NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

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BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

It is pretty, and quiet.
HPs pictures don't really do it justice, but it's not like it matters anyway. Put it somewhere out of sight, that way it doesn't matter if it's pretty or not.

With Samsung's support thing moved to Seagate, does anyone know how to find the firmware for the Samsung F4EG HD204UI disks (the ones where the new firmware fixes the NCQ/SMART probe data-loss issue? I can't seem to locate it no matter what I do, and I can't remember when my drives were purchased, so I need to flash to the newest firmware before I dare enable SMART.

EDIT: ↓ Sweet, thanks.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Apr 3, 2012

# ? Apr 3, 2012 10:36

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# ? May 16, 2024 19:36

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

D. Ebdrup posted:

It is pretty, and quiet.
HPs pictures don't really do it justice, but it's not like it matters anyway. Put it somewhere out of sight, that way it doesn't matter if it's pretty or not.

With Samsung's support thing moved to Seagate, does anyone know how to find the firmware for the Samsung F4EG HD103UI disks (the ones where the new firmware fixes the NCQ/SMART probe data-loss issue? I can't seem to locate it no matter what I do, and I can't remember when my drives were purchased, so I need to flash to the newest firmware before I dare enable SMART.

SmartMonTools wiki links to it.

--

On another note, I'm using the Windows port of smartctl to try running long tests on my array drives (which happen to be Spinpoint F4EGs). On these drives, but not the boot drive or drives in other computers, the test halts at 80-90% on each and every drive saying "Interrupted by host." The machine is idle, the array shouldn't be accessed, and I've done the tests away from scheduled tasks like Shadow Copies or machine backups. The drives are set to spin down, but after an hour - and the tests stop ~5-5.5 hours in.

What the gives?

Factory Factory fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Apr 3, 2012

# ? Apr 3, 2012 11:20

DEAD MAN'S SHOE: Nov 23, 2003; We will become evil and the stars will come alive

D. Ebdrup posted:

It is pretty, and quiet.
HPs pictures don't really do it justice, but it's not like it matters anyway. Put it somewhere out of sight, that way it doesn't matter if it's pretty or not.

Thanks, I am convinced now! That and the �100 rebate.. http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-microserver-100-cashback-658553-421

# ? Apr 3, 2012 19:47

sini: May 9, 2006

So I'm definitely going the roll your own route. I've got my old rig ready, and ordered two 4x Sata2 pci expansion cards + a 10/100/1000 network card, and a drive cage, giving my initial rig a capacity of 10 SATA drives. I'll keep my 3tb drives as they are in my network enclosure, since it looks like most parity solutions available would cost me an extra tb of usable space and I wont be buying 3tb drives soon.

So I'll be starting with:
4x2tb
1x1.5tb
2x1tb
3x<1tb

And expanding with probably one 2tb drive a month, replacing the smaller drives -- and eventually moving to a case with higher capacity when I retire all the smaller drives.

What software options should I use? I've got some speed requirements and my sata ports are limited by a shared PCI bus. I'd like to be able write captured HD video (dvr), over the network rather than locally on my HTPC, but I realize I may just need to archive it there and do initial storage locally. I'd ideally like to be able to read at ~80mbps, enough to stream multiple HD feeds... but anything over 40mbps should be sufficient. I don't think I really need or want more than one drive for parity (i assume drives still throw warnings when failing, giving me time to retire them before multiple failures -- right?), and I don't think striping will significantly improve my performance (throttled by shared PCI bus -- for now) and it will increase my power consumption having to spin up multiple drives for regular access.

I prefer unix, and would love to run sickbeard and sabnzbd+ on the rig, rtorrent or similar, and I guess since it's up 24/7... some source code version control software, irc client, etc. DLNA support would also be really nice.

# ? Apr 3, 2012 20:23

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

sini posted:

So I'm definitely going the roll your own route. I've got my old rig ready, and ordered two 4x Sata2 pci expansion cards + a 10/100/1000 network card, and a drive cage, giving my initial rig a capacity of 10 SATA drives. I'll keep my 3tb drives as they are in my network enclosure, since it looks like most parity solutions available would cost me an extra tb of usable space and I wont be buying 3tb drives soon.

