HDDs for DrivePool

[essential]

I'm assembling a computer this weekend.  I was originally going to build 2 computers, 1 home machine, and 1 server.  Budget restraints have brought me down to just one machine, and I'm going to run DrivePool and have the pool be a share for several devices in the house.

 

I currently have:

 

4TB Seagate NAS Drive (ST4000VN000, never used)

2TB WD Green (2 years old)

1TB WD Green (5 years old)

1TB WD Green (5 years old)

 

All the drives are still working with no errors, but I was going take out the two 1TB drives and add another 4TB drive since they are at the 5 year mark.  I was never able to use the 4TB seagate because my old machine wouldn't recognize the drive so I can't speak on it's reliability.  Are there any drives that work better with DrivePool?

 

I'm going to be duplicating most things, but reliability is important.  I've looked in to enterprise drives but some reviews say they aren't desktop drives and shouldn't be used as such.  This isn't technically a NAS even though other devices will be accessing the pool.  The machine will be on 24x7.

 

Should I go cheap with a green drive, a nas drive, or enterprise drive?

 

Thanks.

[lee1978]

I used to use a corsair 600w but when I fully populated the server total of 27 drives and putting it under stress I.e scanner running, duplication running, streaming 1080p to 7 different rooms, downloading torrents, streaming music to another room. I sufferd power problems 2 of the last drives in the daisy chain kept dropping in and out and as a result I ended up losing 3 drives this was all a result of a power supply. So after spending £400 on 3 new drives I spent another £100 on a 1200watt power supply and have touch wood never even had a blip out of the system since.

Over kill maybe but at least I have peace of mind the power is there when needed. Also a single rail of a psu can only supply a limited amount of power so daisy chaining lots of stuff off 1 rail is a risky business now I only have 3 drives per rail instead of 6 or more. Also if the psu developes a fault on 1 rail my loss will be minimal.

[Umfriend]

That's still twice as many HDDs as Ryo was planning to use but I see your point. Max power per rail is something that is overlooked easily, in this case by me perhaps and, yeah, peace of mind is worth a lot.

 

I was still looking at Ryou running 3x1TB and missed that he was planning on 12.

[Ryo]

my plan is for my 1 120gb ssd 1 wd red 2.5 1TB 1 slot load dvd writer and 12 6TB wd red (2 of wich will replace my 1 TB black and my 1 TB green) for a current grand total of 120gb os drive and a 61TB data pool

until larger drives come out

[Umfriend]

I've been saying for years now that everyone should have a personal copy of the interweb.

[lee1978]

Hahahaha

[Ryo]

im trying to digitize my dvd collection.. just gotta find a good program to convert from dvd to digital (preferably hd)

[lee1978]

I use DVD fab it will convert from any format to any format there are other programmes but I found that much more simpler. you could also just use torrent download would probably be quicker I had around 800 DVD mixed bluray/standard took about 6 months doing a few a night after work give it a try rip a copy of a film time it torrent download compare the copy's and see which was quicker also torrents will download 24hr's a day

[Ryo]

is that all I need

 

years ago I used dvd decrypter and then dvd shrink.

will dvd fab convert to a playable format for windows?

seems expensive

im also looking at ihomeserver

[otispresley]

im trying to digitize my dvd collection.. just gotta find a good program to convert from dvd to digital (preferably hd)

 

Hi, DVD's are 480p, so they are not High Definition (HD).  You can encode it at a higher resolution, but the source is still only 480p and so the picture quality will not be any better than the DVD.  Plus, any time you encode to another format, there is a loss in quality.  There are up-converters built into most televisions; while the result is slightly better than DVD, it is still no substitute for content from a real HD source (Blu-Ray).  As far as digitizing goes, I have had a lifetime license for AnyDVD HD for several years and find it to be a great tool for decryption, and it can also rip the disk to an ISO or just to your hard disk if you want.  

 

In order to be playable in Windows, you do not have to convert it.  I still use DVD Shrink to rip to a single VOB file, and it works fine with AnyDVD performing the decryption.  For Blu-Ray, I use tsMuxer to rip to a single M2TS file.  If you want smaller files and wider playback support, then you need to encode to another format, like MP4 or WMV.  MP4 is compatible with many more players than WMV.  If you go the MP4 route, then I recommend Handbrake.  These are free options, except for AnyDVD.  If you don't mind paying, then DVD fab, as lee1978 mentions, is a good all-in-one tool that supports DVD and Blu-Ray and does its own decryption.

[lee1978]

Otis went into more detail than I did I simply choose dvdfab as it was all in one they do have a free trial test both ways see what you like from time to time I use anydvd and tsmuxer as for Ihomeserver I use that also it's great for allowing iTunes to stream music from your server to airplay devices all around the house sonos is also great.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

DVD Fab can rip to about any format, IIRC. That includes WMV's and MKV.

