Nvidia Ion plafrom.. Ideal HD HTPC?

[Lazybones]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/12/nvidia-ion-platform-gets-demonstrated-at-ces/

Looks like a great setup for a home theater PC.

[Mr. Analog]

Now that is compact!

[Thorin]

Throw in a terabyte drive...  I wonder if it'd work as a home file server?

I followed the link to the Hot Hardware article: http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIAs-Ion-Small-FormFactor-PC-Platform-/.  What's interesting is that nVidia supplied benchmark results, including Call of Duty 4.  The idea that you can play first-person-shooters at a respectable frame rate on something that fits in your hand, well, COOL!

[Mr. Analog]

Throw in a terabyte drive...  I wonder if it'd work as a home file server?

I followed the link to the Hot Hardware article: http://hothardware.com/Articles/NVIDIAs-Ion-Small-FormFactor-PC-Platform-/.  What's interesting is that nVidia supplied benchmark results, including Call of Duty 4.  The idea that you can play first-person-shooters at a respectable frame rate on something that fits in your hand, well, COOL!

If your after a good home file server you want this:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX21524(ME).aspx

[Tom]

The mythtv users mailing list has been talking the ion platform up a little. It would make an excellent mythtv front end box.

[Mr. Analog]

The mythtv users mailing list has been talking the ion platform up a little. It would make an excellent mythtv front end box.

Indubitably!

[Thorin]

If your after a good home file server you want this:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX21524(ME).aspx

Thanks for that link.  I'd want to get the DroboShare so I can connect it to the network separately from any other computer.

Interesting, though, that if you put 4 x 1TB drives in it, you get 2.7TB of storage (try it here: http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html).  Looks like it's using some kind of RAID mechanism built in, either hardware or software, to protect against data loss when you remove a drive.

[Melbosa]

Thanks for that link.  I'd want to get the DroboShare so I can connect it to the network separately from any other computer.

Interesting, though, that if you put 4 x 1TB drives in it, you get 2.7TB of storage (try it here: http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html).  Looks like it's using some kind of RAID mechanism built in, either hardware or software, to protect against data loss when you remove a drive.

There is overhead to all RAID levels.  Each requiring some space for certain things.  RAID 5 does have overhead for the parity information, so that is where you would loose the 300GB to I would imagine.

[Mr. Analog]

If your after a good home file server you want this:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX21524(ME).aspx

Thanks for that link.  I'd want to get the DroboShare so I can connect it to the network separately from any other computer.

Interesting, though, that if you put 4 x 1TB drives in it, you get 2.7TB of storage (try it here: http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html).  Looks like it's using some kind of RAID mechanism built in, either hardware or software, to protect against data loss when you remove a drive.

Yes, exactly!

The beauty of the Drobo device is that you can hot swap any size drive into it at any point.

So lets say you have five 20 G drives lying around and you set up the Drobo with them. Then lets say you buy a Terabyte drive, take one 20 G drive out and drop the Terabyte drive in, the Drobo does all the allocation and syncing for you.

It makes RAID very, very easy and dependable.

[Thorin]

Thanks for that link.  I'd want to get the DroboShare so I can connect it to the network separately from any other computer.

Interesting, though, that if you put 4 x 1TB drives in it, you get 2.7TB of storage (try it here: http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html).  Looks like it's using some kind of RAID mechanism built in, either hardware or software, to protect against data loss when you remove a drive.

There is overhead to all RAID levels.  Each requiring some space for certain things.  RAID 5 does have overhead for the parity information, so that is where you would loose the 300GB to I would imagine.

Well, check the math.  It's not 300GB lost, it's 1,300GB lost.  One third of the storage you put in.

The beauty of the Drobo device is that you can hot swap any size drive into it at any point.

So lets say you have five 20 G drives lying around and you set up the Drobo with them. Then lets say you buy a Terabyte drive, take one 20 G drive out and drop the Terabyte drive in, the Drobo does all the allocation and syncing for you.

It makes RAID very, very easy and dependable.

It's a fully-functioning JBOD device.  I do agree with you, it's a great idea.  Commercial server capabilities brought to the home.  Still, $700 plus the price of drives plus the $200 for the device that turns it into a NAS...  Could just buy a cheap desktop sans monitor and put a RAID controller in it

Anyway, I'm off-topic.  The reason I suggested it as a home file server is because it'd be really neat to have this tiny little box and point to it while telling the kids and the visitors our whole terabyte worth of data is located in that little box, and it's a fully functioning computer with keyboard and mouse and can play games.  It reminded me of the little black box that Roy and Moss convince Jen is _the_ Internet in season 3, episode 4, of The IT Crowd.