So I'll be starting with:
4x2tb
1x1.5tb
2x1tb
3x<1tb

And expanding with probably one 2tb drive a month, replacing the smaller drives -- and eventually moving to a case with higher capacity when I retire all the smaller drives.

What software options should I use? I've got some speed requirements and my sata ports are limited by a shared PCI bus. I'd like to be able write captured HD video (dvr), over the network rather than locally on my HTPC, but I realize I may just need to archive it there and do initial storage locally. I'd ideally like to be able to read at ~80mbps, enough to stream multiple HD feeds... but anything over 40mbps should be sufficient. I don't think I really need or want more than one drive for parity (i assume drives still throw warnings when failing, giving me time to retire them before multiple failures -- right?), and I don't think striping will significantly improve my performance (throttled by shared PCI bus -- for now) and it will increase my power consumption having to spin up multiple drives for regular access.

I prefer unix, and would love to run sickbeard and sabnzbd+ on the rig, rtorrent or similar, and I guess since it's up 24/7... some source code version control software, irc client, etc. DLNA support would also be really nice.

You could do a ZFS array with all that, though you'd be pretty limited initially in size. What you could do is take all 10 disks, and make a single RAIDZ2 pool. The size will be 8x the smallest drive (two drives are lost for parity, don't go to a RAIDZ1 at this density). Then you can replace that smaller drive with a 2TB, and the pool because 8x the second smallest drive. Replace again and again, and once you've gotten rid of the 3 drives less than 1TB, you're at 8TB. Replace the two 1TB drives, and you're at 12. Replace that last 1.5TB and you're at 16 TB.

It would be a bit ambitious for most, but it sounds like you know what you're doing. Though I'd return the PCI card and get a PCIexpress SAS card, if you go with Solaris, the IBM M1015 will do you well for $150, not sure what the BSD alternative is.

# ? Apr 3, 2012 22:06

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:

I'd be all over the N40L if it wasn't plastic. And can anyone confirm the amount of HD seek noise it gives out?

I have 4 x drives suspended with elastic in a Metal Silverstone HTPC case, so no complaints other than the drat size of the thing.

I don't see what it being plastic has to do with much. Most of the noise escapes through the grates used for ventilation, not directly through the solid plastic parts. I've got mine shoved under my desk, which is next to my bed. When I'm laying down, I can't tell if it's on or off other than the blue light from it. Unless you're doing something like scrubbing or real heavy I/O, it's pretty damned quiet.

# ? Apr 4, 2012 03:24

IT Guy: Jan 12, 2010; You people drink like you don't want to live!

I don't know about you guys but I can hear the fan on mine. However, this is an easy fix. There are all kinds of guides out there for replacing the fan with a quieter one. Hard drive noise I don't hear unless it's doing a snapshot or scrub.

# ? Apr 4, 2012 12:48

Crackbone: May 23, 2003; Vlaada is my co-pilot.

Are N40L sales common, or was the PCConnection deal a fluke?

# ? Apr 4, 2012 13:17

GEMorris: Aug 28, 2002; Glory To the Order!

What's the consensus on getting an N40L and slapping this turnkey linux version on it? http://www.turnkeylinux.org/fileserver

I'm just looking for network data storage, maybe torrents. I've done freenas in the past and I don't want to go back down that road.

I guess if I want torrents then I should be looking at this one: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/torrentserver

# ? Apr 4, 2012 14:11

Viktor: Nov 12, 2005

Getting harder to suggest let alone recommend Unraid. It's been a beta of version 5 now almost two years (beta-1 started on July 2010) and the time line gets pushed farther and farther out. The developer is really lacking on communication on the forums and hasn't released a roadmap/timeline etc. Worst of all the LSI controllers still have been broken for the last two beta releases effecting a huge chunk of the user base. People actually have started their kernel/samba builds to replace the beta unraid versions to work around the issues.

