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an actual cat irl
Aug 29, 2004



My ~2 year old Microserver has developed an intermittent gentle humming sound. Tapping the case tends to get it to stop temporarily, so I'm inclined to think that one of the fans has developed dodgy bearings. I've tried to identify whether it's the large rear exhaust fan, or the fan in the power supply, which is to blame, but I've not been able to pinpoint the source.

Has anyone else encountered this?

D. Ebdrup
Mar 13, 2009



I have, the exact same problem. I'm reasonably sure it's the chassis fan, not the psu fan. I just moved the server onto a piece of soft styrophome as it seems to be made more audible by the server standing on a surface like a floor or a desk.

Froist
Jun 6, 2004



moron posted:

My ~2 year old Microserver has developed an intermittent gentle humming sound. Tapping the case tends to get it to stop temporarily, so I'm inclined to think that one of the fans has developed dodgy bearings. I've tried to identify whether it's the large rear exhaust fan, or the fan in the power supply, which is to blame, but I've not been able to pinpoint the source.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Mine (N40L coming up a year old) has always had an intermittent vibration sound if that's the same thing. I think it's just something rattling on the right side of the case, the lightest touch there will stop it, but I've not yet figured out what it is though or how to stop it happening. I'm pretty sure it's not one of the fans though - the PSU is on the opposite side of the case, and I've replaced the main fan for a quieter version a few months back.

yomisei
Mar 18, 2011


If the vibrations actually come from the fan(s) you could try slowing them down with cheap fan controllers like the Zalman Fan Mate 2 or Xigmatek Monocool (if you have more than one), or rubber pins to hold the fan in the screw holes. On the other hand if the drives cause vibrations that the case resonates on, maybe switching drive positions will reduce the noise generated.

an actual cat irl
Aug 29, 2004



Thanks for the replies guys. It gives me some peace of mind!

It's not a bad sound or anything - definitely not the sound of a fan that's about to break, so I'm not especially concerned. It's just reassuring to learn that I'm not the only person to have experienced this!

D. Ebdrup
Mar 13, 2009



Given that we're talking about servers, slowing down the fan is a bad idea because the server will refuse to start up if it doesn't get the proper RPM reading from the fan.

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.


Synology 4.2 software has glacier support.

MasterColin
Aug 4, 2006


So I have a Unraid Server with an ASRock H77M-ITX motherboard. I'm looking buy some new HDDs but I'm worried about the 2tb limit.


I know ASRock has a 3tb unlocker app but it requires windows. So first off, will my linux box support 3tb drives (running Unraid) and/or if not will it at least give me 2tb of 3tb which I can get the full disk space later when I get a new MB.


Winner gets an invite to nzb.su if they want it.

e. Not to mention Newegg has WD Red 3TBs for $140 right now.

MasterColin fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Feb 23, 2013

deimos
Nov 30, 2006

Forget it man this bat is whack, it's got poobrain!


Unraid will support 3TB on version 5.0beta and on. And I think the 3TB limitation is strictly a Windows problem as long as you use GPT partitions instead of MBR you should be fine.

The limitation is strictly one of MBR iirc, and BIOS has to boot into MBR so use EFI, it's really a limitation on the boot drive. This is why unraid 5.0beta can support them, they probably switched to GPT.

deimos fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Feb 23, 2013

Dobermaniac
Jun 10, 2004


3TB Western Digital Reds are on sale at Newegg for 139.99 right now. Limit 5 using promo code EMCYTZT2982

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16822236344

MasterColin
Aug 4, 2006


Edit3: Thanks Deimos. PM me your email and i'll invite you. After your suggestion and some googling of those terms/my MB. I found it does support EFI. I shut my UO bots down and pulled a 3tb from my main system and it put it into my unraid. I couldn't start it because my parity is only 1tb but unraid registered the drive model and size so I think it will be fine. (No if only the wife wouldn't see the $300 from the 2 3tb Reds i'm about to buy... Sounds like a good time to ship them to work...)

deimos posted:

Unraid will support 3TB on version 5.0beta and on. And I think the 3TB limitation is strictly a Windows problem as long as you use GPT partitions instead of MBR you should be fine.

The limitation is strictly one of MBR iirc, and BIOS has to boot into MBR so use EFI, it's really a limitation on the boot drive. This is why unraid 5.0beta can support them, they probably switched to GPT.


That is helpful, but i was under the impression it was a limit on my MB and not the OS.

