Is RAID mirroring on a 2HD NAS worthwhile?

[uncl_nigel]

...which will get you a full silent Mini ITX PC rig and change (£100s) to spare, offering way more power and versatility as a storage / server solution.

Links might be helpful

 

[Yomanze]

Links might be helpful

Hi Nigel, I self build which immediately knocks 30% to 50% off the price. Having said this, there are some nice units here:

https://www.inside-tech.co.uk/fanless-pc

 

[kicker]

It has happened to me twice in my office. It turns out that disks from the same batch fail together, maybe power issues or their internal firmware bugs.
The single point of failure of the drive controller and OS driver is also still there

Happened twice to me too, I don't bother with RAID arrays anymore just an external usb drive now

 

[Amber Audio]

One size doesn't fit all, there are ways to make a NAS more robust, minimise/almost eliminate interruptions and make restores easier/quicker but generally it's business stuff and costs £

I like RAID at home to minimise inconvenience, I'm happy to pay for the extra disks/NAS - for many folk it's an unnecessary expense, a lot of the time a big USB hard disk or two combined with Cloud is a better choice

 

[uncl_nigel]

To give this some context:

Currently, I have a couple of external drives connected to the Mac which runs the Roon core.

- silence is important
- reliability is important
- I would like the solution to run the Roon core
- Mac, PC or NAS? No idea, no bias, the one which is most appropriate
- if the above makes the solution expensive, I will just save for a couple more months

The idea is to buy it once and buy it right.

 

[Amber Audio]

What is it about the current setup that you don’t like or that it does not perform or performs poorly? What’s the rest of the playback chain, Streamer/DAC/Amp - combo?

Lots of ways to skin this cat. Keep the Mac serving up ROON or a ROCK silent PC but divorce the storage to a normal NAS - can you locate it out-with the HiFi room and not worry about a bit of noise? if so you can use cheaper spinning disks like WD Red and get more space per £.

The QNAP HS-453DX has none of the limits of the 251+ at a cost. You can do SSD for OS/ROON and SATA for FLAC both in RAID1 if you wanted. Silent, so should be happy in your HiFi room.

There are some excellent mini/silent PC’s and NUCs if you don’t mind a PC in the HiFi room, depends what problem you’re trying to solve.

 

[Cereal Killer]

QNAP HS-453DX

This is know is used by friend of mine for roon and movies with 6TB of SSD. Think it cost him about £1200 all in.

Quality 4TB SSDs are around £400-500 ATM

 

[davidsrsb]

This is know is used by friend of mine for roon and movies with 6TB of SSD. Think it cost him about £1200 all in.

Quality 4TB SSDs are around £400-500 ATM

I bought an ex-lease Dell I3 and a new conventional disk and upgraded RAM for 20% of that.
Any decent operating system pre-loads a file being opened into RAM if possible, which makes the speed advantage of SSD very limited.
From reports that I have read, monster SSD MTBF is not that good either and one nasty feature of SSD is that they tend to die suddenly rather than going through the gradual and detectable path that magnetic drives tend to follow

 

[Amber Audio]

I bought an ex-lease Dell I3 and a new conventional disk and upgraded RAM for 20% of that.
Any decent operating system pre-loads a file being opened into RAM if possible, which makes the speed advantage of SSD very limited.
From reports that I have read, monster SSD MTBF is not that good either and one nasty feature of SSD is that they tend to die suddenly rather than going through the gradual and detectable path that magnetic drives tend to follow

The P/E (Program/Erase) number gives an idea of how long lived/resilient a drive will be but the thing that seems to get SDD’s is the onboard controller failing which leads to catastrophic failure. Like everything it’s not black and white but for data protection roles I prefer the older tech enterprise/nas grade disks like the WD Red and Seagate IronWolf.

SSD’s make a PC boot up much faster but once up and running they don’t have significant benefits if the PC has a decent CPU and plenty of RAM. Intensive read/write heavy apps benefit.

 

[davidsrsb]

My experience is that SSDs make more difference on Windows, due to antivirus activity and on applications that open hundreds of files like CAD software. File and directory fragmentation is not a problem for SSDs
Fragmentation is not a serious matter in music servers as the files get written once and never modified

 

[uncl_nigel]

What is it about the current setup that you don’t like or that it does not perform or performs poorly? What’s the rest of the playback chain, Streamer/DAC/Amp - combo?

Lots of ways to skin this cat. Keep the Mac serving up ROON or a ROCK silent PC but divorce the storage to a normal NAS - can you locate it out-with the HiFi room and not worry about a bit of noise? if so you can use cheaper spinning disks like WD Red and get more space per £.

The QNAP HS-453DX has none of the limits of the 251+ at a cost. You can do SSD for OS/ROON and SATA for FLAC both in RAID1 if you wanted. Silent, so should be happy in your HiFi room.

There are some excellent mini/silent PC’s and NUCs if you don’t mind a PC in the HiFi room, depends what problem you’re trying to solve.

