My Rio Central has died for the last time, I think. Replacement?

The hard disk just went bad in my Rio Central for, I think, the third time. I've actually got two centrals, one of which was an alpha prototype, and I've been doing parts-swapping and replacing hard disks as needed, but I think it's reached its last legs, and now, I want a replacement solution for a streaming household media server. And since the Rio Receivers only could ever connect to the Central, if that's going out, I'm going to have to throw those babies out with the bathwater too. It's a sad day, I know. But I figure this would be a great time to get a thread started about how I could go about replacing this system that served me well for many years. I think there has to be something that exists that can do more capabilities these days.

Here's some ideas about what I *think* I'd like to do in this area, all are open for discussion. Does anyone make a solution that does all these things or a subset of these things?

1. I'm thinking that, whatever I do, I want to do a server/client solution, where I'm buying both ends of the equation.

2. I want it to stream not just MP3s, but many types of audio/video media to the clients.

3. The head-end does not have to rip CDs nor output video or audio. The head end could just be a dedicated file server, with some caveats as listed below.

4. I tried going the "Dedicate an old PC to the task" route, and did not like that. The PC turned out to be a problem, was noisy so I had to hide it away somewhere, and never really ended up doing what I needed it to do.

5. My ideal device would be something like a NAS box, where it's just a glorified hard disk with an ethernet plug in back. But in the box should be...
- Lots of storage for video/audio files. Perhaps expandable storage.
- Web UI for managing those files.
- Windows/Samba file share access for adding/removing/editing files.
- Acts as a Windows Media Server so that my Xbox and Playstation can stream from it.

6. Then I would want player client boxes, much like the Rio Receivers. I would want the clients to:
- Stream audio from that server, using their own built-in UI screen (i.e., without needing a television UI).
- (Not necessarily in the same client box) Stream Video and audio with HD television output and television UI interface.
- Infrared remote control that I can use my Harmony One with.

Does such a system exist? What do you guys recommend?

Does "Windows Media Server" just mean CIFS/Samba, DLNA, or what?

I use a Synology NAS running Squeezebox Server. It's got built-in DLNA for sharing audio/video with my PS3. It has the web UI for managing files bit. You can poke around a demo of the user interface here.

...but I guess I should have read the "Squeezebox is dead" post first.

Hm. I'm not sure what I mean.

- No, I don't mean just a samba server.
- I mean, the thing, I don't know what its official name is...
- That you get if you install Windows Media Server on your windows computer...
- Where there are other windows-media-savvy devices on your network that will stream media from that service. Such as: The Xbox 360.
- I don't know what that's called. Is that "DLNA"?

Something to think about, I'm now thinking about........

Maybe the client end doesn't need to be Video-player. Maybe if the server can stream to Xbox/Ps3, then that's enough, and maybe all I really need is audio-player clients. I have two TVs in the house and they both have at least an Xbox connected.

You could try Open Media Vault. I'm running it on an HP N40L ProLiant microserver, which is a really nice little box. Very quiet, and you can put up to 5 Sata drives into it.

OMV supports a load of media serving and streaming services, as the name would suggest, and there's probably what you want in there to connect to most playback devices.

HP seem to more or less constantly be running a cash back deal on the thing, I got mine after the rebate for about £130. That's not bad for a little VERY well built server with a 250GB drive, 2GB of ram, and a decent processor. I ended up installing OMV on a 20GB laptop drive I had lying around, using one of these to connect it to the internal USB port, and mounting it underneath the optical drive tray. That leaves me space for all five drives internally. It's got 8TB in it at the moment, which isn't really enough but will do for the moment

I got it doing a shutdown when it's no longer being accessed, but am having issues with wake on LAN not quite working. Other than that, very happy.

pca

I can vouch for the N40L. I bought one for a sweet price, and then decided I need to stop buying so many thing just because the price is good. Therefore, I wound up selling it to a friend while it was still en route to me.

I helped him put Ubuntu on it and he's using it to feed a Popcorn Hour (Samba shares) and I think he's also using a Roku with it now (running Plex Media Server on the N40L, I presume). I will have to ask him about it...

I've also been looking at getting a new box to hook my Drobo up to. I've been eyeing this Foxconn barebone which seems perfect aside from the USB 3.0 ports being on the front. It's even coming with a 60GB SSD through a promotion currently. If you want it out of the way, it comes with a VESA mount so you can stick the thing to the back of a monitor with the proper holes.

I've got what's probably the precursor to that (it looks more or less identical) the nt300i, as a media player box running XBMC. Very good indeed.

pca

I think Synology NAS will also work as Windows Media Server.