What about the second part. Even if it can't for some reason recognize the 3tb should I still get 2.2 or what ever?

e. Also, I'm on Unraid 5 rc8a

e2.

MaximumPC.com posted:

You’ll need a motherboard that uses Extensible Firmware Interface (or EFI) instead of the 32-bit BIOS that’s standard, a GPT-initialized drive (as opposed to MBR), and a 64-bit version of Vista, Windows 7, Linux, or OS X. Only then will you be able to boot from a partition greater than 2TB. Manufacturers have resisted transitioning from BIOS/MBR to EFI/GPT, but as physical drives with more than 2TB of storage become a reality, they may finally have to comply.

MasterColin fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Feb 23, 2013

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

MasterColin posted:

Edit3: Thanks Deimos. PM me your email and i'll invite you. After your suggestion and some googling of those terms/my MB. I found it does support EFI. I shut my UO bots down and pulled a 3tb from my main system and it put it into my unraid. I couldn't start it because my parity is only 1tb but unraid registered the drive model and size so I think it will be fine. (No if only the wife wouldn't see the $300 from the 2 3tb Reds i'm about to buy... Sounds like a good time to ship them to work...)



That is helpful, but i was under the impression it was a limit on my MB and not the OS.

What about the second part. Even if it can't for some reason recognize the 3tb should I still get 2.2 or what ever?

e. Also, I'm on Unraid 5 rc8a

e2.

The key word there is BOOT. I have a whole system full of 3gb drives on an old ass core2 mobo, but since I boot windows off a smaller drive, it works fine.

Question:

I've got an HP microserver running freenas that's full of drives, and I want to add a (non redundant) backup system to it. I was considering adding a USB 3.0 card into one of PCI-E slots (one is taken up by an Intel NIC) and adding 2 4tb drives. Will this work with freenas? The card I'm looking at is this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...t?ie=UTF8&psc=1

UndyingShadow fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Feb 23, 2013

D. Ebdrup
Mar 13, 2009



The place to check would be the FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE Hardware Notes.

sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006



Don Lapre posted:

Synology 4.2 software has glacier support.

that is awesome

Porkchop Express
Dec 24, 2009

Ten million years of absolute power. That's what it takes to be really corrupt.


I recently started using Plex, and it seems like the most cost effective solution for a Plex Server, and it seems like for the price this is it:

http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ready...rds=plex+server

Someone correct me if I am wrong? All I need it to do is stream the files to my htpc and a Google TV in my bedroom, and act as a file server.

Avenging Dentist
Oct 1, 2005

oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

Don Lapre posted:

Synology 4.2 software has glacier support.

Has anyone tried using this yet? I'm curious as to how good the implementation is. I'm especially curious if it does client-side encryption, since I'm paranoid and don't want Amazon to make fun of my home movies. I could probably live (in shame) if it didn't, though.

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001



College Slice

After building a new computer, I'm wondering if it would be worth it to turn my old PC into a NAS, or if I'd be better served with a standalone device. The machine in question is a Pentium 4 2.6C with 1GB of RAM, and the motherboard has two SATA1 ports, which as far as I can tell should be fine for RAID1 over a gigabit LAN.

The only place I can hook it up is behind a couch in our living room, so I'd like for it to be as quiet as possible. With that in mind, I've got these parts picked out:

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/FEHA

The power supply is ten years old and came with my Antec Sonata I, so it's probably due for a replacement anyways. At around $400 with the drives, are there any alternatives that would end up being smaller/cheaper/just as quiet?

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

Well, there's not much you can do about drive prices, which are going to be the majority cost in most setups. However, a P4 w/1GB RAM is pretty outdated, even by server standards. Would it work? Yeah. Would a smaller/faster/quieter option be a N40L for $100 more? Yeah. Either way, I'd strongly suggest a good chunk more RAM--it's cheap enough these days there's no reason to ever be without a good amount.

Master Stur
Jun 13, 2008

chasin' tail


DrDork posted:

Well, there's not much you can do about drive prices, which are going to be the majority cost in most setups. However, a P4 w/1GB RAM is pretty outdated, even by server standards. Would it work? Yeah. Would a smaller/faster/quieter option be a N40L for $100 more? Yeah. Either way, I'd strongly suggest a good chunk more RAM--it's cheap enough these days there's no reason to ever be without a good amount.

DDR1 and DDR2 ram is actually really expensive compared to DDR3 unless you buy used, I would probably just get a N40L or similar.

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

It is, sorta, but you can still get 4GB DDR2 for <$50. Sure, you get 8GB DDR3 for $50, but mostly my point was he shouldn't leave it at 1GB.