Honestly about to throw in the towel and buy a synology.

# ? Apr 4, 2012 14:59

evil_bunnY: Apr 2, 2003

I don't think I'd choose Linux for a storage box. ZFS on BSD or solaris/illumos tends to be much less of a headache.

It'll be interesting to see where BTRFS ends up a couple of years down the line.

# ? Apr 4, 2012 16:09

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Crackbone posted:

Are N40L sales common, or was the PCConnection deal a fluke?

Looks like they come up on regular intervals. If you have the means, set up deal alerts for amazon and newegg as well.

Speaking of, I'm really happy with my N40L and WHS2011. I'm not comfortable enough with linux/solaris/bsd to mess with one of those solutions, and this has ended up being really nice as a fileserver and media server for the PS3's in my house. I was going to put PS3 media server on it, when I realized the native media sharing works perfectly already (h.264 mp4 files for video). Performance is excellent for file transfers, even if the dashboard operations are a little sluggish. But it's a low-power CPU, so I can't complain too much.

My DNS-323 is sadly neglected now until hard drive prices fall again and I think of some use for it.

# ? Apr 4, 2012 16:33

Matt Zerella: Oct 7, 2002; Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

evil_bunnY posted:

I don't think I'd choose Linux for a storage box. ZFS on BSD or solaris/illumos tends to be much less of a headache.

It'll be interesting to see where BTRFS ends up a couple of years down the line.

I've been fooling around with ZFSonLinux and it's drat simple to get running on a DEB based system. I'm still running FBSD 9.0 right now but I just need to run a backup and I'll be good to go. I don't use CIFS so I'm not going to miss the kernel stuff.

Matt Zerella fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Apr 4, 2012

# ? Apr 4, 2012 16:44

Bonobos: Jan 26, 2004

Civil posted:

Looks like they come up on regular intervals. If you have the means, set up deal alerts for amazon and newegg as well.

Speaking of, I'm really happy with my N40L and WHS2011. I'm not comfortable enough with linux/solaris/bsd to mess with one of those solutions, and this has ended up being really nice as a fileserver and media server for the PS3's in my house. I was going to put PS3 media server on it, when I realized the native media sharing works perfectly already (h.264 mp4 files for video). Performance is excellent for file transfers, even if the dashboard operations are a little sluggish. But it's a low-power CPU, so I can't complain too much.

My DNS-323 is sadly neglected now until hard drive prices fall again and I think of some use for it.

Any problem with drivers on WHS 2011 and the n40l?

Does it download the drivers automatically like Windows 7 or didyou have to hunt for drivers?

# ? Apr 4, 2012 22:57

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I don't recall needing to install a single driver, and windows update took care of everything. I checked device manager to be sure, and everything was golden.

Really, the only difficulty I've had with the machine so far was disconnecting the mini-sas port to pull out the motherboard. Other than that, it's been one of my favorite pre-builts I've owned, and WHS has been perfect for my needs once I installed drivepool.

# ? Apr 4, 2012 23:23

Bonobos: Jan 26, 2004

Civil posted:

I don't recall needing to install a single driver, and windows update took care of everything. I checked device manager to be sure, and everything was golden.

Really, the only difficulty I've had with the machine so far was disconnecting the mini-sas port to pull out the motherboard. Other than that, it's been one of my favorite pre-builts I've owned, and WHS has been perfect for my needs once I installed drivepool.

Thanks for the info. Did you try Drivebender at all? I was wondering how it compares to Drivepool.

# ? Apr 4, 2012 23:45

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

Bonobos posted:

Thanks for the info. Did you try Drivebender at all? I was wondering how it compares to Drivepool.