However, since you would be perfectly able to easily manage a full feature server, and considering inexpensive, cheap, silent hardware is available (Shuttle, or the HP N40L mentioned above, which I had never seen), I'd go that venue. You may install any OS of your choice. Linux, Windows Server, or even a plain Windows 8 pro, will be great in managing drives, RAID, Storage spaces, and you'll be able to install whatever server software you like.

As clients, Logitech ones are probably still available if you're planning to purchase now. They will surely last years, and as far as I know they are still the best option available.

Edit: I actually can't find music players on Logitech websites (I checked US and IT ones).

Logitech has cleared out all the older music stuff from their site. You can buy from independent retailers if needed.

Server: Rob's got the ticket here.

Server OS: Tony's choice.

For audio on the server end: Nothing else makes sense for someone like Tony besides Logitech Media Server (formerly SqueezeServer, etc...) They may be ending the product line but it's still "the only game in town" as far as quality music streaming also capable of serving a collection of quantity.

For Video on the server end: 2 choices, IMO.

The first is "nothing." Don't run any video streaming software at all and instead simply supply SMB/NFS/whatever shares that clients can connect to and stream from.

The second option is again back to something Rob mentioned. Plex Media Server. This will have a client requirement, but you may be able to use any DLNA client.

Now to clients...

Music: Absolutely keep this a dedicated music-only device. In other words, not a media player that would otherwise be connected to the video output of your TV. Either a proper Squeezebox or a more general-purpose device running software-based Squeeze-compatible player, such as any iOS device running iPeng. When it's not playing music you can use something like an iPad to show a slideshow.

Video: Now we're into problem territory. There's not a single solution at this time that I can recommend head-and-shoulders above the rest. The PS3 and XBOX devices can play back some content but leave a lot to be desired. Stand-alone media players all have a number of issues. You can use a small silent PC and run Plex CLIENT on it. That might be your best bet.

But you can also try the Plex app on one of the higher-end Roku boxes. Or a WDTV Live if you went the SMB route.

And FINALLY...... If you wanted an alternative you could wait around a little while longer and see about installing Windows onto that server, running Windows Media Center and then pick up one of the forthcoming Ceton extenders. Keeping with the suggestions above for music however. Ceton also has their own server with built-in tuners if you want/need that sort of thing. XBOX 360 can also act as an extender today, but again, YMMV.

Everything above except the iOS devices can work with an IR remote. iOS devices themselves make the best music remotes for operating on Squeezebox/LMS.

Oh, I'd also strongly recommend a silent PC as a client wherever you have space for it and a monitor/TV.
from it, you may simply access media via shares/smb, or you may run any media collection manager/player. As Bruno said, Windows Media Center is not a bad option, and only costs $10 in addition to the Windows 8 Pro license (relatively cheap for few months after release), for example. Or, XBMC as a free alternative, and possibly others. Also, you'll be able to use all sorts of different players if needed. I like Foobar for some multichannel tracks, and it works very nicely if you wish to connect to an Amp. Of course, a Silent PC won't work in every room.

Forgot to mention.... You can also run a software-based Squeeze player on a PC and forgo a dedicated device. It was probably out of my mind at the time because I haven't always had the best of luck with the headless software I've tried before, Squeezeslave.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet as a video/audio client is the Raspberry Pi. It can run XBMC, but I don't know if you can use a IR remote with it yet.

RPi has USB so you can easily connect an IR receiver, like one of mine, and use it with XBMC. I'm not certain the platform has enough "oomph" however to decode a wide assortment of streams. If it has to use the CPU, instead of dedicated co-processing for many of them, it's going to be in trouble.

XBMC at 1080p on Raspberry Pi, which is encouraging. Of course, YMMV.

Poked at that UI demo. Nice.

So it comes with that OS and web UI already built-in? It seems to already have some sort of media indexing service built-in to it. How does that work in terms of being able to serve indexed media to client devices?


If I wanted to run squeezebox clients, is it tough to add Squeezebox server to it? Would there be any other audio-player clients that connect to it that don't require me to install anything onto it?

The other suggestion of an HP ProLiant Micro Server is nice, but I'm thinking I'd be happier with a system where I didn't have to do any OS installation/configuration/maintenance when I got it. I'm looking for something more plug-n-play, and if that Synology box works in a simple plug-n-play fashion, then that might be the ticket.

