Sick Computer

[Mr. Analog]

Oh you know, a while back I had a cooling problem and it was solved with a bay cooler (fits in a 3.5" drive bay)

[Tom]

Mel: Well, the computer cases don't have active cooling for the drives either.  Just a CPU fan and a power fan.  Thanks for the warning, though.

Tom: That's a lot of drives.  And they're all Seagates?  Barracuda 7200.12s?  Any problems?  Lots of people online seem to complain about them failing early...  And yet, I bought the WDs that are supposed to be great and I've got two acting up within one year.

Yup. 7200.12's. The 7200.11s are the bad ones, at least the ones that had the really bad firmware issues. I haven't had a problem with the .12s, or my older .11s for that matter (4x640). The first two are the single platter drives, so they are significantly thinner and cooler than the 1TB drives.

I run 15 drives non-stop in the house.  I have 4 Maxtor, 8 Seagate, 2 Western Digital, and one Toshiba.  I've had each group fail one drive in the past 4 years.

But I believe if you can get active cooling on those drives, they will last longer.  I always have a fan causing some type of air flow over my drives, which is a good practice for any computer component in your household.

My drives are stuck in my Antec 900, which has the large fan on top sucking air, as well as the 120mm rear fan, and the 120mm PSU fan also sucking air out, so they should be sucking a fair bit of air through the hot swap bays (2x 4in3 sata hot swap adapters). The nice thing is I haven't seen the temp rise over 42c (I tested non stop for hours, all drives going at max), which is an OK temp for modern hard drives. IIRC google has noticed that drives actually prefer to a be a bit warm, they are made to handle running hot, but not TOO hot.

[Melbosa]

While drives may be more efficient at certain temperatures, it isn't recommended to run any drives without airflow over them, even by Google's research.  The movement of Air is usually enough to make the longevity of any drive that much better, whether it be over heat syncs attached to the drive or just the drive's electronics itself.  And this is what I mean by Active Cooling.

Things like those Nexstar or Velocity 3.5 drive bays are only meant to be used like a USB stick.  Temporarily powered and used, not used as a NAS or USB-Attached Storage for a 24x7 manor.  Plug in, use for what you need, unplug, power down.  These devices have no active cooling measures, and rely on heat transfer through metal to keep any semblance of heat distribution.

This is my advice, compiled through my own experience and research over the years.  My final advice:  Research it on your own before making any purchase or change to your hardware, which I know all of you do .

[Tom]

Ah, you meant more with external enclosures. Gotcha.

My NexStar CX is rather good at staying cool. I don't think I ever saw it above 40c or so either. even plugged in constantly and running tests. Of course USB 2 keeps it from operating at full potential (1/3 or less...), and my laptop doesn't do eSATA.

[Thorin]

I RMA'd my drives a week ago, and they arrived on Friday.  So Saturday, I ended up buying a Drobo FS from Memory Express for $630+tax; no more sitting around thinking about whether to build a server or not.  I got the Drobo home, read the short manual, shoved in the drives, installed Drobo Dashboard, and turned it on.  It's hooked to my network, so I don't need any specific computers turned on.

I re-configured the shares on the Drobo to have a Drobo_Shared and Drobo_MyDocs.  Drobo_Shared is for shared docs, Drobo_MyDocs is for individual users' My Documents folders.

I have seven users on each of my home machines - one for each family member and "Visitor".  I went through all fourteen users and pointed their My Documents folder at the appropriate subfolder of Drobo_MyDocs.  There, now as long as people save stuff into their My Documents folder, it'll be on a properly-protected file system.

The Drobo itself sits up on the desk with the computers, so it'll be easy to see if there's a yellow or red light.  Kinda funny, my computers and printer and router are all white/silver, the Drobo is jet-black - it's the black sheep on the desk.

Took me only a couple of minutes to install and connect, but I spent probably two hours deciding the right way to use it (shares for users' MyDocs).  In the end I don't have very much security on it, relying on my network security instead, since this is no different than what I had before the Drobo.  At this point I'm basically using it as a file server, but I'm looking at installing a couple of DroboApps to stream to the Xbox and the iPhones/iPods in the house.

My only complaint so far is the slow file copy.  I've got 600GB of data to copy over (movies, music, pictures, tv shows, etc), and I'm on 15+ hours.  Good thing it'll just run all night.

I think once all the data has been copied over and I've double-checked for other data created since my drives first started acting up, I might just wipe these two Dells and completely re-format / re-install.  There was a lot of old, junk registry entries, which means there were a lot of programs installed and then uninstalled (or worse, still running).

This was money I didn't really have available to spend, but it's certainly bought me some peace of mind, especially once I get that third drive cleaned off and popped into the Drobo.

[Mr. Analog]

Writes can be slow but then again it's writing to multiple drives. One thing I do recommend is setting up regular diff backups to folders you need backed up.

One thing I like about the drobo is how stupidly easy it is to set up and keep running. The only real gaffe I had with it was a crap update was pushed down that required a manual re-install of the desktop management software, but that was one update in about 3 years of files so... not so bad really.

[Tom]

Writes can be slow but then again it's writing to multiple drives. One thing I do recommend is setting up regular diff backups to folders you need backed up.