I think the only difference is in the price, $20 vs $40.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 00:01

Minty Swagger: Sep 8, 2005; Ribbit Ribbit Real Good

Viktor posted:

Getting harder to suggest let alone recommend Unraid. It's been a beta of version 5 now almost two years (beta-1 started on July 2010) and the time line gets pushed farther and farther out. The developer is really lacking on communication on the forums and hasn't released a roadmap/timeline etc. Worst of all the LSI controllers still have been broken for the last two beta releases effecting a huge chunk of the user base. People actually have started their kernel/samba builds to replace the beta unraid versions to work around the issues.

Honestly about to throw in the towel and buy a synology.

I'm right there with you, I'm sort of in a holding pattern because the betas are all over the place and I dont want to buy more 2TB drives. At this point the developer has shown whatever his priorities are, Unraid is down at the bottom. I'm leaning towards Windows Server 8 right now since it mimics a lot of what Unraid's core specialties are, so we'll see how that ends up once its released. That or I just bite the bullet, buy a microserver, stuff it full of 3TB drives and ZFS2 the poo poo out of it or something.

Such a bummer too, its made itself an inferior product due to lack of development when for a while it was the best thing going for home archival use. At this point I've stopped recommending it to people especially since it costs money. Maybe it isnt a dead product, but its certainly not worth paying money for promises that may come in 2013/14.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 01:22

DEAD MAN'S SHOE: Nov 23, 2003; We will become evil and the stars will come alive

evil_bunnY posted:

I don't think I'd choose Linux for a storage box. ZFS on BSD or solaris/illumos tends to be much less of a headache.

It'll be interesting to see where BTRFS ends up a couple of years down the line.

What kind of headaches?

I have no complaints or apparent data loss with headless Ubuntu w/ software Raid5 after 4 years, multiple reinstalls and 1 drive failure. TightVNC launching icewm (or whatever) with whatever else on top has worked out very well, even on 1gb ram.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 01:24

IT Guy: Jan 12, 2010; You people drink like you don't want to live!

How does the WHS drive pool thing work anyway?

Edit: Does anyone have experience installing other apps on FreeNAS yet? I want to setup a BIND DNS server because I run a SonicWALL at home which doesn't have a built in DNS server and I don't want to run a tower computer just for DNS.

IT Guy fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Apr 5, 2012

# ? Apr 5, 2012 01:43

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

IT Guy posted:

Edit: Does anyone have experience installing other apps on FreeNAS yet? I want to setup a BIND DNS server because I run a SonicWALL at home which doesn't have a built in DNS server and I don't want to run a tower computer just for DNS.

While I haven't played with BIND DNS, FreeNAS has a variety of add-in applications (like Transmission for torrents) that you can instal via pkg_add. bind9 looks like it should be available via this method: http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2391

# ? Apr 5, 2012 02:41

IT Guy: Jan 12, 2010; You people drink like you don't want to live!

DrDork posted:

While I haven't played with BIND DNS, FreeNAS has a variety of add-in applications (like Transmission for torrents) that you can instal via pkg_add. bind9 looks like it should be available via this method: http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2391

What kind of steps would I need to take if I wanted to upgrade to FreeNAS 8.2 when released?

# ? Apr 5, 2012 04:46

Fangs404: Dec 20, 2004; I time bomb.

IT Guy posted:

What kind of steps would I need to take if I wanted to upgrade to FreeNAS 8.2 when released?

Unless 8.2 is weird, all you'd need to do is backup your config (just in case) and upload the GUI upgrade (open the web interface, Settings -> Advanced -> Firmware Upgrade (a button at the bottom)). That should be all it takes to upgrade.

[edit]
Oh, oops, I think you mean how you'd upgrade if you installed those plugins. Nevermind!

Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Apr 5, 2012

# ? Apr 5, 2012 05:16

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

IT Guy posted:

What kind of steps would I need to take if I wanted to upgrade to FreeNAS 8.2 when released?

I guess that depends on what sort of options the FreeNAS team puts into place. So far, though, you've been able to upgrade the OS simply by downloading an upgrade file and using the upgrade option in the web interface. Doing that seems to wipe out any third-party applications you've got set up, but if you keep a copy of whatever config files you used for them, setting things back up with pkg_add ends up being pretty quick--I think sticking Transmission back on usually takes me about 5 minutes.