Well the literal answer to your question is that it's a NAS, so the OS isn't "built-in" per se. Instead, it comes with an install disc that you use once you've put your drives in, and it installs that OS on those disks, after which you build your RAID array, install whatever additional packages you want, etc. But yeah, the OS is part of the package, and it's pretty nice.

There are a bunch of different Synology NAS models with different disk configurations and varying amounts of CPU horsepower; I went with the DS1511+ which offers 5 disk bays and has enough CPU to run all of the add-on packages I've tried so far.

The media stuff seems to work well. It just scans your drives for media files in whatever folders you tell it to and they show up in the PS3 UI. Not much to it.

Squeezebox server is really easy because it's one of the officially supported packages that shows up in their Package Center control panel thing without having to add 3rd party package repositories. Here's a pretty comprehensive list of the supported packages. I had to set up a 3rd party repository to get the Crashplan package, but that was pretty easy, too, and it works flawlessly.

Okay, that's quite impressive. It seems to be riding that fine line between being a turnkey NAS, and a full featured OS. It looks like they're doing that fairly well. With enough storage, I could also use something like this as a file-backup server for the members of my household instead of just a video/audio server. This could be very useful to me.

The 5-bay unit... what's it like in terms of fan/disk noise? I'm planning on replacing a Rio Central, which is relatively quiet.

If you are going to choose a NAS, keep in mind many out there have the same DLNA functions, so evaluate a few brands.

My NAS of choice is still a ReadyNAS. But knowing that some of the key (pre netgear) engineering talent has left recently has me shaky about the future. Waiting to see the impact, if any of their departure.

Almost any NAS will do pure DLNA sharing (ie, it send the file over the network to a playback device, and all decoding happens on the receiving end) just fine. You will run into some issues though if you also want to add video transcoding (ie crunching a big HD file down realtime to play on an iPhone) with most units. Most NAS devices these days are using Intel Atom processors, which do fine for NAS and basic DLNA serving needs. Some NASes offer more normal desktop class processors, so transcoding becomes a possibility.

Fan noise on the ReadyNAS side varies. The 4 bay units are noticeable if you have them in the same room, but may not be annoying depending on your tolerance. My older (and no longer sold) NV+ was the loudest, my Ultra 4 (same form factor, newer guts) runs quieter, but still not desk quiet for me. The two bay units you will notice hard drive noise more then you will the fans.

How good is Squeeze server on a NAS with a large number of files? It can be quite slow searching my collection (35000ish files) off a Vista box with 4GB ram.

It's going to be slow for things like searching and the web interface, but the software itself is more to blame than the NAS. It's already crazy slow at times doing that on fast hardware as you've noticed (I have about 40k tracks).

Using a software-based controller with its own cached copy of (some) metadata and artwork is going to dramatically improve responsiveness for general browsing/control if not for searching. At the end of the day one will spend more time listening and that won't prove to be an issue at all.

Yeah, I guess. I was thinking about having a NAS as the only 24/7 device on my home network but a modern PC isn't going to be any more power hungry, so I'll go with that.

I run LMS on a Windows system only because it's already running SageTV 24/7, otherwise I'd be running it on my ReadyNAS, which is also on 24/7 and already holds all the music.

The Windows system boots from SSD and LMS' database and all cache files are stores on the same SSD. The web interface is usable but far from fast.

I think above all else, the main thing to note with regards to LMS is that it's finicky and has always had its share of issues/bugs. Currently I'm in the process of completely wiping it out and re-installing in hopes of getting back my track artwork, which suddenly disappeared for the majority of my collection the other day. At around the same time I updated to the latest 7.7.2 version I believe.

I recently had to zap and re-install to get back "Now Playing", it started just displaying the text "Now Playing" without actually displaying the file info.

As good as Squeezebox and SBS/LMS is, it's definitely geared toward folks like us, who have the capacity and some willingness to tweak and fiddle with it, not the general public. I think Logitech has a long road ahead if it thinks they're going to change that significantly with the move to the UE brand.

Here's an oddity I don't previously remember.... I just changed the settings via the web interface to show thumbnails at 250px instead of the default 100px and it completely wiped my entire database and is now rescanning. Pretty sure I was able to change thumbnail size at will previously without any such issues, being able to confirm the change in the web UI with a simple browser page refresh.

The synology stuff also comes with an iOS app which allows browsing (and background streaming) directly from your NAS box. Unexpected but rather nice, though if it'd transcode my stuff from FLAC that'd be *really* useful

I have a tiny DS411slim, very happy with it. 4x1TB 2.5" disks, takes almost no power and is almost totally silent too.

Also, they actually offer a shell as a standard feature, and when you apply updates (painless), it doesn't blow your stuff away either.

