are doing is a 2 drive RAID-1 with a third swappable for backup. Each time you swap a drive the array will be-build over the older drive. In this case you have a three drive redundancy. It’s the lest effective for space [(3) 500Gb drives = 500GB] but it is fool proof against a lost drive AND a failed array (lost partition) that can effect BOTH drives in the redundant array.

Then there's probably very little need for RAID at all if this is what you plan on doing.  RAID is designed primarily to ensure continuous operation in the event of a disk failure.  The only thing you gain is not being down during the time it takes you to connect or restore from your backup media.  In the above setup you pay a hefty price for the RAID/NAS device plus one redundant drive.  If all your music fits on a single drive, then back it up periodically to another of the same size and don't waste time or money with a RAID setup.

IMO, there are just two reasons to employ a large RAID 5 array for file storage:

1. To ensure continuous operation.

2. To give yourself a very large contiguous storage space.

The first, as I've said, is probably of little importance for home music storage.  Unlike a corporate environment, where you might have to send everyone home while you restore a critical server from a backup, being without music while you restore from your backup isn't likely to be a huge concern.

The second is one of pure convenience.  Having a single two terabyte drive, for instance, is nicer than working with four separate 500 gigabyte spaces.  There's very little that you can't do with those four non-raided drives, but it takes a bit more work and planning in deciding where to store this or that.

[circinus]

RAID is designed primarily to ensure continuous operation in the event of a disk failure.  The only thing you gain is not being down during the time it takes you to connect or restore from your backup media.

Although it is true that RAID provides added security for disk failure the primary reason for RAID is performance. In a RAID 4 configuration the parity is on a single disk and in a RAID 5 the parity is distributed across all disks. Read performance of a RAID 4 or RAID 5 is similar to RAID 0 but write performance suffers because every time data is written to the array parity needs to be updated. A downside to RAID 4 or RAID 5 is that you loose disk space due to the parity. In a three disk (the minimum) RAID 5 you loose 33% of the storage to the parity.

If you are concerned about hardware failures and do not backup your music then RAID 4 or RAID 5 would be the best options. If you backup your music regularly and you are more concerned about getting the best performance and the least amount of waisted storage then RAID 0 is the way to go.

[bpape]

To me, the write penalty for this application is not a factor.  Yes - it exists but only when burning music to the array which appears to be almost completely done.  Now it's just a disc here and there.  Realistically it would be less than 1 second per song of extra time - probably way less.

The read time is acceptable in a RAID 5 for this application and the security is there.  As for the loss of space - yup - that'll happen.  But, as you get more disks, the % of space lost falls.  3 disks, you lose 33%.  4 disks, you lose 25%, 5 disks, you lose 20%.

Another option is to mirror a set of RAID0 drives in RAID 1.  That is 50% loss but you get full usage from each set.  8 disks gives you 4 disk of data and 4 disk to back it up.

Personally, I'd look at RAID5 and then a BluRay burner when they become available to do your backups on.

Bryan

[bpape]

FYI

Here is a good page to see at a glance the benefits/cost/efficiency/performance of different kinds of RAID implementations

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/comp.htm

Bryan

[woodsyi]

George,

I use older Infrant ReadyNas with 4 300G disks.  I come home, turn it on, go 2 floors down and do my evening rip and listen.  I turn it off when I go to bed.  I haven't had any issues with overheating or noise (on a count of having 2 floors between my listening room and the relatively noisy box).  I left it on for a week one time and I got notices of hot drives.  I don't leave it on continuously anymore.  BTW, I run Raid 5.

[JoshK]

I'm running raid 5.  I coughed up the money to buy a hardware raid card as they are not so expensive anymore.  I am running 4 x 250gig drives and this works fine for me.  When it is full I will probably buy another card and 4 x whatever is cost effective at that time.  I still do not have the backup yet, but have been thinking about it. 

For me the security trumps speed.  RAID 5 is fast enough for streaming.  The key is not to have to rerip your library!  That would really piss me off.

[zybar]

George,

I use older Infrant ReadyNas with 4 300G disks.  I come home, turn it on, go 2 floors down and do my evening rip and listen.  I turn it off when I go to bed.  I haven't had any issues with overheating or noise (on a count of having 2 floors between my listening room and the relatively noisy box).  I left it on for a week one time and I got notices of hot drives.  I don't leave it on continuously anymore.  BTW, I run Raid 5.

Thanks.

I really would like a solution that I can leave on all the time and not think about (like I currently have with my external drives connected to a pc).  It sounds like the ReadyNAS box might not be the answer.

George

[brj]

Another option... check out the unRaid from Lime Technology.

[brj]

Josh, which card did you get?  I've check reviews on occasion, but it never seemed worth it because the more affordable cards really didn't buy you much performance as they were still partially software based.

[JEaton]

I really would like a solution that I can leave on all the time and not think about (like I currently have with my external drives connected to a pc).  It sounds like the ReadyNAS box might not be the answer.

I've been running one of the original model Infrant ReadyNAS 600 boxes continuously for the past 18 months or so in an unairconditioned home office and have never had a heat issue.  Some drives do run hotter than others, though.  The Western Digitals that I use have been exceptionally quiet, reliable, and cool.

As reliable as it's been, the Infrant NAS really isn't worth the money unless you're going to be using the management interface and included software a lot.  These devies are just plain, dog-ass slow.  Plenty fast for streaming audio, and as a file backup destination, but a simple hard drive stuck in an eight year old Windows PC will be several times as fast.  One thing that is _really_ slow is running SlimServer on a PC, but storing the music library on the Infrant, as can mostly be seen during library scans.  I don't know why that is, but I'm glad I got my library off of the Infrant, which is now relegated to nothing but backup duties until I sell it.

If you really have your heart set on RAID 5, get a RAID controller, four drives, a computer case big enough to house them and run Linux or Windows XP.  It'll be both cheaper and faster than the Infrant.  All youl give up is the nice web-based management interface.  Then again, if that's what you're looking for, do the same and install FreeNAS http://www.freenas.org/ as your operating system.

[JoshK]

I got this one. 

[jrebman]

George,

I have a new Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ that I bought diskless and added 4 400 Seagate 400gb 7200.10 drives and which I started up last weekend.  It took the better part of the day to go through volume creation and RAID synching -- and I'm using X-raid so my total storage space is around 1.2 TB.  This particular version also came with a gig of memory -- 4 to 8 times what many of the other NAS's come with.  I have had it on since Saturday in a small closet with the door closed and it is barely warm.

Warning: this unit is supposed to be significantly quieter than previous versions, but you are definitely not going to want it in or near your listening area as even at the slowest fan speed, it is still pretty noisy.

I chose the X-raid because of true hot-swap capability -- you don't have to power down to swap a dead drive, which means continous uptime, which the server and drives like much better than power cycling.

Once I run a CAT-6 connection to my well-insulated under-stairs closet in my basement, that's where it will live and nobody will know it is there.

I don't know if the other solutions people propose are better or not, but since one of my listening rooms has my computer in it, and since I do a lot of beta testing, it makes no sense for me to have my music on my main computer -- both from a noise perspective and because of a much higher than average probability of catastrophic failure due to the nature of a lot of the experimental stuff I need to run on my machine, so obviously this is not the usual case.

HTH,

Jim

[Brad]

We just installed one of the rack mount Infrants for some archive data.
Price was right, used 4x750Gb Seagates, using RAID 5.
Install was easy, the kernel plays well with our Win2k3 AD.