OT: Storage Solution

[Bert 49]

I currently run five external Hard drives to hold my libraries.  Two are Seagates which are now acting up already and they are less than a year old or so.  Saw this today, would this allow me to take apart the external drives and throw them in here until I upgrade drives?

 

http://www.neweggflash.com/product/16-111-168?utm_source=NFEmail020614&utm_medium=index&utm_campaign=SaleBanner_B2L_RAIDEnclosure&cm_mmc=EMC-NFEmail020614-_-SaleBanner_B2L_RAIDEnclosure-_-NA-_-16-111-168

 

 

[shaefurr 1337]

Yes, they're usually just regular sata drives in the external cases, any hard drive enclosure should work

 

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

[pmac 132]

Funny, I was just looking a something similar today HERE

 

@@Bert, can the enclosure you linked be used for JBOD as well as RAID, or is it limited to only RAID, I'm new to these things, and wasn't sure if something labelled a RAID tower needs to be used as such, or can be used as JBOD as well.

 

Thanks,

 

Patrick

 

EDIT: Read a little further down the page and it does support JBOD. A question though. do all these types of enclosures support JBOD? or only certain ones?

Edited February 10, 2014 by pmac

[CBers 6771]

I have a Startech 4-Bay enclosure I use as a JBOD unit.

 

Those 8-Bay units seem very expensive, or is it just me.

[pmac 132]

@@CBers, yeah they're definitely not cheap... THIS 4-Bay seems to be pretty decently priced, but it's got some mixed reviews... I'm really looking for a decently priced JBOD enclosure I can use to mirror the external HDD's I'm using right now, and eventually convert to a FlexRaid system in the future if possible. Downsizing a bit, I think a 4-bay that could support 16TB would be enough for me, rather than going for an expensive 8-Bay unit.

[CBers 6771]

I've never had any problems with my SrarTech unit.

 

Very handy for plugging disks in and checking what they are etc.

[CBers 6771]

@@pmac - have you looked at pooling your dives in the JBOD unit with something like Drive Bender?

 

It's very easy to set up and manage.

 

I use it on 2 of my systems, and look after 3 family members systems as well.

Edited February 10, 2014 by CBers

[pmac 132]

I've thought about that. But I wasn't sure how it would work in my situation; right now I'm running off of 4 drives of various sizes, but plan on building a JBOD unit out of all 3TB drives (can't afford the 4TB drives ). If I pool my drives together, how would I mirror my hard drives onto them? Create separate backup folders for each drive that I'm mirroring?

 

Down the line I'd like to replace the external HDD's that I'm using for my media with an identical JBOD unit, and then I would pool the drives on both of them, and have 2 identical units; one for backup, one for a media server. But for the time being, do you think drive pooling and creating separate backup folders for each external HDD would work? Or would that make it more difficult for me to restore from?

[pmac 132]

@@CBers. Drive Bender seems pretty interesting, I just finished having a bit of a read on their site. Have you used their data redundancy feature at all? It sounds very similar to a software raid (ie. FlexRaid or similar), but says it has better performance. It would be nice if it worked the same as FlexRaid, and if a drive went down, I could simply swap the damaged drive out for a new one without losing any data.

Also, I'm not sure of the technique DB uses for pooling, if I used it for a media server would it result in more wear and tear on my HDD's than necessary? (ie. more drives spinning up at a time than they would without using DB)

 

EDIT: Basically, what I'm wondering about Drive Bender's file duplication feature is, if I wanted say, 10TB of pooled storage, and want data redundancy, does this mean I'd need an additional 10TB of free space for Drive Bender to duplicate my files onto? Or does it work similar to FlexRaid, where I'd just need a parity drive the size of my largest drive in the pool? And, is the redundancy drive part of the pool, or should it be kept out of the pool, like a backup server.

 

Thanks,

 

Patrick

Edited February 10, 2014 by pmac

[ronvp 92]

That unit is actually is well priced because it includes a RAID card (Hardware RAID). it promises up to 250 mb/sec for raid 5 which is very good..  To reduce cost, most NAS systems use build in chips with software RAID and give at best 15 to 80 MB/sec. That would still be fast enough for streaming a couple of movies simultaneously, but if you are ripping or making back-ups, having a fast raid system make a difference... I really like this unit and may go get one myself..

 

EDIT: Just thought of another thing, the drives are by far the most expensive thing and because this unit has 8 bays, you can save money by just starting with a 6 disc JBOD and then slowly use the 2 other slots to build out to RAID 5 (or other RAID). Basically you get to do what you want..