Thorpe
Feb 14, 2007

RELEASE THE KITTIES


I know this probably isn't the best thread to ask this in, but also a lot of people who could probably help my problem look here too.

I was messing around with a hackintosh install on my computer, and using OSX's disk utility I formatted my exFAT 2tb data drive instead of a 2gb USB flash drive. I formatted it to to FAT32, and am now sort of freaking out trying to find a program to recover the files. I had a lot of music from local bands that will be an absolute bitch to try and replace. I booted into windows 8, and the drive itself and some of the files are still showing up, but a lot are gone and I'm scared to delve too deep or try and copy in case I would ruin any ability to recover the files. Am I super fucked here, or is there a program that could help me? Free would be best, but if it comes down to it I'll pay for a program.

I can't believe this happened to me. I feel like a giant idiot.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004





Is anyone familiar with Stablebit DrivePool?

It looks like it started off life as a plugin for WHS 2011, but it is now a seperate app? Is this correct?

I was ready to jump in to Windows 8 Pro as a file server to take advantage of RDC server and Drive Pooling baked in to the OS, but now it seems that introducing smaller drives in to the pool (I am looking at having 3-4 2TB drives in about six months) limits the usable size of your "drive pool".

It looks like this shouldn't be a problem though, as Win8 is going to want to use up your smallest drive first in a pool with three drives or more (I am thinking a 250gb + 2x2TB drives) so that the two 2TB drives can start parity mirroring eachother. I figure if you leave at least 10GB free on each drive, as files get deleted and added you should see some sort of "passive balancing" of the data slabs.

Stablebit Drive Pool seems to be very similar in functionality with "active balancing" but I am wary for two reasons 1) this is a third party vendor, do I trust them with my data? How stable is their software long term? and 2) this is a third party vendor, will this product be supported in a year? six months?

Installing windows 8 pro this afternoon, not ready to move all my data there yet, but I plan on playing around with it for a while. Any thoughts? Has ANYBODY used Stablebit Drive Pool? At least Windows 8/WS2012 drive pools will be supported as a "standard" of sorts for many years to come. Going more proprietary than microsoft with my data makes me twitch slightly. If stablebit drive pool is just a plugin that lets me active balance my slabs, then it's worth the $20.

LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

A Very Useful Person



Fun Shoe

I've made a decision to just stick with the one PC instead of spending 200-400 bucks on a NAS device that can do cool stuff. So far I have FreeNAS running on a VM that contains an NFS share for my Raspberry Pi's root which works pretty well. Next I'll buy a 3GB disk (and retire an old 640GB drive) to put my media on and let my virtual FreenNAS handle that as well.

My reasoning is that, first money, second I want to save power. If I get an efficient NAS it will use less energy, but I suspect my PC will spend much of its time awake anyway, so why not just serve my low disk/low device setup from this 16GB RAM monstrosity? I get killer uptime too!

yomisei
Mar 18, 2011


Coxswain Balls posted:

After building a new computer, I'm wondering if it would be worth it to turn my old PC into a NAS, or if I'd be better served with a standalone device. The machine in question is a Pentium 4 2.6C with 1GB of RAM, and the motherboard has two SATA1 ports, which as far as I can tell should be fine for RAID1 over a gigabit LAN.

The only place I can hook it up is behind a couch in our living room, so I'd like for it to be as quiet as possible. With that in mind, I've got these parts picked out:

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/FEHA

The power supply is ten years old and came with my Antec Sonata I, so it's probably due for a replacement anyways. At around $400 with the drives, are there any alternatives that would end up being smaller/cheaper/just as quiet?

That Pentium is quite a power hungry hog, you'd fare better if you get a new setup if you run it 24/7. My usual suggestion would be a Celeron G1610 + ASRock B75 Pro3-M and a bunch of ram (1GB ~ 1TB space for ZFS). The WD Reds are recommended for NAS use because they're quite silent, power efficient and are set up for NAS-like use. I picked them over Seagate Barracuda XTs because those were quite noisy. If you can find a SeaSonic G-Series 360W, take it over the 400W one.

For the silent part I would suggest using the stock Intel cooler at 20% PWM and 2 120mm fans in the case for a basic (and more than enough) airflow, coupled with a cheap fan controller like the Xigmatek Monocool or a bunch of Zalman Fanmate 2's.

Koaxke
Jan 18, 2009


What is a good external enclosure that can hold at least two drives and has USB 3.0?

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!