I'm struggling right now trying to figure out what to do about increasing my NAS storage. It's either replace every 2GB drive in my current 6-drive RNP with 3GB models, or buy another enclosure and add a few 3 or 2TB drives to that. I'm leaning toward the new enclosure because upgrading drives in the original from 2 to 3 doesn't give you much extra storage and has an extremely high cost per TB - unless I can re-sell the original 2TB drives to offset the cost.

With double drive redundancy in my setup, I have to upgrade at least 3 drives before I see even an additional byte of storage.

One idea that has occurred to me recently, is to use a USB 3.0 hub and a bunch of nearly-silent external USB 3.0 "drives" -- the WD "My Book Essential" units in particular.

Our local electronics recycling depot came by a pallet load of empty "My Book Essential" enclosures, and is reselling them at $7/each. Since I have a shelf full of bare SATA drives here, I've purchased ten of those enclosures.

With a WD "Green" Drive installed in one, the thing is darned near silent. Cooling is passive -- no fans, no noise. Even purchased "new" with a 2TB or 3TB drive included, these are only about a $10 mark-up over the bare drives.

The bare enclosures do seem to work with any size/brand SATA drive, not only the WD "Green" series drives.

Cheers

Thanks for that endorsement, Hugo.

A Synology NAS seems to exist in my future. And using my existing Xbox and PS3 as my video streaming clients seems to be a pretty straightforward solution. Looks like that will be plug and play.

Now... What about music streaming client hardware stations?

They don't necessarily have to have a UI even... it could, for example, be an Apple AirPort Express. Can one of those stream the music from a Synology NAS?

I did this for a while, but decided that it was untidy and that all the wallwarts were inefficient compared to a single low power NAS box. So I got a Synology DS211. Very happy with it, but I've not used it much for streaming.

Tony, there's already a stable build of Logitech Media Server for Raspberry Pi with playback. It's a fork of Squeezeplug: http://squeezeplug.de

Of course you could just install Squeezeslave on a RBP and have yourself a super-light and cheap SqueezeBox. With the caveat that it has no optical audio output and may not have the ideal analog output. You *should* be able to get digital audio out of the HDMI port however.

Yep, an actual hardware squeezebox is one that I am considering. Currently, I see its only drawback being that it is a discontinued product. Other than that, I think it would do the things I want.

In fact, it seems very attractive even considering the discontinued-hardware issue.

In the meantime, are there other options equal to squeezebox that would satisfy the same sort of need, but which aren't discontinued products?

Software-based. Otherwise, no, nothing quite like it.

Oh, one more for you Tony. It's already been implied, but might as well just say it. If you have any empegs lying around, you can always run Squeezeslave on them.

Like this guy: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?89844-Vanputer

So, if I'm getting a Synology NAS, what kinds of drives should I populate it with?

If I was going with actual Squeezebox client hardware, should I get Squeezebox Touch units from Amazon or Crutchfield?

I use 3x 3TB Western Digital WD30EZRX drives in mine, in a RAID5 configuration.

RAID5 sounds like the way to go. Have you ever had to replace a drive on the NAS, and was it a fairly painless procedure when it happened?

And I wanted to clarify my question about the Squeezebox clients above, too, since I worded it poorly. Here's my re-worded question:

If I was going to get some squeezebox clients, should I get the Squeezebox Touch models, or some other models? I see some older ones available used on Amazon with VFD displays. But I can get the Touch units on Amazon, Crutchfield, or elsewhere.

I replaced a drive on my Thecus NAS last year. It was simple, but you do have a period of some hours while it's rebuilding the parity info where access is a lot slower.

And I misspoke -- I'm not actually using RAID5, I'm using Synology's "Hybrid RAID" which is much more flexible when you're replacing drives, adding larger drives, etc. I haven't had to replace a drive on this one yet, but when I do, it'll be nice knowing I won't have to use a drive of the same size (or waste the extra space beyond the size of the smallest drive in the array.)

I don't have an opinion on the Squeezebox question -- I still use original Squeezeboxes with the empeg-esque low-res display, and haven't really looked at the rest of the lineup recently.

That Synology hybrid RAID looks pretty snazzy. I can upgrade disk sizes over time without having to replace the whole thing.

With these hybrid setups you'll still always be wasting the difference between the size of the largest drive and the next largest if you're only replacing a single drive in a single drive redundant array.

Put simply, adding a single drive to the system that is bigger than all the other drives will not increase your usable storage space. You will have to swap two drives and the space gained is about equal to the difference in storage of the smaller of the two over top of what it's replacing (if the two replaced drives were the same size to begin with).

