Looking at Networked Ethernet Drives

[chris ashdown]

With the advent of V9 I am looking at speeding things up by using a networked gigabite Ethernet twin disk drive with our multi user system

I am confused with Raid systems but have seen a couple of twin disk setups and also this one Buffalo TeraStation Pro II TS-H1.0TG which has four drives

Can anyone tell me what the advantages are between a 2 disk raid and a 4 disk raid and what raid 0-10 should I use or is there a better alternative

Also with my USB hard drive can I connect it to say the raid drive directly for backups durring the day using Acronis workstation and still take it home again each night

Any better solutions welcomed

[Darren B]

OK Chris a basic explaination

Raid 0 = Striping, these drives were faster as basically one block got stored on one drive and the next block on another drive, therfore data access was faster because the work load was split over 2 drives

Raid 1 = Mirror, 2 drives were the data is identical, a security feature so if one drive fails you still have an identical copy

Raid 0+1 Stiping Mirror, as you might have guessed a combination of 0 and 1

Raid 2 and 3 are not really used anymore

Raid 4 = Starts to get more complex here, similar to traid 0 but does other stuff that i have never decided to learn

Raid 5 = Is like riad 4 but does things a little different

but from then on it becomes a bit more customised and can be vendor specific, and you may find only one type of raid to one type of manufacturer.

Basically these are likely to be slight performance enhancements giving better write speeds and will use either raid 0 or raid 1 type configuration with the added extras

hope this helps chris

D

[Darren B]

Ah i ment to add, there are restirctions depending on the file system used, fat 32 is not really used because of hdd size restrictions, ntfs is more stable and widely used due to windows being everywhere, there are others

D

[marke]

I use a Freecom 500GB Network Drive. Maybe slightly different to the multiple disk arrays you are looking at. It comes bundled with NTI Shadow copy. This drive plugs into my router via a network connection and picks up an IP address from the router (which is my DHCP server). It then just sits on my network in the same way as any other PC only it is just a drive. I have drives mapped to it from a number of PCs. Its portable just like the USB drive you mentioned. The software, NTI Shadow is set up to basically mirror my My Docs folder to the network drive so and changes I make to files are copied over striaght away just like they would be on a raid mirror. An extremly simple solution which is very flexible and very cheap @ £115. Smaller drives are cheaper still. You can also plug in via USB if you choose to.

[Cheapprices4u]

or as previoulsy mentioned use freenas

gabe mentioned it on another thread its great, just an old pc and slap in your hard drives

[marke]

Not so easy to take home with you though.

[Cheapprices4u]

no but you dotn always need to take it all home

i have freenas at work, in the office and good old memory pens for stuff i want
then remote access to pc if i forget something

[Mark H]

We use a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, which is four disks (total 2Tb), RAID 1 mirrored (safest), to provide two "storage spaces" of 500Gb each. This provides almost total protection against disk failure, although we do back up as well, using a USB drive attached to one of the PCs. In theory you can attach a USB drive straight to the box, but we never got this to work.

Pricey, but very good. If anyone is considering one of these, it is considerably cheaper to buy the version that has two 500Gb drives pre-installed, and then buy two more separately to stick in, rather than buy the version with 4 drives pre-installed. I think later models now also take 750Gb drives. Make sure that the separate drives you buy are on the list of compatible drives.

Also features Gigabit LAN for highest transfer speeds.

PS it's easy to take home for security, even comes with a handle on the back.

[Mark H]

PS, make sure you read all the reviews for the unit you are looking at (the reviews on Dabs.com are good, as are the prices) - there are some very well known units on the market which use their own file system (not good) and/or are unreliable in terms of losing data (really not good).

[fleetwood]

any thoughts on/experiences with the LACIE 2bigNetwork, which is one of the ones on my 'consider' list?

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...avigationKey=0

at £245 ish, its about half the price of the Netgear Ready 4 bay (or the same price as a 2 bay Netgear Ready 'case only' model)

The only real negative I've read about the Lacie so far, is that the proprietory software is not good for remote netowrk access (but great for local network access).

As ever, real experiences are what count the most - so if anyone has one, and is happy, plmk.

[chris ashdown]

Many thanks to you all, great range of idea's and information

Question if I buy a four disk unit like suggested, what difference would raid 1 and raid 5 make, by that I mean whilst i understand raid 1 would give me two mirrored disks or would it mirror all four disks and Raid 5 what is the difference between 2 and 4 disks

I note that the Buffalow Terastation comes with 4 250 gig drives and assume I would not be using more than say 20-40 gig so do i have one original drive and one mirrored or 3 mirrored?

Do I gain anything by using raid 5


sorry if not put clearly

[NicolaUK]

Personally I'd be wary of relying on anything by LaCie - my tape drive went down about 6 weeks ago, admittedly it is out of warranty but their support system is non existent. It took them a week to tell me 'oh well it's shafted and we don't fix anything out of warranty' then another to say 'well it could be the power supply and we'll see if we're authorised to send you a new one', which they were and I'm still waiting for.

I do recommend Buffalo though, I have 2 Linkstation Pros that work like charms.

[chris ashdown]

Thanks Nickola

Can you tell me how easy they are to set up and what software comes with them

[NicolaUK]

They're very easy to set up, they can be configured using a browser and come with Memeo Back Up software which admittedly I haven't used - my set up is a little unusual am running Actinic via Parallels so use Retrospect and Time Machine to a Time Capsule.

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...nkstation-pro/

http://www.memeo.com/autobackup.htm

[chris ashdown]

Thanks all I have gone for the Buffalo Terastation at £334.16 plus vat from DABS

If you don't hear from me again , It's because I lost my cool sorting it out an have done a Reggie Perrin (if you can remember that far back you youngsters)