Need a 1Gbit network storage!!!

Alright I am looking for a eSATA/1Gbit Ethernet network storage. It needs to be able to do raid 5 and support 2TB or high drives(thinking future upgrades^^) Also I would like this affordable....i only make 20g a year :/ Are there reasonable prices ones out there for what i need? Also It doesn't need to come with hardrives....i prefer it didn't. I rather buy my own. Also it can be dual gigabit Ethernet too ^^

To consolidate this,
eSATA port
10/100/1000
Raid5 support
3.5inch hardrive support
affordable?

 

The only way to meet your requirements is to build a small cheap computer with a whole bunch of drives in it. Look up "how to build nas box" on google.

 

true i do got a decent desktop at home...kinda power inefficent lol...ah crap. wait i can't use that its only SATA and pci...no pci E crap Looks like i am building a new one

 

Luckily you don't need much computer, so it can be done for really cheap. I've toyed with the idea of making one for years, but it really wouldn't do anything for me over cramming more drives into my desktop.

 

the one i found by maximum pc uses freenas and that does a software raid...dont those suck? I need to be able to do raid 5 with 4 drives

2TB each min

 

A Gbit link would at most give you a max throughput around 100MB/s and I decent x86 CPU should be able to handle that so software RAID may not be an issue. Afterall, a hardware RAID card is nothing but a processor with some RAM for cache. Most x86 PC configuration can out perform that easily. software RAID is bad for a desktop/server setup because it used the resource that can be used for something else. For a dedicated NAS, the resource is sitting there anyway. Just run linux instead of windows.

Noise, size and power consumption is an issue though as you would need a full size chasis(for 4+ drive) and running 24/7.

 

I wouldnt use software RAID on parity arrays like RAID5 unless its a dedicated CPU/machine.

Whats your budget anyway? You can get a 4bay NAS box that fulfills all your criteria for about $400

 

Yes, a 4bay NAS box sounds to be a better idea. However, just a quick glance of them shows that most has a sustained throughput in the range of 25-40MB/s, it is kind of slow. Though even a DIY would still be limited by the network(80MB/s ?), unless one goes for 10Gb or FC.

 

yea 400 is expensive....i am thinking if i got enough spare parts to build one. The reason why i also wanted an eSATA is because if i ever needed more than a 1Gb Ethernet the eSATA would be right next to it. for faster transfers...4 hardrives in a raid 5 would be really fast for reads

 

1Gb would push 100MBps easy

EDIT sorry for double post. Also like i said thats why I would want the eSATA because that would give it a lot more speed if i needed to do some large file transfers

 

You can actually get really close to the theoretical bandwidth with wired ethernet, and you can run multiple gigabit lines for more bandwidth. You can probably do at least 240MB/s with dual lines. Since you need only a weak processor and you can adjust the power settings pretty well, it shouldn't consume much energy.

 

An NAS as a eSata device ? That is something I doubt you can build. I would also like to see such a thing.

You are really talking about enterprise class solution for throughput in that range.

 

multiple Gbit link can increase the throughput of the server but can it benefit the client as well ? Sure if there are 2 clients accessing it simultaneously, both would get their max (say 120MB/s) but if there is only one client, the client itself would also need to have dual link(and the software needs to be smart enough, I know linux can but not sure about windows). How likely would that be ?

 

i would like dual link and if i built my own i would do that because duel link wouldn't be hard to do with a custom build. And yes it would help a lot if multiple people use it. And there are ones that have eSATA attachments. But those run for $400ish instead of $200ish If i had to buy the raid 5 4 bay i want it'll cost 400ish....might as well as get a MOBO/CPU combo and use my extra parts like a 85 Plus psu extra ram and case. The hard thing would be getting a MOBO that supports 4 SATA drives or has enough PCI-E slots

 

When you say eSATA attachment, do you mean I can attach eSATA device to it or use that one big 'black box' as an eSATA device to my notebook ? It is the later that I think is difficult(if possible). If I can get a device like that for 400, I think it is cheap.

 

your i can connect my computer/laptop to the NAS device via eSATA and 400 bucks aint cheap! I could build one "cheaper" with spare parts, which is a great idea! I think i will do that. Also could you do multiple NASs in one bock? Lets say i got 4 2TB drives for a raid 5 and than I got 2 500gig drives can i make those as a raid 0? in the same box?

 

Dual LAN teaming wont work on consumer grade routers. You need a switch that supports link aggregation or else having two links will only be good for fail over redundancy.

Even so, for single client use, its only as fast as the bottleneck in your network. Its mainly used for servers with multiple clients that can use that large bandwidth.

You can also use dual lan to split up your WAN and LAN networks.

 

Ah yes, you're right. Windows is too stupid to implement this.

 

where can I get such a thing and how can you build it ?

 

One answer: Windows Home Server. Use any PC and any combination of drives for storage.

 

I was asking if you can do a duel NAS set up in one device if it was home build...i dont know if its possible chimp.

Also my router should handle it just fine. I got Netgear 3700WDR

 

I was not talking about the dual link but the eSATA part. Where can I find an NAS box that also acts like a standard eSATA device ?

Dual link is simple, just get 2 Gbit lan cards.

 

newegg has them you can use the power search. select the eSATA 1x and 2x that will give you 1 or 2 port eSATA NAS systems.

Also i was saying i am wondering if you can have a 4x2TB raid 5 and a 2x500gig Raid 0 in the same system

Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more!
100 bucks and i get get a motherboard with 5SATA ports and supports raid....says it doesn't support raid 5 so i guess software raid would do. Also its got a duel core AMD ^^ so all i got to do is slap that in my case and use my current psu and get hardrives....thats a lot better than 400 bucks. Although how would i get the eSATA part to work?