It's the same for ReadyNAS' XRAID and Dobo's DroboFS.

Tony, I like the look and functionality of the "classic" SqueezeBox 3. If you don't think you'll need a display at all, you might go for a SB Receiver. Otherwise the main advantages with the Touch are that it's controllable right from the unit itself and it can also run a mini-server allowing you to connect storage directly to it.

There's always the unRaid software -- a much better idea for huge drives, but it does require a little bit more interaction to get it set up.

When I see listings on ebay and web sites for "Squeezebox Classic" is that the same as Squeezebox 3?

And, if I'm buying from Ebay, is there anything about them that I should need to check, other than that they work and have the power supply included?

Classic: Yes
eBay: That the VFD still has good brightness level. The product should come with a small AC adapter and a hand-held remote.

Tony, you should get the Synology DS2411+ w/ 12 bays. Nice.

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Attached-DS2411/dp/B0057LA7KU

You might want to use the Western Digital WD30EFRX 3TB drives instead. This is the 'Red line' of products instead of the 'Green line'. The Reds are specifically manufactured for use in NAS'es (or other RAID setups). If you're going to setup an unRAID server, then forget I mentioned this and use the Green line range.

I went with the "green" drives because they were significantly cheaper at the time. I do know that the Synology firmware disables the "idle3" timer in Green drives that causes some problems with NAS operation, and that they fully support the green drives in RAID configurations. I'm sure there are other differences between the "red" and "green" lines that make the former better for NAS usage, but I've been pleased with the throughput on mine, FWIW.

Anyone know what those differences are? I'll need to select some drives, too.

I'd say buy based on pricing/warranty and make sure that the drives are tested and approved by your NAS manufacturer.

I only use Seagate drives in my NAS and have been quite happy with them since 2009. I started with 4 1.5TB drives (yeah, THOSE 1.5TB) and then upgraded to 6 2TB drives. I've replaced 2 drives that started to grow errors as reported by SMART, the second one only a few weeks ago.

The only WD Green drive I have (in use) is a 2GB that I originally bought to test in the NAS but it just didn't behave, so I ended up using it in my Apple Time Capsule. It died and was replaced under warranty. The replacement seems to be doing fine at the moment, back in the Time Capsule. The original Time Capsule drive is also a WD - 500GB Caviar, which sits in an anti-static bag on a shelf as a sort of emergency backup. I can't really think of anything to do with drives under 2TB anymore. The 1.5's all live in my PVR server now.

TL;DL summary of the other thread:
Vibration preventive tech (movable counterbalances), shorter timeout when trying to recover bad data, longer warranty.

If you haven't bought yet, Ars posted a lengthy review of a Synology unit the reviewer used for months.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/synology-ds-412-is-fast-fun-and-flexible/

The home NAS market overall is in a great place these days. I've made use of my ReadyNAS a few times during this trip, including setting up a source control server on it yesterday. All the flexibility of Linux under the hood with most of them, but without the need to set it up from scratch if that aspect doesn't appeal to you.

Especially for vendors. The one aspect that's still in a bad place for consumers (and ARS pointed this out), is price. No matter what vendor you choose, the prices are significant when looking at hardware component costs.

And you can't build anything even remotely similar to a commercial NAS yourself unless you want to invest heavily in developing your own custom software. There's nothing available in the open-source space that compares (in any way) to the proprietary software on these products. So you'll in fact lose a lot more than ARS indicates by going DIY, including living with a fraction of the performance of commercial solutions and losing the ability to easily migrate disks.

Just recently, spurred by this thread, I started looking at DIY possibilities and the conclusion I came to was that nothing is quite right. The best compromise seems to be UnRaid if performance is of no concern (because it's absolutely terrible) and you can live with only a single redundant disk.

Otherwise figure on spending at least $1000 to go with Synology or ReadyNAS.

Thanks for the link to that review. It includes an important bit of information about which disk drives he used:





This was an exceptionally good explanation of the reason why specific drives are important. Also, he said this which was very good information:



Thanks again!

That's interesting, because the NAS manufacturers (Synology and NetGear/ReadyNAS) fully support desktop drives in their products and don't include these kinds of warnings in their drive compatibility lists. I don't think the issue is as explained when using these products specifically. In other words, they're designed to work on a wide assortment of drives, including standard desktop drives.

If the author was seeing disk failures every 3 to 4 months with the Drobo, maybe it was time to switch NAS platforms a lot sooner - or drive brands.