 

I note that if you only plan to use it for JBOD, then you will have cheaper choices..

Edited February 10, 2014 by ronvp

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

Per drive bay, the 8-bay is cheaper than the 4-bay listed later on. If you could get a 4-bay for $99 or less then it would be worth it. However as the post above me says, the speed and raid card are great bonuses that you probably won't see in a JBOD setup.

Edited February 10, 2014 by Wayne Luke

[pmac 132]

I just downloaded the trial of Drive Bender and tested it out on one of my external hard drives. The process completed except for initializing the drive. I kept hearing the sound windows makes when it detects new hardware over and over again, and the log said it was "unable to complete initialization" and it just kept retrying. After googling that problem I tried selecting "Manage Windows Autoplay" in the Drive Bender settings to disable autoplay for any drive letter mount point, but this didn't seem to fix anything...

 

I've since removed the drive and mount point from the pool, and have my drive back to normal, but I'd really like to try this out and have it work with my external hard drives, as DB is supposed to work fine with USB HDD's.

 

Anyone here have any ideas what the problem may have been?

[CBers 6771]

@@pmac - did you start off the pool with a blank dusk?

 

Might be worth registering on the DB forums and we can help you out there.

[pmac 132]

No, I tried converting a disk with data on it.

[CBers 6771]

I believe it's better to add an empty disk to create the pool, then add in disks with data on.

 

You're not trying the v2 beta are you.

[pmac 132]

No, I believe it's v1.950 or something like that.

I have an extra 1TB I can format to test it out when I get a chance.

Edited February 10, 2014 by pmac

[CBers 6771]

Yes, v1.95 is the latest GA version that most people use.

 

There are a number of us testing v2 beta. It's working OK, but has a few issues.

 

I've been using DB since v1 was released, almost 3 years ago.

[pmac 132]

I'm really interested in getting it working, not so much for my externals, but for a JBOD box once I build one.

 

I just wanted to try it out on my externals first to see how I like it. Eventually I'd like to have my collection on two 4 bay JBOD units that are mirrored, or one 8 bay unit with 2 pools on it for backup.

 

I'm kind of interested in the duplication feature of DB, if it's as good as it sounds I'd be happy with an 8 bay enclosure with half of it dedicated to duplicates. It sounds like it works better than software raid.

[CBers 6771]

Duplication is currently done by duplicating files onto separate disks in the pool.

 

In v2,there are plans to duplicate across pools and even to cloud sync, although this hasn't been finalised yet.

Edited February 10, 2014 by CBers

[pmac 132]

So currently if I had an equal amount of drives that are the same size, I'd want them all in the same pool? Do I tell DB which drives I want the duplicates on, or do they span all the drives?

[CBers 6771]

DB will duplicate (copy) the file to another disk in the pool.

 

You can't currently tell DB which disk to use for duplication.

 

 

.

Edited February 11, 2014 by CBers

[pmac 132]

Sorry, just to clarify; what I mean is, does DB use separate disks for duplication? As in, nothing but duplicated files on those disks? So it would be basically the same as my original plan of mirroring my files with CrashPlan, only I'd have them pooled as well.

[CBers 6771]

Depends how many disks in your pool.

 

Two disks will create a "mirror" of sorts, but as soon as you add more disks, then dups will be created on the disk with most space on.

 

V2 will bring more management of file locations.

 

More information is available in the DB forums.

[Bert 49]

I was the OP... I did order the original hardware.... Not sure if will raid or what but at least it will be way less messy without all the cords.

 

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[moviefan 184]

I currently run five external Hard drives to hold my libraries.  Two are Seagates which are now acting up already and they are less than a year old or so.  Saw this today, would this allow me to take apart the external drives and throw them in here until I upgrade drives?

 

http://www.neweggflash.com/product/16-111-168?utm_source=NFEmail020614&utm_medium=index&utm_campaign=SaleBanner_B2L_RAIDEnclosure&cm_mmc=EMC-NFEmail020614-_-SaleBanner_B2L_RAIDEnclosure-_-NA-_-16-111-168

 

Just one warning I would have ... it might be extremely difficult to extricate the drives from their enclosures.

 

Many years ago I had a big Seagate External Drive that just stopped responding when I plugged in USB and it had some important data on it.

 

It took a significant amount of effort and I broke much of the enclosure getting the drive out.  Security torx screws everywhere and all sorts of other nonsense to prevent one from actually physically reaching the drive.  Just be prepared to trash the enclosures afterwards if you go this route.