[Tom]

Thanks for that link.  I'd want to get the DroboShare so I can connect it to the network separately from any other computer.

Interesting, though, that if you put 4 x 1TB drives in it, you get 2.7TB of storage (try it here: http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html).  Looks like it's using some kind of RAID mechanism built in, either hardware or software, to protect against data loss when you remove a drive.

There is overhead to all RAID levels.  Each requiring some space for certain things.  RAID 5 does have overhead for the parity information, so that is where you would loose the 300GB to I would imagine.

Well, check the math.  It's not 300GB lost, it's 1,300GB lost.  One third of the storage you put in.

The beauty of the Drobo device is that you can hot swap any size drive into it at any point.

So lets say you have five 20 G drives lying around and you set up the Drobo with them. Then lets say you buy a Terabyte drive, take one 20 G drive out and drop the Terabyte drive in, the Drobo does all the allocation and syncing for you.

It makes RAID very, very easy and dependable.

It's a fully-functioning JBOD device.  I do agree with you, it's a great idea.  Commercial server capabilities brought to the home.  Still, $700 plus the price of drives plus the $200 for the device that turns it into a NAS...  Could just buy a cheap desktop sans monitor and put a RAID controller in it

Anyway, I'm off-topic.  The reason I suggested it as a home file server is because it'd be really neat to have this tiny little box and point to it while telling the kids and the visitors our whole terabyte worth of data is located in that little box, and it's a fully functioning computer with keyboard and mouse and can play games.  It reminded me of the little black box that Roy and Moss convince Jen is _the_ Internet in season 3, episode 4, of The IT Crowd.

I got 4 640G drives for $80 or so a piece not long ago. near 2TB and to be honest, I haven't even started using it yet, still using my older 3x320G (596G) raid array. I'll probably be happily going along with what some see as a "small" 2TB raid array for years to come.

[Mr. Analog]

Regarding single-drive NAS solutions; the trouble I've found has been two fold:

• Failure Recovery
• Expandability

Recently I had a combination of both HDD failure AND low NAS drive space. This solution is far more expensive to be sure, however with minimal effort these two potentially costly problems disappear.

Wildly off topic but what the heck, it had to be said

[Tom]

Regarding single-drive NAS solutions; the trouble I've found has been two fold:

• Failure Recovery
• Expandability

Recently I had a combination of both HDD failure AND low NAS drive space. This solution is far more expensive to be sure, however with minimal effort these two potentially costly problems disappear.

Wildly off topic but what the heck, it had to be said

More off topic.. A friend of mine deals with backups and whatnot by buying a new harddrive, and filling it with backups, once its full, it gets put on a shelf, and he gets a new one. These drives get swapped in and out of a usb external drive case. I however just create transparently compressed ISOs that I burn to DVDRs and will start uploading to my website as an additional precaution. Raid is ok, but its not a proper solution, at some point that raid is going to fail on you... So I have Raid5 and regular backups. Though I don't actually use the raid5 just for backups, infact i didn't used to use it at all, I just ran rsnapshot off of my old server box's /var partition (non raid), and I won't be saving MOST of the data on the raid array by backing up to DVDs (well that depends on how much I like the media, and how lazy I am.. most of my raid is dedicated to anime, tv and music, only a very small amount (15G?) is being used for backups at any one time since rsnapshot does incremental backups (emulates full backups using hardlinks) even with 10-20 backups).

Yeah, raid1/raid5 good, backups and raid even better.

[Melbosa]

Thanks for that link.  I'd want to get the DroboShare so I can connect it to the network separately from any other computer.

Interesting, though, that if you put 4 x 1TB drives in it, you get 2.7TB of storage (try it here: http://www.drobo.com/Products/drobolator.html).  Looks like it's using some kind of RAID mechanism built in, either hardware or software, to protect against data loss when you remove a drive.

There is overhead to all RAID levels.  Each requiring some space for certain things.  RAID 5 does have overhead for the parity information, so that is where you would loose the 300GB to I would imagine.

Well, check the math.  It's not 300GB lost, it's 1,300GB lost.  One third of the storage you put in.

If you know your RAID 5 you know you loose one whole drive to the RAID level.  RAID 5 needs at least 3 drives, but only gives you 2 drives worth of space (minus the overhead of a RAID 5 per drive as well).  But you get the benefit of 3 spindles for I/O and is cheaper than a RAID 10 (which needs at least one more drive), just don't get the performance that RAID 10 gives you.