Done properly, writing to multiple drives should be faster, not slower.

If it really is only going to take about 11ish hours, then it's going at 15MB/s, which means you are on a GbE network. But 15MB/s is pretty close to peak speeds of transferring a lot of data over 802.11g. Are you transferring over wifi? If so, maybe just jack the machine on wifi direct to the switch, or the drobo itself.

If you actually have a GbE lan, it should be going significantly faster (2Hrs @ 30-60MB/s), or if you're on a 100mbps lan, much slower ( 28Hrs @ 6MB/s).

Anyway, it is a nice thing to have a safe(ish) place to keep your files. I love my file server.

[Mr. Analog]

Writes can be slow but then again it's writing to multiple drives. One thing I do recommend is setting up regular diff backups to folders you need backed up.

Done properly, writing to multiple drives should be faster, not slower.

Depending on the setup it can be faster or slower, it has nothing to do with being "done properly".

I'll say this about the drobo, reads are generally quick.

[Tom]

Writes can be slow but then again it's writing to multiple drives. One thing I do recommend is setting up regular diff backups to folders you need backed up.

Done properly, writing to multiple drives should be faster, not slower.

Depending on the setup it can be faster or slower, it has nothing to do with being "done properly".

I just can't see writes to multiple drives being much slower than to a single drive in any sane config I can think of. Even a Raid1 isn't much/any slower than a single drive. A linear appended array (JBOD) wouldn't be any slower either, since its really only writing to one disk at a time. Get into Raid0 and Raid5/6, or Raid10 style things, and speed increases significantly in most cases.

Even if the Drobo has a super fancy Raid5 like system, 2+ disks should be faster than 1 disk. Unless its a super slow machine, doing all of the parity on its super slow CPU. But for $600 you should expect the machine to not get slower when you add more disks to it. For that kind of price, it should have a hardware parity/checksum feature.

[Mr. Analog]

Even if the Drobo has a super fancy Raid5 like system, 2+ disks should be faster than 1 disk. Unless its a super slow machine, doing all of the parity on its super slow CPU. But for $600 you should expect the machine to not get slower when you add more disks to it. For that kind of price, it should have a hardware parity/checksum feature.

I think the constraints are more likely the fact that mine is USB 2.0 as well the controller on the drobo doesn't spin up the drives until a request is made to save on power consumption so there is some lag when you first access it. Thorin's might be newer so I don't know what his speeds or the spin up time is for him.

I challenge you to find a standalone RAID device that requires nothing more than putting drives in and plugging in a couple of cables to get running. The point of this was for it to be hassle free and if a couple hundred bucks solves that, it evens out when your time has value (which in a family of 5 is probably valuable!)

[Melbosa]

I too own a Drobo FS and find the transfer speeds fast enough (both read and write), but I do have mine configured to use Jumbo Frames as all my devices on my network support it, save my XBox which I don't use to stream.  The write is a bit slower on a Drobo FS than with conventional raids as it utilizes a storage hyper-visor with the disks allowing you to utilize different sized disks for maximum storage, versus the standard all disk sizes must be the same.  With the Drobo FS you can also change your raid settings on the fly with the storage virtualization, going from 0 redundancy to dual disk failure with a click of a button and a releveling process (assuming you have the storage to do so).  So you have a higher flexibility with the storage virtualization and the controller, but it does suffer some performance because of it.

But 600GB over a 100mb backbone can take a bit.  Also depends on sequential reads versus randoms, and fragmentation can cause slowness.  And if you have ever dealt with Storage Virtualization before, you'll know the higher the spindle count the better your write performance will get - assuming your controller is able to handle it (my Drobo FS is full).  So from my experience for over 2 months, I have noticed decent  transfer speeds to the Drobo FS, but even with Jumbo Frames enabled I still notice a difference over what I had before (I had better transfers to my file server with a standard RAID 5 before my Drobo FS - again utilizing Jumbo Frames).

In the end, like Thorin, I am opting for a simpler solution over my traditional bulky file server - although I am keeping it around as a Movies Storage/Virtual Machine computer.  I do think they need to work on their integration and streaming "Drobo Apps" if they want to compete with Synology in that area.  Buffalo does offer better performance at the same spindle count, but the Buffalo systems are more expensive.  Synology is next for costs, but you do get a lot of functionality out of them you wouldn't get from any other at the same price point.  For me the cost/storage bay and the sale I got mine at was the driving factor for me (got mine when it was on for $499 at memory express).

[Thorin]

I only have two drives in it at the moment.  I've read online several people that have had it speed up when they put more drives in.  Also, I'm running over 100Mbit/s not Gbit/s.  The computers I bought way back when didn't have gig-E networking, so the router I bought way back when didn't either.  And no, I wasn't transferring over wifi, I tend to use hardwired connections for data transfer because as fast as they claim wifi is getting, we don't really get anywhere close to those speeds.

Thanks for the explanation about the storage hypervisor - I was wondering how they did all this changing on the fly with different-sized disks.  And that $499 price was on until the week before I bought mine, but they were all out.