The system is: Roon on the Mac / dCS Rossini / Aesthetix amps / Proac Future .5 speakers

Currently I am running out of storage capacity so something has to be done I suppose this could be as simple as putting a exFAT formatted 4Tb SSD in an external USB box.

The current set up involves a couple of 1Tb external drives and the Mac's internal Fusiondrive.

It looks messy (I can live with that) and is not that convenient since the music is on NTFS formatted discs so when I acquire new files I have to faff about with my Win10 laptop with a screen I find difficult to read.

I have been told that the dCS sounds even better if the Roon core is on a NUC/PC/Mac/NAS directly connected to its second ethernet port. The convenience of automatic backup (not RAID as everyone has pointed out) is also tempting.

 

[Amber Audio]

Seriously nice rig. Not sure how connecting to the separate LAN sockets on the dCS would improve things, the 2nd LAN is a loop not an isolated network card, so same as using a Switch.

Totally down to what arrangement you prefer and whether you can/want to house a normal NAS outside the listening room or even in a cupboard and have the necessary network/mains cabling. Personal preference is to have the NAS/Router/Switch tucked away in another room, network cable run from Switch to LAN socket on Streamer.

I’ve run a NUC as a ROCK Server with a basic QNAP NAS as a data tank and now run the ROON App on a souped up QNAP as well as keeping the music files on it. Both worked well and I’m happy to use either method. If I intended to max out the ROON DSP/RC functions I’d go with a high spec PC - NUC/ROCK Server.

The 453DX NAS should work nicely if you want a simple method located in the rack - bump the Ram to 8GB and use SSD or mix SSD/SATA.

 

[davidsrsb]

You don't want magnetic hard drives in your room, quite audible at times

 

[uncl_nigel]

You don't want magnetic hard drives in your room, quite audible at times

I know what you mean - my films are on an 8To Ironwolf which I only power up if I want to watch a film. I generally put the film on the Mac, watch it then archive several at a time to the Ironwolf.

 

[Amber Audio]

That’s why I’ve put a comms cab in the garage with my router/switches and NAS boxes in, doesn’t matter about spinning fans and clicking disks, not practical for a lot of folk I know. Very large SSDs are still pretty expensive and not really an advantage when just used basically as a data dump over spinning SATA/SAS drives.

 

[Chefren]

Don't forget RAID 0. I use it to increase read/write HD performance - almost double. Possibly the only real use of RAID for home use if your mobo supports it.

A properly sorted RAID1 solution also doubles read speed using the same interleaving tactic as RAID0. That really only leaves write speed as a benefit of RAID0, making it a very niche setup, especially for home use.

High write speed for lower data security is something you would select only for logs or temporary files if performance is a real issue.

 

[Wolfmancatsup]

That’s why I’ve put a comms cab in the garage with my router/switches and NAS boxes in, doesn’t matter about spinning fans and clicking disks, not practical for a lot of folk I know. Very large SSDs are still pretty expensive and not really an advantage when just used basically as a data dump over spinning SATA/SAS drives.

I considered doing the same a few years ago, but a friend pointed out that our garage would get very hot in Summer and very cold in the Winter, so I decided not to risk it. If it was insulated I probably would have done so though.

 

[Amber Audio]

I’d agree that locating a comms cabinet in the loft would cause thermal concerns, in the UK a small comms cab with a couple of switches/router/nas/ups located in a garage would be fine. I really don’t think it would be an issue, the typical devices you’d house don’t pump that much heat and in winter the heat they do produce is an advantage. Assuming an attached stone/brick garage not a wooden standalone.

Defo keeps the noise out of the way and keeps everything tidy and easy to manage cabling wise Have a fair few cabs/servers in outbuildings around NE Scotland, get the odd Server fire a temp warning, maybe 3 or 4 in deep winters last 15 years or so, we bang an oil filled rad or two in to sort things. Overheating would be more of an issue but the only times have been top floors/lofts with a few Servers/42U Comms Cabs - opening doors/windows or portable air cons sorted. Dell Servers have built in temp warnings, Draytek and some PDU’s have temp monitor addons.

Running a few Bitcoin mining rigs or a Server farm in a garage during a hot summer, then you’re gonna get real toasty. A normal home use comms cabinet I reckon will be fine. I have multi room audio/ceiling speakers and run all the cables back to a 4mm patch panel in the Comms Cab, linked to Nad multi channel amp fed by Sonos and Pi, keeps things nice and tidy all in the garage, the Alarm/Cameras/Solar base stations are all located in the Cab.

 

[Colin L]

I’ve been in someone’s house when they were running more than a few bit-mining rigs and the place was absolutely roasting. No names mentioned.

 

[Amber Audio]

I’ve been in someone’s house when they were running more than a few bit-mining rigs and the place was absolutely roasting. No names mentioned.

Funnily enough I've been in there too. Give you a bell later, see how the UMIK is going.