NAS Box

[TeaLeaf]

I've been wanting to stuff one of these into my home LAN for a while and finally bit the bullet and bought one this week.  Tomshardware has some good reviews of NAS boxes that are well worth reading to find the one with the functionality you want.

I went for the Synology CubeStation CS-406 and stuffed 4 x Western Digital 400GB HDDs into it.  Installation and set up was a doddle and it can provide a number of additional services which I am going to experiment with over the next week or two.

Initial impressions are excellent and it is whisper quiet - you cannot hear it at all!  Highly recommended so far.

TL.

[Anonymous]

Where'd you buy it TL?

[TeaLeaf]

I eventually got it from Scan as they were one of the few people who had one in stock and had a supply of appropriately approved HDDs - important as I wanted the spin down feature on the box.  I did ask Norm, but he said Scan's price was good anyway.

TL.

[Whitey]

Looks like a nice feature list as well.  Let us know how you get on with it

[TeaLeaf]

Aye, well the it set up as RAID5 automatically (it defaults to this where 3-4 disks are installed) so it is providing me with 1.2TB of disk space across the 4 x 400GB drives.  Only found one set up error in the manual - it says you can install it when it is connected to a switch or your PC - this is partially correct as you can do the initial configuration whilst it is connected to your PC but then you need to have it connected to a switch in order for the Management Console to find it on the network.

File transfer speed: I noticed the slow down when it writes to RAID5 as I moved 30GB of data to the box last night.  I was certainly slower than a disk to disk swap, but not so as you would mind leaving it to complete the transfer.  As far as performance on normal use: I cannot tell the difference between opening a file from the NAS box or from a HDD on my PC at the moment if the NAS box has not spun down the HDDs.  Clearly, where the HDDs have spun down they they will take a few seconds to spin up each disk (one at a time to minimise power consumption).

Currently exploring the other features.....

TL.

[Carr0t]

How does it notify you of disk failures? One of my mates bought a NAS box a while back and was raving about it until it suddenly died. Turned out that it's way to warn of disk failures was via SNMP Traps, and has he didn't have a trap server set up on his Windaz box he didn't notice until *2* drives died, and his data was then unrecoverable.

[Gorion]

when drives "die" there is a way for you to gain them back for a few min or so, put the "dead" drives in a sealed bag, and put them in the freezer for some minutes.. then, defrost, connect and copy the stuff..

this may seem crazy, but its not...it actually works


and if that fails, and you got stuff that will cost you big thousands to remake (like projects for new chips etc) there are a few companies in the world that actually dismantle the hdd "tray" and copy the stuff for you, bit by bit (extemely expensive)

[TeaLeaf]

The box has two methods, either it sends you an email (you configure it to do this during set up and install) or there's a bloody great big flashing red light on the front.  Kind of difficult to miss.

And it's running Raid 5, so I have no need to worry about using my freezer, I'll just hot swap a new HDD into the box :norty:

TL.

[Gorion]

you should really try raid6 while youre at it

sortof super raid5

raid5: disk striping with distributed parity
raid6: super disk striping with distributed parity( capable of asynchronous +cached data transmission)

[Gandalf]

pfft, raid 60 ftw

Anyway, nas boxes are great. We've got the 1TB Buffalo Terrastation at work, the pro version that hooks into active directory.

It's great with loads of features. That's also setup as raid 5 so we've 750GB of space on it.

What I really want to enable though (but can't until I upgrade the main office switch to a managed gigabit switch) is jumbo frame. That'll speed up data transfers no end

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=127&categoryid=27

oh, and this is really nice too;

With two USB 2.0 ports, TeraStation Pro can accommodate additional external USB hard drives for expanded networked storage or as backup targets.

[Anonymous]

pfft, raid 60 ftw

I'll take two. How much?

[TeaLeaf]

Aye Gandalf, Jumbo frame is on this box too - just my network is not gigabit switched yet.  Likewise this one has a couple of USB's on the back for additional external HDD space.  

TL.

[Anonymous]

I ordered a CS406 today. Got it for the same price as Scan are charging for the 406e

https://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/145