Or maybe 8.2 will require a completely new install in order to support the plug-in stuff they're doing. :iiam:

# ? Apr 5, 2012 05:16

Bonobos: Jan 26, 2004

I looked through this thread and didn't see anything about it, so i thought i'd ask...

Anything I ned to do to my same-size-but-different-manufacturer drives before I build a ZFS RaidZ1 array in FreeNAS 8? I noticed some people are 'aligning' their drives, but i'm curious as to what this does, and if it is required for ZFS, or if it helps performance.

Most of what I googled turned up a reference to using ZFS inside a VM, so i can't really tell if this is something done to increase performance in VMs or what.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 06:05

DrDork: Dec 29, 2003; commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Bonobos posted:

Anything I ned to do to my same-size-but-different-manufacturer drives before I build a ZFS RaidZ1 array in FreeNAS 8? I noticed some people are 'aligning' their drives, but i'm curious as to what this does, and if it is required for ZFS, or if it helps performance.

Maybe. The only time you need to worry about anything is if you have one of the obnoxious "advanced format" drives which, in an effort to enhance compatibility with outdated systems, lies to the OS and claims it uses a 512 byte sector instead of the 4kb sector it actually uses. WD drives with "EARS" in the part number were/are probably the most common such drives. In this case, when you go to create the RAIDZ pool, make sure to tick the box that says "force 4k sectors" to maximize performance. Other than that, nothing is required on your end.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 06:44

EconOutlines: Jul 3, 2004

After reading the past 10+ pages, I'm looking towards a N40L once another sale pops up. The $180/190/200 prices are too good, especially since I already have 2 x 4TB drives. Then, roll that saving into another 2TB drive or i3 HTPC to transcode/stream/SABnzbd/etc. So, far my OS prospects are WHS2011 with either Flexnas/DriveBender/DrivePool.

Most of my data is replaceable media, so allowing me to duplicate only the files/folders I care about is key instead of a RAID solution. Plus, I really would rather not spend too much time learning something new.

I was looking at the Synology boxes with 4 bays(mainly the DS411 variations), and while seemingly nice, are much more expensive than the N40L. The feature set doesn't seem to be that much more than WHS2011, only that it comes installed with their own propriety OS, right? I'm trying to see the comparison along with pros and cons and price difference.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 10:19

evil_bunnY: Apr 2, 2003

DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:

What kind of headaches?

I have no complaints or apparent data loss with headless Ubuntu w/ software Raid5 after 4 years, multiple reinstalls and 1 drive failure. TightVNC launching icewm (or whatever) with whatever else on top has worked out very well, even on 1gb ram.

Well software raid with a traditional FS on top is a very different animal.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 10:37

IT Guy: Jan 12, 2010; You people drink like you don't want to live!

DrDork posted:

Doing that seems to wipe out any third-party applications you've got set up

Ah ok, I wasn't sure if it basically did a reformat or something when it upgraded. It sounds like it might. I can just copy my zone files, BIND isn't that hard to setup.

Roving Reporter posted:

After reading the past 10+ pages, I'm looking towards a N40L once another sale pops up. The $180/190/200 prices are too good, especially since I already have 2 x 4TB drives. Then, roll that saving into another 2TB drive or i3 HTPC to transcode/stream/SABnzbd/etc. So, far my OS prospects are WHS2011 with either Flexnas/DriveBender/DrivePool.

Most of my data is replaceable media, so allowing me to duplicate only the files/folders I care about is key instead of a RAID solution. Plus, I really would rather not spend too much time learning something new.

I was looking at the Synology boxes with 4 bays(mainly the DS411 variations), and while seemingly nice, are much more expensive than the N40L. The feature set doesn't seem to be that much more than WHS2011, only that it comes installed with their own propriety OS, right? I'm trying to see the comparison along with pros and cons and price difference.