 

are you sre these NAS box can act as an eSata device rather than just can accept other eSata device ?

 

Most RAID controllers will support multiple arrays, even on the same drive.

You wont get any speed benefit with dual LAN on your Netgear router because for one it doesnt support link aggregation/bonding and two it doesnt have enough switching capacity like proper switches do.

 

i assumed they acted as a hardrive...like an external....i don't know why they wouldn't

also case
Newegg.com - APEX TX-381-C Black Steel Micro ATX Tower Computer Case

 

i have a professional 24 port 10/100/1000 switch at home...i think its 1000 if not buying a switch thats a 10/100/1000 isn't expensive.

 

The eSATA on NAS boxes are for storage expansion, unless otherwise stated.

 

crap

well this is what i got so far for building one. I would use my case at home its ATX but it can fit a microATX board in it.
case
Newegg.com - APEX TX-381-C Black Steel Micro ATX Tower Computer Case
cpu/board
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Plus ram at home I got like 4 gigs of DDR2
Hardrives...would get hitachi but they are out 170 for seagate and 130 for hitachi
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148506
they dont have any good microatx PSUs so get one from somewhere else
total so far is $805 bucks lol

looks like i'll wait til i am out of this S hole before I build mine.

 

Get Windows Home Server, costs about $100, sometimes find it for $80. No need to worry about RAID or anything. Use any box and any combination of hard drives you want. Simple to use. Only need 2GB's RAM and meager CPU. I use an Athlon 64 X2. Works great!

 

i'll look into that. freenas does sound nicer lol ^^...its free....though from what i saw its a little bit of a pain ^^

 

Well the nicest thing about it is you don't need to worry about RAID or much of anything about your hard drive configurations. It manages everything for you. Automated backups, network storage, etc. Pretty streamlined.

 

sounds good. Maybe i can find a friend with a copy to try

 

You can download it and use it for free for 30 days.

Order Windows Home Server Evaluation Edition

Problem is that the trial edition can't be activated. You'll have to do a new install with a full version once the trial has ended. But enough time to trial it and give it a whirl even in a virtual machine.

 

cool noted ^^

 

Not sure what all you need to transfer so fast, but here are some things to consider...

Software raid, either through an Intel chipset or through Windows will NOT get you raid speeds. You may see an increase, but nothing like a dedicated hardware raid will do. Rest assured, Intel on-board raid is software.

Small files can really drag down transfer rates. Windows based servers seem even more susceptible to this problem than Linux.

P4's while generally considered power hogs, have quite good power management. My NAS/file server with a P4 540, single 1TB drive, and extra Sata card for esata ports sits at about the same wattage as most dedicated NAS boxes (around 35 watts). Oh, and Atoms are not as power efficient as people think.


Don't overlook used parts.
By the time you buy a new ram, board, chip and case you can have some serious money invested and you still need drives. Especially cases, there's nothing wrong with used cases. Take a look on Ebay for used systems. $100 or so will get used a working P4, 2gig ram, gigabit ethernet, PCI-E, 2-4 sata ports, 40gig drive and a legal copy of Xp. Just add drives.

I pull consistent 100-105meg transfers on large files with a slow drive (old Maxtor 1Tb). Linux was faster, just need to find time to switch back. Which isn't bad for what I have invested in it.

 

That's not true. Raid through the modern chipset is more like an in-between. The processor does the work, but the array is invisible to the OS and managed by the motherboard's hardware and firmware. 99% of people are using this for RAID, and they are getting the full speed benefits. A performance deficit only happens when you start adding an overly large number of drives into the array. I forget exactly how far it scales well, but it is a number of drives that normal people don't really use together in an array. Most motherboards don't even sport this many ports anyway. I *think* it scales pretty much perfectly to 6, and a performance deficit becomes noticeable at 8.

 

Thats not true

A RAID card is just a dedicated CPU and cache. Software RAID uses the host CPU and RAM, which can easily be spec'd faster. Linux can take advantage of multi-thread and multi-core CPU's which is a lot faster than any RAID controller out there.

But it will only be faster if dedicated for that use, but it usually isnt because most servers play multiple roles which use up resources.

As mentioned earlier parity based arrays like RAID5 will eat up a lot more resources, so a dedicated card is more desirable because it has dedicated processing and write back cache.

Hardware RAID is just more reliable and able to swap out failed drives without turning off the server. Software RAID relies on the CPU/RAM, if those hiccup for whatever reason then you could be in for trouble.

 

do you think that duel core AMD cpu is plunty fast enough? Also I would make this with 4 2TB drives Maybe do a raid 0 with my 2 spare 500 gig drives as well. it has 5 SATA ports and i would just through in a pci-e card with an extra SATA port to do the 2 500 gig raid 0

 

For home use, software RAID will do fine. A dual core is fast enough as long as you dont continually use it for other cpu intensive tasks.

If you are looking to buy a hardware RAID, a decent entry level card will set you back about $400~ and it might not even support RAID5. The ones ive looked at mostly had a 800mhz CPU and 128mb cache. $1000+ cards will have 1GHZ+ dual core CPU.

If your gonna make 2 arrays, make sure you create the RAID0 array first so it will be written on the closer edge/fastest part of the platters.

Look i cannot let this discussion continue if its regarding desktops as this is a notebook forum. Those have to be forwarded to Desktop review forums (DTR).

 

ok thanks I got all i need to know. I'll use my old hardware and that MOBO/cpu combo. Feel free and close it