I let it run overnight and it finished copying, though, and for all that time that it took it's now done.  Here's to never losing files again!  I still need to double-check a few locations on the old drive (like people's desktops) to make sure I've got all files copied; by the end of the week I should be ready to pop that old drive in and double the storage (or turn on dual disk redundancy?).

[Tom]

I too own a Drobo FS and find the transfer speeds fast enough (both read and write), but I do have mine configured to use Jumbo Frames as all my devices on my network support it, save my XBox which I don't use to stream.  The write is a bit slower on a Drobo FS than with conventional raids as it utilizes a storage hyper-visor with the disks allowing you to utilize different sized disks for maximum storage, versus the standard all disk sizes must be the same.  With the Drobo FS you can also change your raid settings on the fly with the storage virtualization, going from 0 redundancy to dual disk failure with a click of a button and a releveling process (assuming you have the storage to do so).  So you have a higher flexibility with the storage virtualization and the controller, but it does suffer some performance because of it.

No doubt. But I very much doubt that writing to the two disk array would be slower than just a single disk. Maybe not as fast a traditional raid, or even two separate drives.

But 600GB over a 100mb backbone can take a bit.

You ain't kidding. Back in the day when I was stuck with 100mbit, It took AGES to back my stuff up and whatnot. These days its not so bad, except I have MUCH more data, so when I do a full copy of it all, it still takes quite a while, even over GbE (5TB @ 60MB/s == 24~ hours)
(I get 40-60MB/s over CIFS/NFS, but can get upwards of 90MB/s raw throughput, even without Jumbo Frames, which is good since many of my devices don't support Jumbo Frames)

In the end, like Thorin, I am opting for a simpler solution over my traditional bulky file server - although I am keeping it around as a Movies Storage/Virtual Machine computer.  I do think they need to work on their integration and streaming "Drobo Apps" if they want to compete with Synology in that area.  Buffalo does offer better performance at the same spindle count, but the Buffalo systems are more expensive.  Synology is next for costs, but you do get a lot of functionality out of them you wouldn't get from any other at the same price point.  For me the cost/storage bay and the sale I got mine at was the driving factor for me (got mine when it was on for $499 at memory express).

Sure does sound easy. I just can't afford that kind of outlay. I already have a system with tons of space for disks, and all I had to do was buy a $100 8 port, PCIE x4 SATA/SAS card, and I was off to the races. Now its almost full 7 out of 8 ports full with 1TB drives. And DAMN its fast with raw drives. If I did a test on it now, I'd likely get over 600MB/s, possibly more.

I only have two drives in it at the moment.  I've read online several people that have had it speed up when they put more drives in.  Also, I'm running over 100Mbit/s not Gbit/s.  The computers I bought way back when didn't have gig-E networking, so the router I bought way back when didn't either.  And no, I wasn't transferring over wifi, I tend to use hardwired connections for data transfer because as fast as they claim wifi is getting, we don't really get anywhere close to those speeds.

Yeah, most I get off wifi is 15-20Mb/s. Far short of the 54Mb/s they claim.
[/quote]

I let it run overnight and it finished copying, though, and for all that time that it took it's now done.  Here's to never losing files again!  I still need to double-check a few locations on the old drive (like people's desktops) to make sure I've got all files copied; by the end of the week I should be ready to pop that old drive in and double the storage (or turn on dual disk redundancy?).

What do you have it set on now? Does it tell you what "mode" its in? You could go dual redundancy if you want, or you could stay with single redundancy and pick up some performance if you find you need some (I assume it'd switch from mirroring, to something like raid5, where it distributes data and parity info across stripes on the disks).

It really is nice to not have to worry too much about losing your data. I started getting so sick of losing even my unimportant stuff (anime, tv shows, music) that I built a second JBOD array to backup the entire larger raid5, just so I don't have to go through an re-find everything I want to keep again when either the entire array somehow dies, or I PEBKAC it some how (that's happened at least twice). As it is, I backup my other machines important files onto my home server, and then mirror that backup folder up to my dedicated server on the internet. So I have three copies of it all (that server also backs up its important files, and syncs them down to the home server \o/ but that server doesn't have raid, so its /very/ important I have the extra copy)

[Thorin]

Drobo FS by default has single disk redundancy - if one disk fails, you still have all your data, but if a second disk fails before you replace the failed disk, you lose data.  Not that big a deal since it emails you when a drive fails plus it has really obvious indicator lights plus replacing a drive takes seconds (if you have an extra one kicking around).

Drobo FS can also have dual disk redundancy - up to two disks can fail and you still have your data.

Since I only have two disks in there now, I can't do the dual disk redundancy yet.  Once I put a third one in, I can.  It's set to single disk at the moment, though, but can be switched by just checking the "Dual Disk Redundancy" checkbox.

And from what I understand, Drobo doesn't really use RAID, just RAID-like technology.  For instance, disks can be all sizes and all of each disk gets used.

And I didn't have the money for this either, I've been telling the kids one of them can't do sports this year.  They all gave me that "Yeah, right" look.  It's a good thing credit cards allow you to carry a balance.

[Mr. Analog]

It sure feels good to know that your files are covered though eh?