Jago posted:

I've made a decision to just stick with the one PC instead of spending 200-400 bucks on a NAS device that can do cool stuff. So far I have FreeNAS running on a VM that contains an NFS share for my Raspberry Pi's root which works pretty well. Next I'll buy a 3GB disk (and retire an old 640GB drive) to put my media on and let my virtual FreenNAS handle that as well.

My reasoning is that, first money, second I want to save power. If I get an efficient NAS it will use less energy, but I suspect my PC will spend much of its time awake anyway, so why not just serve my low disk/low device setup from this 16GB RAM monstrosity? I get killer uptime too!
What virtualizer do you use? Does it come with guest drivers for FreeBSD/FreeNAS? What's your performance over the virtual network?

Right now I'm rocking a test setup based on Hyper-V, since it comes with Windows 8, and probably will for a while, until whenever I feel confident enough to bring my current data disks including content over. Still waiting for the integration drivers. Hope it will happen fast, because I get only unstable 25-30MB/s writes, and maybe half of that on reads. Judging my experiences with OpenSolaris, back when I ran it full time, there's way more to be had.

sleepy gary
Jan 11, 2006



Thorpe posted:

I know this probably isn't the best thread to ask this in, but also a lot of people who could probably help my problem look here too.

I was messing around with a hackintosh install on my computer, and using OSX's disk utility I formatted my exFAT 2tb data drive instead of a 2gb USB flash drive. I formatted it to to FAT32, and am now sort of freaking out trying to find a program to recover the files. I had a lot of music from local bands that will be an absolute bitch to try and replace. I booted into windows 8, and the drive itself and some of the files are still showing up, but a lot are gone and I'm scared to delve too deep or try and copy in case I would ruin any ability to recover the files. Am I super fucked here, or is there a program that could help me? Free would be best, but if it comes down to it I'll pay for a program.

I can't believe this happened to me. I feel like a giant idiot.

To do it fully properly:

1) Buy or borrow 4tb* worth of disk (unless you already have it free somewhere)
2) Make an image of the affected disk using dd
3) Stop fucking with the affected disk
4) Use testdisk to recover whatever files are undamaged

*You need 2tb for the image plus however much space you had in actual files on the 2tb disk. If it had 1tb of files, you need 3tb total.

To do it with less required additional space but with slightly more risk that you will screw something up permanently:

1) Buy or borrow enough diskspace to recover all the files you had before, unless you already have enough free space somewhere
2) Use testdisk to recover whatever files are undamaged

In either case, please implement a backup strategy going forward.

Thorpe
Feb 14, 2007

RELEASE THE KITTIES


I found everything but my videos on an external I recently used to transfer stuff thankfully. Going to be purchasing a synology and a few 3tb disks in the very very near future. Thank you for the help though.

LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

A Very Useful Person



Fun Shoe

Combat Pretzel posted:

What virtualizer do you use? Does it come with guest drivers for FreeBSD/FreeNAS? What's your performance over the virtual network?

Right now I'm rocking a test setup based on Hyper-V, since it comes with Windows 8, and probably will for a while, until whenever I feel confident enough to bring my current data disks including content over. Still waiting for the integration drivers. Hope it will happen fast, because I get only unstable 25-30MB/s writes, and maybe half of that on reads. Judging my experiences with OpenSolaris, back when I ran it full time, there's way more to be had.

Like I mentioned, I'm not in a very demanding environment, but your question made me curious, so I did some tests.

Using iperf, the raspberry pi appears to be limited to about 30mb/s over the wired link (pi can only do 100 megabit). That is obviously low, but I suspected it was the pi's fault. I plugged my gf's computer into one of my 100megabit routers and got 94mb/s which is way higher than I would have expected. When I have the pi ping my VM I get sub-millisecond ping times, but when it just pings my windows host I get about .075 ms better. The numbers on both the pi and the laptop stay steady even when running up to 5 parallel tests. The pi can also send data faster than it can receive, so I'm not sure what's going on there. I should probably see if I can't get it to perform a bit faster. (disable USB ports?)

My setup is a win7 host to a FreeNAS VM (I don't know much about FreeNAS, I just downloaded an image, I guess it's FreeBSD?). The VM is network bridged, sharing my gigabit bandwidth with windows and torrents and whatnot, then my secondary routers are 100mb. The VM has 2gigs of RAM and one processor and the host doesn't seem to even notice when lots of stuff is going on.

If you have any other questions or benchmarks to try let me know.

fake edit: I hooked the laptop to my gigabit switch, unfortunetely it doesn't support gigabit so I can't really push it.