I have both the N40L (main NAS) and a DS411j (backups). The DSM software on the Synology boxes is pretty cool, it's built on linux. The problem I have with my Synology box is I went for the "j" version which is the home version. It has a terrible CPU and 128MB of RAM and is slow as poo poo when transferring. If you're going to go with a Synology box, definitely get one of the higher end ones, like the DS412+. Overall, you're going to be cheaper to go with an N40L and have much better performance. With the Synology box, I see about 30MB/s transfers. With my N40L I max out a single gigabit NIC.

IT Guy fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Apr 5, 2012

# ? Apr 5, 2012 13:06

Horn: Jun 18, 2004; Penetration is the key to success; College Slice

evil_bunnY posted:

Well software raid with a traditional FS on top is a very different animal.

Would you mind elaborating a bit on this? I was thinking of using Open Media Vault which is basically debian plus the FreeNAS interface.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 13:48

Matt Zerella: Oct 7, 2002; Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

For fucks sake, anyone on FreeBSD 9 with a m1015 card? I keep getting this when trying to query the SMART info:

code:

server# smartctl -a /dev/da0 -d sat
smartctl 5.41 2011-06-09 r3365 [FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, [url]http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net[/url]

Segmentation fault (core dumped)

# ? Apr 5, 2012 14:53

UndyingShadow: May 15, 2006; You're looking ESPECIALLY shadowy this evening, Sir

IT Guy posted:

Ah ok, I wasn't sure if it basically did a reformat or something when it upgraded. It sounds like it might. I can just copy my zone files, BIND isn't that hard to setup.

I have both the N40L (main NAS) and a DS411j (backups). The DSM software on the Synology boxes is pretty cool, it's built on linux. The problem I have with my Synology box is I went for the "j" version which is the home version. It has a terrible CPU and 128MB of RAM and is slow as poo poo when transferring. If you're going to go with a Synology box, definitely get one of the higher end ones, like the DS412+. Overall, you're going to be cheaper to go with an N40L and have much better performance. With the Synology box, I see about 30MB/s transfers. With my N40L I max out a single gigabit NIC.

I'm using a N40L with an intel nic on FreeNAS, with 2-tb green drives (1 wd green drive and 5 samsung eco green drives) in a raidz2 array.

My transfer speed when writing is about 60MBs, my transfer speed when reading is about 80MBs. The whole network is gigabit. I'm trying to figure out if this can go faster, ie should I start replacing crappy d-link/trendnet switches, or if this is about expected?

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:15

Civil: Apr 21, 2003; Do you see this? This means "Have a nice day".

I think you're seeing the limits of your hard drives. You might get a little north of 100MB/s if your drives were a bit faster on both ends, but you're already close. Replacing your networking hardware wouldn't get you anything.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:23

UndyingShadow: May 15, 2006; You're looking ESPECIALLY shadowy this evening, Sir

Civil posted:

I think you're seeing the limits of your hard drives. You might get a little north of 100MB/s if your drives were a bit faster on both ends, but you're already close. Replacing your networking hardware wouldn't get you anything.

I can live with that. It's fast enough, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't artificially limited by a switch I could replace for 50 bucks.

Thanks for the info.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:27

Ivan Dolvich: Oct 14, 2004; Shit bag. I use all ammunition for weapon

IT Guy posted:

Ah ok, I wasn't sure if it basically did a reformat or something when it upgraded. It sounds like it might. I can just copy my zone files, BIND isn't that hard to setup.

I have both the N40L (main NAS) and a DS411j (backups). The DSM software on the Synology boxes is pretty cool, it's built on linux. The problem I have with my Synology box is I went for the "j" version which is the home version. It has a terrible CPU and 128MB of RAM and is slow as poo poo when transferring. If you're going to go with a Synology box, definitely get one of the higher end ones, like the DS412+. Overall, you're going to be cheaper to go with an N40L and have much better performance. With the Synology box, I see about 30MB/s transfers. With my N40L I max out a single gigabit NIC.

I have been thinking about getting the DS411j, with the primary purpose being streaming media to my TV. Have you used it all in this capacity? Would you still recommend a higher end model if this is all I will be using it for?