I do know the ReadyNAS does specific tweaks to the Green drives, in line with what Mark Lord advises. And I haven't seen mass failure stories about the Green drives on the ReadyNAS forums. It's possible the Drobo doesn't do anything special, leading to the issues the Ars person saw.

I've run desktop/green like class drives in all 3 of the ReadyNAS units I've had with no major issues. Each time, I just make sure the drive is on the compatibility charts. Just a failure here or there within normal. I do avoid Seagate now, but purely based on their lack of advanced replacement for failures now.

Heh. Funny, very funny.

Just about all NAS products, "home" or "commercial", are based on (as in like, 90% of everything) Open Source software. Usually on top of Linux, FreeBSD, or (more rarely) Solaris. All of the NAS functionality comes from the Open Source parts, and normally just the management interfaces are closed source.

I work on the insides of some rather Big Name "commcercial NAS" thingies, and it's just Linux in there ticking away. But not with a puny Marvell CPU like in a lot of "home NAS" boxes.

Cheers

Mark

Can you show me an open source NAS that supports that magic RAID stuff across multiple different size drives ala Drobo, X-RAID etc that the commercial solutions have?

Sure underneath there's mostly open source but when I was looking at NASes, resizing/moving around partitions in a simple manner really wasn't possible without digging into the command line and working it out yourself.

Whilst open source may be 90% or more, it's that last 5 or 10% that makes a big difference. If it was really that trivial surely someone would have done it already.

It's that last 5-10% that's worth the millions of dollars in revenue. And that last little bit has thousands of man hours behind it.

I didn't mean to imply that the commercial products weren't built on top of open source platforms - they ALL are. But that there is no pre-packaged open source solution that does what the commercial products do. So you'll have to get the base open source platform and tools, then you'll have to spend probably the rest of the foreseeable future working on a custom solution to that last 10% - or pay someone else to develop it ($1 million? 2 Million?)

OpenFiler? No. FreeNAS? No. Etc.

That's better. I was simply responding the earlier quoted absurdity: "nothing available in the open-source space that compares (in any way) to the proprietary software on these products."

The management interfaces are what make these things saleable for high markups, no question. I'm not a user of "purchased NAS" or even "free NAS specific" systems of any kind here, so I cannot really suggest any good packages simply because I've never researched them myself. I do work on internals, but not the management interfaces -- too high level for me.

I dunno what Drobo and the like are presenting to the user, but their RAID stuff underneath is nearly 100% stock Linux (kernel) capabilities. This includes instant filesystem snapshots, file versioning, rollbacks, RAID (all levels), etc.

Cheers

I'm not familiar with the management interfaces of any of these products, but the "RAID stuff across multiple different size drives" phrase caught my eye. My understanding, from a friend who uses a Drobo NAS, is that most of them limit the RAID capacity to multiples of the smallest drive currently installed.

So when upgrading, by installing larger drives in place of smaller ones, the new larger capacities don't normally become available for use until all drives are upgraded. Then the management software simply does an on-the-fly "filesystem resize" (standard Linux feature) to add the extra capacity into the pool.

But no, I can't help with the original question, as I simply don't use "NAS" management stuff of any kind. Here, I just have a box running Ubuntu, and I add drives to it as needed, and it all just works without fuss. But I don't even use RAID myself -- too complex and the rebuild times are total insanity with modern TB+ drives. Instead, I just stick with periodic filesystem mirroring to a set of backup drives.

Edit: for a lot of people, I expect the "unRAID Plus" NAS software is a lot more appropriate than any kind of RAID when dealing with huge TB+ drives.

Edit2: Or even just their packaged hardware+software systems -- way more expandable than most others I see out there, and without the nasty RAID rebuild issues.

Cheers

But you can't write or read to/from unRAID at 80MB/s, let alone 100 or more.

That could well be true, as it is for nearly all small NAS boxes. That's another reason I don't bother with "NAS" here.

It depends what you mean by "small" - the ReadyNAS Pro holds 6 drives and it's about the size of a shoebox, relatively small compared to a full PC case. 80MB/s on a single GigE port is readily achievable.

It looks like FreeNAS has come some ways in the past few years - just started looking at it again today. With support for ZFS and what should be a relatively painless installation (there are a number of install guides). Then there are also a few alternatives which sound a little more challenging, like OpenIndiana and Nexentastor (wow, what a name). Performance is up on all of these compared to a few years ago, so too is the usefulness of their management UI's.

Nice enclosures with drive caddies still cost a premium, so there's really no way around that. eBay has some interesting deals, but I don't know how the hardware will stand up in the "real world." 16 drive rack-mountable system ready with support for 12 drives - using the other 4 requires a controller upgrade.