Also, just ran both systems again (laptop connected to gigabit) and they both reported the exact same speeds, though the 7 parallel operations spiked my cpu core up to 30percent (i5 2550k)

real edit: you asked for performance across the virtual link. I get up to 900 megabit with half my cores maxed out.

LRADIKAL fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Feb 25, 2013

nickhimself
Jul 16, 2007

I GIVE YOU MY INFO YOU LOG IN AND PUT IN BUILD I PAY YOU 3 BLESSINGS


So, I'm trying to install Sick Beard on my Synology and the directions to get it running from the NAS aren't working.

I've gotten SSH installed and have gotten into the system. The problem is, after I grab the .xsh file and process it I can't send "ipkg upgrade" without getting "ipkg not found" even though I've followed the directions completely. What's happening?

Don Lapre
Mar 28, 2001

If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.


nickhimself posted:

So, I'm trying to install Sick Beard on my Synology and the directions to get it running from the NAS aren't working.

I've gotten SSH installed and have gotten into the system. The problem is, after I grab the .xsh file and process it I can't send "ipkg upgrade" without getting "ipkg not found" even though I've followed the directions completely. What's happening?

Why are you doing any of that?

Just add the synocommunity repo to your packages list

http://www.synocommunity.com

tk
Dec 10, 2003



Nap Ghost

Hadlock posted:

Is anyone familiar with Stablebit DrivePool?

It looks like it started off life as a plugin for WHS 2011, but it is now a seperate app? Is this correct?

I was ready to jump in to Windows 8 Pro as a file server to take advantage of RDC server and Drive Pooling baked in to the OS, but now it seems that introducing smaller drives in to the pool (I am looking at having 3-4 2TB drives in about six months) limits the usable size of your "drive pool".

It looks like this shouldn't be a problem though, as Win8 is going to want to use up your smallest drive first in a pool with three drives or more (I am thinking a 250gb + 2x2TB drives) so that the two 2TB drives can start parity mirroring eachother. I figure if you leave at least 10GB free on each drive, as files get deleted and added you should see some sort of "passive balancing" of the data slabs.

Stablebit Drive Pool seems to be very similar in functionality with "active balancing" but I am wary for two reasons 1) this is a third party vendor, do I trust them with my data? How stable is their software long term? and 2) this is a third party vendor, will this product be supported in a year? six months?

Installing windows 8 pro this afternoon, not ready to move all my data there yet, but I plan on playing around with it for a while. Any thoughts? Has ANYBODY used Stablebit Drive Pool? At least Windows 8/WS2012 drive pools will be supported as a "standard" of sorts for many years to come. Going more proprietary than microsoft with my data makes me twitch slightly. If stablebit drive pool is just a plugin that lets me active balance my slabs, then it's worth the $20.

I recently put together a new fileserver with Win8 and the StableBit Drive Pool 2.0 Beta. I went it with over Storage Spaces because it seems a bit more flexible, plus I'm fairly certain that you don't get Storage Spaces unless you move up to Server 2012.

I've only been running for a couple weeks. No data issues yet, but I've only been running for a couple weeks, so who knows. There are a couple things that I'm less than excited about so far:

1) The 2.0 version does not appear to have folder-level file duplication. I don't care about redundancy on most of my stuff, but the smaller and more important files I would like it. The website lead me to believe I would be able to do this, but my guess is that hasn't made it over from 1.0.

2) There are currently some issues with file shares from a pool. I can always access files if I have their whole path, but non Windows machines only seem to get a listing of the first 40 or so files in a directory. There also seems to be some weirdness related to updating of files if they get removed/added while you're already in a directory.

crm
Oct 24, 2004



I was going to pick up a WD Green drive tomorrow but I know there's some weird spin down adjustment that needed to be done at some point.

Is this still a concern? If it is does somebody have a link?

wheez the roux
Aug 2, 2004
THEY SHOULD'VE GIVEN IT TO LYNCH

Death to the Seahawks. Death to Seahawks posters.

Koaxke posted:

What is a good external enclosure that can hold at least two drives and has USB 3.0?

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-Disk...ywords=synology

They have other models with more bays, too.

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

crm posted:

I was going to pick up a WD Green drive tomorrow but I know there's some weird spin down adjustment that needed to be done at some point.

