Looking at Networked Ethernet Drives

[fleetwood]

Chris

If you set yourself up on RAID1, if one of you decides to walk out to sea, the other could still be in the office filling orders

[chris ashdown]

Thanks Martin

Does that mean I have a split personality?

[fleetwood]

Does that mean I have a split personality?

Its all down to your drive!

nuff said.

[Quantum]

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

Raid 1 will give you two pairs of mirrored drives and therefore will give you approx 500 gig

Raid 5 will give you approx 700gig of space as it effectively utilises one of the four drives to contain the duplicate blocks with which it can rebuild the data.

Raid 5 will be faster as it is not writing the data twice.

In both cases you will lose data if more than one drive goes down (unless in the case of Raid 1 you lose both the mirrored discs)

Riad 5 is supposed to be the best compromise for speed and security.

The Buffalo comes out of the box configured for Raid5.

For reference I have the Terastation Live 1TB

I chose this based on recommendations from friends in both medical server and computer backgrounds who recommended that they do not use drives over 250gb because of reliability issues.

[chris ashdown]

Thanks Andrew

I looked up http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html before I brought the unit, good explanation of all raid options though way over my head, and note that it says difficult to restore from raid 5 compared with raid 1 if a disk fails

Just wondering what the restore is like on raid 5, but think as only using small amount of disk that raid 1 might be better and also leaves two spare disks if the worst ever happens

[Mark H]

We stuck with RAID 1 as it is pretty bulletproof, and the only indication that you have a failed disk is that the box sends you an email! There is no restore/resync process with RAID 1 as far as I'm aware (just stick another disk in) and the risk with RAID 5 that such a process was difficult/long/prone to failure just wasn't worth it.

[Quantum]

Thanks Andrew

I looked up http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html before I brought the unit, good explanation of all raid options though way over my head, and note that it says difficult to restore from raid 5 compared with raid 1 if a disk fails

Just wondering what the restore is like on raid 5, but think as only using small amount of disk that raid 1 might be better and also leaves two spare disks if the worst ever happens

I did have a disc failure shortly after getting the unit so it didn't have a lot of data on it.

I just replaced the disc and rebuilt the array which if I recall took a few hours to complete.

If speed and space are not paramount than I would probably agree that Raid 1 is your best option.

[chris ashdown]

My Terastation being used as a RAID 1 system seems very slow,would RAID 5 make much difference

We are using Cat 6 cable and 1 gig switch with the terastation on the network

I assume the speed is due to mirroring, but would have thought this would be hidden in the background rather than making the drive slow

[Mark H]

We are using the Netgear ReadyNAS on RAID 1 mirrored mode, and it is slower than, say, an external USB drive. But to put it in context it opens a large spreadsheet in about 4 seconds rather than 2-3 for a plain USB drive. If your drive appears to be much slower than that it might be something else that's causing the problem.

[chris ashdown]

Thanks Mark

It looks like I made another Boob, It's actually the time taken to open the drive up the first time it's used that is causing the delay, once open its OK

I guess all the bits take time to talk to each other first time (but my guesses are normally crap as well)

[fergusw]

Following a post on another topic I thought I'd try out the QNAP ts-209 pro with 2 x 500Gb seagate drives (RAID 1) to replace file/web Windows 2003 server.
We operate with a local domain controller (AD) and I need NTFS security using domain permissions.
The QNAP was a snap to install, picked up all AD info from domain controller, is faster that the original server (we run several shared apps over network) and the RAID type is selectable within interface. It even allows web based interface connection for secure, remote access to file shares, a built-in web server (mySQL/PHP), torrent downloader etc amongst other features.

...and it comes in a nice little black box

[Mark H]

...and it comes in a nice little black box

I understood that bit

[fergusw]

I understood that bit

An important part of the purchasing decision making

[dave_finlayson]

OK, we are looking for a external backup drive for our server (windows 2003). I know absolutely nothing about disk drives so excuse the numptyness here.

Can I buy one of said Raid drives, plug it into our server and let it do it's stuff. Will this automatically shadow what is on the server? Or do I need anything else?

[fleetwood]

Chris

Two months down the line, are you happy with your Buffalo Terastation purchase?

Did the speed issue resolve itself, or is it noticeable bothersome?