The Drobo (and the expandable RAID setups on other systems) do RAID across drive partitions. If you add/replace a new larger disk, the extra space sits there going to waste initially. But if you add/replace two disks with larger capacities, it will create a second RAID across the leftover space, and usually use LVM or similar to add it into the overall storage pool.

The Drobo's have a bad habit of never reoptimizing, so after many drive swapouts and upgrades, the units can become very slow. I believe the ReadyNAS XRaid, and similar tech from other providers is a little better about this, but I'm not certain of the details under the hood.

The EVA rack sized storage boxes I worked with at HP would use idle time to reoptimize the data. Both for performance, and for maximum redundancy, factoring in the physical layout of the independent disk shelves, and even different racks.

Just F all YI: Western Digital has just announced their new 4TB drives. These drives are 'enterprise class' and come with an appropriate price tag (about 450 euro per drive!). The drives are 7200rpm though, and come with a 5 year warranty. These are not the usual Green Drives range. As far as I can see, these drives use 800GB platters. So this means 5 platters in a HD, which is too much for the drives to still be called 'Green' because they'll probably consume a relative large amont of power.

So WD 4TB drives are finally here. After Hitachi (which is now also WD in a way), WD is the second brand to offer them. Now we just have to wait for Seagate. (not that I'm interested at all in Seagate, but it'll be good for the competition and hence, the prices)

Maybe you're thinking specifically about Enterprise drives.

Because Seagate were the first to announce and release a 4TB hard drive, almost 1 year ago (end of October 2011). They just don't currently market the drive as retail integrator (bare) product and sell it only in their own enclosure.

Hitachi was the second to announce, back in December 2011 also with encased drives and one model of bare drive, supposedly shipped in January 2012, but I think it might have only hit the street in March 2012. In April 2012 they announced the first Enterprise model.

You're right.
But what I meant was indeed bare drives available for sale.

So.....

I've previously mentioned that space was running low on my current NAS. This past week I got down below 700GB free. Let's call it 650GB. That's been constant for some days now. Until...

Today I get a warning email from the NAS saying space is running low and that I'm currently at 330GB free. Hmmm.. WTF!? Where did over 300GB just disappear to?

I only did one thing yesterday which was out of the ordinary...

Yesterday I re-enabled some Mac-to-NAS rsync backups (from the NAS UI) that I had disabled for some months. I had 2 backup jobs and only one of them would work, so I only kept the one turned on. Since it's RSYNC, it's incremental and most everything already existed on the NAS. The total backup folder was only about 265GB and I can't see more than 20-50GB of that being newer content that didn't previously exist.

I can't see these backups being the missing data. I killed the backup share completely and that gave me some 280GB of additional space. I still think I'm missing 300+ however.

I'm at a total loss for ideas at this point.

There are plenty of disk space graphing programs for Mac. I haven't needed one in a while but when I did, I used "Disk Inventory X." Just use that to drill down to see what's taking up a lot of space.

Disk usage tool for Mac OS X: Grand Perspective (current as of Aug 2012): http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net

I'm about to run it now...

I use Disk Inventory X, but also useful is DiskWave, which gives you a multi column hierarchical view of the disk usage that is a bit quicker to navigate when you are looking for large folders rather than large files.

http://diskwave.barthe.ph/

Disk Inventory X looks like it's PPC only as it was last updated in 2005. I can't imagine it would work in Mountain Lion.

I tried a commercial app (in demo mode) just before downloading the other program I pasted the link to. I wasn't able to find any reason for the extra storage use. All the paths I checked on my share seemed like the contained the right amount of data in them.

I'm really perplexed here. If I was able to confirm that the backup path was empty before re-scheduling the backup tasks I could mostly explain away the issue. But it's still not quite the right amount of data and I know for a fact that the path was NOT empty.

I'll keep looking but at this point I can't think of anything definitive other than copying everything off onto other disks and then reformatting the NAS before copying everything back. Not something I'd really want to risk unless it's a verified/checksummed copy onto another redundant array.

http://www.derlien.com/dixforum/viewtopic.php?t=62 - universal Disk Inventory X. (Being open source, you also could just download and compile it for Intel).

Thanks for the tip on DiskWave. I like the treemap view of Disk Inventory X, but it's nice to have something that's under active development and offers a different view.

Oh, Tony, if you haven't bought a Synology yet, this looks like a pretty nice deal.