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:28

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

UndyingShadow posted:

I'm using a N40L with an intel nic on FreeNAS, with 2-tb green drives (1 wd green drive and 5 samsung eco green drives) in a raidz2 array.

My transfer speed when writing is about 60MBs, my transfer speed when reading is about 80MBs. The whole network is gigabit. I'm trying to figure out if this can go faster, ie should I start replacing crappy d-link/trendnet switches, or if this is about expected?

Buy another NIC, the built-in NIC has a problem with the bge driver that FreeBSD uses.
_{This is like the 10th time I mention this in this thread. Jeez.}

EDIT: Just went back through my own posts in this thread and found the manpage for the em(4) driver which supports single and dual-port gigabit NIC on one low-profile pci-ex x1 port. Alternately, there's the ethernet section of the 8.2-RELEASE hardware list which covers just about every driver that FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE can handle.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 5, 2012

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:29

UndyingShadow: May 15, 2006; You're looking ESPECIALLY shadowy this evening, Sir

D. Ebdrup posted:

Buy another NIC, the built-in NIC has a problem with the bge driver that FreeBSD uses.
_{This is like the 10th time I mention this in this thread. Jeez.}

EDIT: Just went back through my own posts in this thread and found the manpage for the em(4) driver which supports single and dual-port gigabit NIC on one low-profile pci-ex x1 port. Alternately, there's the ethernet section of the 8.2-RELEASE hardware list which covers just about every driver that FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE can handle.

I'm not using the built in NIC, it's completely disabled in the BIOS and nothing is plugged into it.

UndyingShadow posted:

I'm using a N40L with an intel nic on FreeNAS

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:41

Fangs404: Dec 20, 2004; I time bomb.

D. Ebdrup posted:

Buy another NIC, the built-in NIC has a problem with the bge driver that FreeBSD uses.
_{This is like the 10th time I mention this in this thread. Jeez.}

EDIT: Just went back through my own posts in this thread and found the manpage for the em(4) driver which supports single and dual-port gigabit NIC on one low-profile pci-ex x1 port. Alternately, there's the ethernet section of the 8.2-RELEASE hardware list which covers just about every driver that FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE can handle.

Which NIC do you guys recommend? I mentioned some similar performance issues a few posts back, and I'm wondering if replacing the NIC will increase speeds. This guy has a $7 off promo for the next few days. Is there another you guys recommend? For FreeNAS, is it as simple as just inserting the new NIC and disabling the onboard NIC in the BIOS?

# ? Apr 5, 2012 17:45

Bonobos: Jan 26, 2004

DrDork posted:

Maybe. The only time you need to worry about anything is if you have one of the obnoxious "advanced format" drives which, in an effort to enhance compatibility with outdated systems, lies to the OS and claims it uses a 512 byte sector instead of the 4kb sector it actually uses. WD drives with "EARS" in the part number were/are probably the most common such drives. In this case, when you go to create the RAIDZ pool, make sure to tick the box that says "force 4k sectors" to maximize performance. Other than that, nothing is required on your end.

Thanks, I just want to make sure I set this up correctly, would hate to have to redo the whole array because my drives arent performing as they should, or i missed an option that prematurely kills the drives.

# ? Apr 5, 2012 18:30

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# ? May 16, 2024 19:36

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

Fangs404 posted:

Which NIC do you guys recommend? I mentioned some similar performance issues a few posts back, and I'm wondering if replacing the NIC will increase speeds. This guy has a $7 off promo for the next few days. Is there another you guys recommend? For FreeNAS, is it as simple as just inserting the new NIC and disabling the onboard NIC in the BIOS?

That NIC is awesome but you can totally get it on eBay for about half the price.

Random question that would be more useful to N40L folks than myself; does such thing as a PCIe extension cable exist so that you could use that internal x1 slot for something that is not the remote access card?

# ? Apr 5, 2012 18:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > NAS/Storage Megathread: What is this "File Deletion" You Speak of

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