Is this still a concern? If it is does somebody have a link?
WD Green's still have aggressive head parking by default. I'm unsure if you can still disable this. In either case, if you're planning on using the drives for a NAS, you might as well get the Reds, anyhow. They're actually designed for NAS use, and you get an extra year of warranty support, too. They cost a little more (about $20), but they are the "correct" choice.

Coxswain Balls
Jun 4, 2001



College Slice

yomisei posted:

That Pentium is quite a power hungry hog, you'd fare better if you get a new setup if you run it 24/7. My usual suggestion would be a Celeron G1610 + ASRock B75 Pro3-M and a bunch of ram (1GB ~ 1TB space for ZFS). The WD Reds are recommended for NAS use because they're quite silent, power efficient and are set up for NAS-like use. I picked them over Seagate Barracuda XTs because those were quite noisy. If you can find a SeaSonic G-Series 360W, take it over the 400W one.

For the silent part I would suggest using the stock Intel cooler at 20% PWM and 2 120mm fans in the case for a basic (and more than enough) airflow, coupled with a cheap fan controller like the Xigmatek Monocool or a bunch of Zalman Fanmate 2's.

Thanks for the advice. That suggested build looks like it only costs about fifty bucks more, and I'll probably be able to get more mileage out of it, too.

balakadaka
Jun 30, 2005

robot terrorists WILL kill you

Just a general "how dumb is this idea" question:

am I nuts for wanting to build a 2.5" 4-bay NAS, putting in 4x WD Blue or Blacks and setting to RAID 10?

I'd like to do a mix of iSCSI targets for a VM lab, and also have DLNA for some media. I like the idea of a smaller array to someday build one out of SSD's (but is still too rich for me now)

nickhimself
Jul 16, 2007

I GIVE YOU MY INFO YOU LOG IN AND PUT IN BUILD I PAY YOU 3 BLESSINGS


Don Lapre posted:

Why are you doing any of that?

Just add the synocommunity repo to your packages list

http://www.synocommunity.com

Well, I did that because the instructions given here were basically "sick beard, then more things that work with sick beard", so I went to sick beard's site and clicked the Synology guide and started following that.

I'll check out your link when I get home. Hopefully that's way easier than the ridiculous process I was trying to follow!

ClassH
Mar 18, 2008


Porkchop Express posted:

I recently started using Plex, and it seems like the most cost effective solution for a Plex Server, and it seems like for the price this is it:

http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ready...rds=plex+server

Someone correct me if I am wrong? All I need it to do is stream the files to my htpc and a Google TV in my bedroom, and act as a file server.

Let us know how this works. I run plex off of my home server but I have a quad core as it sometimes is streaming 1080p movies to multiple places as once and it takes a bit of beef to transcode those.

ClassH
Mar 18, 2008


Hadlock posted:

Is anyone familiar with Stablebit DrivePool?

It looks like it started off life as a plugin for WHS 2011, but it is now a seperate app? Is this correct?

I was ready to jump in to Windows 8 Pro as a file server to take advantage of RDC server and Drive Pooling baked in to the OS, but now it seems that introducing smaller drives in to the pool (I am looking at having 3-4 2TB drives in about six months) limits the usable size of your "drive pool".

It looks like this shouldn't be a problem though, as Win8 is going to want to use up your smallest drive first in a pool with three drives or more (I am thinking a 250gb + 2x2TB drives) so that the two 2TB drives can start parity mirroring eachother. I figure if you leave at least 10GB free on each drive, as files get deleted and added you should see some sort of "passive balancing" of the data slabs.

Stablebit Drive Pool seems to be very similar in functionality with "active balancing" but I am wary for two reasons 1) this is a third party vendor, do I trust them with my data? How stable is their software long term? and 2) this is a third party vendor, will this product be supported in a year? six months?

Installing windows 8 pro this afternoon, not ready to move all my data there yet, but I plan on playing around with it for a while. Any thoughts? Has ANYBODY used Stablebit Drive Pool? At least Windows 8/WS2012 drive pools will be supported as a "standard" of sorts for many years to come. Going more proprietary than microsoft with my data makes me twitch slightly. If stablebit drive pool is just a plugin that lets me active balance my slabs, then it's worth the $20.

I heard good things about DrivePool v1, not sure about version 2.
The competitor to DrivePool when it was coming out was DriveBender, which I have not used.
http://www.drivebender.com/

Also might check out flexraid, which has a drive pooling feature and a parity feature (so you don't have to worry about losing any data if a hard drive fails) http://www.flexraid.com/ A lot of people over at hardforums use flexraid and absolutely love it as you can have up to triple parity drives if you wanted.

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