It's not. While the price is decent, it's one of the "j" models, which means sloooooow. I wouldn't touch it.

Yeah, I guess you're right. The "j" series should be fine for general NAS usage and running Squeezebox server, but if you want to do transcoding, it's probably better to use one of the models with Atom chips.

I was more concerned with the question of whether or not it would accept their expansion bay units. Though the CPU power might be a factor if I decide to ever use any of its server features, such as web server or VPN host. Also, you're right, maybe I'll use it to transcode stuff if I can figure out how to set it up to do that.

Which ones in their inventory have both of those features (compatible with the expansion bay, and also, fast processor)? It's hard to tell from just browsing their web site.

The CPU question is answered here:

http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have

Not sure about which ones support the expansion thing

If it's the expansion bay compatible ones you're interested in, you're limiting yourself to only a handful of compatible devices. If you don't use rack mounted devices, and I don't think you do, the only available expansion bays are the DX513 and the DX1211. The DX513 is compatible with 3 NAS units, the DX1211 with two. All the compatible NAS servers are from the "+" series, the most powerful series Synology has to offer (so no problems in the CPU department). Of course, this also means these are the most expensive units.

Eg. (I'll use Euro prices here, but I suspect the situation in dollars will be the same) The DX513 is the cheapest expansion bay and costs about 530 euro. It can be used with the DS712+, the DS1512+ and the DS1812+ NAS units, which cost 410 euro, 700 euro and 840 euro respectively. This means that he cheapest unit, the DS712+, which is only a two-bay unit, combined with the DX513 will cost you 940 euro for 7 bays. This, while a DS1812+ would have only costed you 840 euro, AND would have given you 8 free bays! Not a cost-effective option if you ask me... If you look are the comparison table, you'll notice all those units are from the "Small and medium business range".

In my opinion, the best price/performance offering currently (for home use) is the DS413 unit. It's 4-bay, quite fast and costs about 450 euro. But it cannot be expanded.

To be honest, I find those expansion bays quite expensive by themselves - I think I'd rather invest in a big NAS with a large number of free bays, instead of buying an extra -expensive- expansion bay to go with it. You'll probably be cheaper off in the end anyway. And, if I'm not mistaken, you also cannot combine the disks in the expansion bay and the ones in the main unit into one big volume. You'll need to make (at least) two volumes. This defies the purpose if you ask me.

From what I'm seeing here:

If adding an expansion bay is critical to me, then what I really want is the DS1512+ now, allowing for the option to add the DX513 later.

If later expansion is not important, then I could go with the cheaper DS413 now.

Correct. But you'll be able to buy about two DS413's for the price of one DS1512+.

FWIW, I think 5 bays is a great number that lets you hit the sweet spot for RAID-5 setups (3-4 disks) but still have 1-2 bays open for when you want to migrate to bigger drives and need to copy the data somewhere so you can create the newer, bigger RAID volume.

That's why I was thinking of the Synology system because, if I'm reading it right, I can add drives to the system to increase the overall size without need to copy the data anywhere. So if, for example, I started out with the 5-bay system, I could add the 5-bay expansion and get more space without having to copy everything off it.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, but I've always felt increasing the size of disks was a better play than adding more disks. Fewer disks == less chance of failures, less power consumption, etc.

Good point there.

This is true. But you could also replace the disks with larger disks one by one and let the array rebuild. Works just as well and is a lot cheaper. Unless you absolutely need 10 disks in your array of course - which would automatically be two volumes, see my earlier comment about that.

Wait, so the expansion bay wouldn't allow me to address all discs as one big storage array?

I thought I'd read that somewhere, but the Synology site suggests otherwise:



So I'm probably wrong. Still, it might not hurt checking before making the final purchase.

I'm also wondering what happens if eg. you're running 10 disks in a 1512+ and DX513 expansion bay and the power drops by accident on the DX513. In that case, more than one disk is "lost", which is more than RAID5 can handle.
Would that mean the entire array would be lost and all the data gone? In that case I would surely also invest in a big fat UPS, just to make sure!

Good question about the power loss. I'm going to post that question to their forum (if I can't find it through searching).

The array will probably go offline until power is restored to the expansion. Should be the same as pulling multiple drives from a single box. It won't destroy the array. But don't quote me on that, I've never used Synology-specific RAID/NAS before.

I hope you have plenty of patience, traffic can be pretty slow there.

FWIW, regarding transcoding, I am having no problems using the built in Audio Station app (on a DS710+) to transcode FLAC to MP3 to stream to my XBox while the NAS is performing its normal duties (serving 3 other computers plus rsync backups).