 

IIRC, MyMovies can do the same, as well. (albeit, it aims to be more "headless", IIRC).

And it uses AnyDVD HD, IIRC. 

 

 

But to be honest, I have found that everyone has an answer here. Try some of the suggestions here, and see what you like using the best.

[Ryo]

? about anydvd.... do I need to buy both any dvd and any dvd HD or does any dvd HD do everything? sorry for the topic change.....

[otispresley]

? about anydvd.... do I need to buy both any dvd and any dvd HD or does any dvd HD do everything? sorry for the topic change.....

 

AnyDVD HD does everything.

[Ryo]

? for backup purposes should I go crashplan or Carbonite? both plans im looking at are about 59.99 / year

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I would avoid CrashPlan. More and more lately, I've seen issues with it. Such as corrupt backups which can't be restored from, just not completing backups, etc. 

 

As for Carbonite, I'm not as familiar with them, but they may be better to go with....

[Ryo]

have you guys used the LSI 9300 Megaraid card with 12GB/s sas/sata ports (8port card) 599.99 on newegg. would this be more future proof and compatible with my wd reds and of corse future 12gbps drives.....

lsi 9300 megaraid sas 9361-8i

[Christopher (Drashna)]

That's .... complete overkill.

 

Unless you're getting high RPM SAS disks... you're not going to even need that much. 

Get this instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118182

Just for reference... that card should support 69 standard HDDs running at max throughput, just by itself. Well, with an SAS Expander card or two as well. Such as this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816117207

 

And just to clarify, most HDDs don't even come close to saturating the 6gbps speeds of SATA III (which would be approx 768MB/s). So you definitely don't need 12gbps speed connection.... 

 

So, spend the same amount of money and support 24 drives for the same price.

[Ryo]

I only looked at it because I don't wanna have to replace it in 5 yrs

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Ryo, I absolutely understand that, and it's a big consideration.

However, unless you're using a LOT of SSDs... or a very large RAID array, then it's not really worth the money to get the higher end card.

 

Higher end performance drives (include NAS drives) will get between 80-120MB/s speed, which doesn't come close to saturating the SATA II bus. And the PCI Express 3.0 x8 (8 lane) card is capable of supporting ~70 drives running at 120MB/s sustained. That's more than plenty of bandwidth for your drives. You should be completely fine with the "lower end" card for a long while (unless TB SSDs suddenly become super common and drop in price significantly).

[Ryo]

my abosolute longterm goal is a 25 drive setup (1 for os and 24 for drivepool) lol guess im liking the idea of collecting storage drives.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

my abosolute longterm goal is a 25 drive setup (1 for os and 24 for drivepool) lol guess im liking the idea of collecting storage drives.

I'm very interested in the same. Though I have a head start. I have 12 disks in my Norco RPC-4220 case.

I need to sell off two of my controller cards, and buy an expander card to replace it... because as I said, one SAS controller card can connect MANY disks (mine's only PCI Express 2.x 8x, so only half the amount of bandwidth as the one I linked).

 

Using the cheaper controller card, and the expander should give you plenty of speed and plenty of bandwidth. Unless HDDs get significantly faster (which they really having for a long while now), or we start seeing dirt cheap SSDs (not likely)... then that hardware will still serve you VERY well for years to come.

[RobbieH]

I'm starting to see 500GB SSDs for $199. That's pretty amazing. Certainly not as cheap as spinny drives, and not necessary for streaming movies, but they are getting cheap(ish).

[Christopher (Drashna)]

True, and would be great for using with the SSD Optimizer balancer.

 

But even still, assuming ~500MB/s read speeds, with a PCI Express 3.0 8x (8 lane) card, you could max out 16 SSD on the controller. At this point, I'm not sure about the cables though. This starts to get to where I'm not as sure about.

Theoretically, the cables have 4 lanes, which means it could saturate 6 SSDs (again at about 500MB/s) and have a little more room to spare.

 

However, chances are, that you're not going to be continually using disks like this. You'll use them in spurts, and idle most of the time. That means that to really hit these bottlenecks, you'd need to be recording to the disks constantly, and with high HD content. 

While, yes, you could do this with a PVR or NVR (IP camera server), potentially, chances are, that you're not going to come close to these limits.

 

 

 

Also, $199 gets you a 6TB NAS drive anymore. That's 12 times the capacity.

[Ryo]

my server is gonna run sweet with 1 Kingston V300 120gb ssd 1 1 TB wd green drive 1 1TB wd black 1 2.5 inch 1 TB red and 2 6TB wd red drives for a total of 15 TB data pool and 120 os drive with (4x8gb trident ram) yay 32 GB and the Xeon 1246 v3 3.5ghz

[Christopher (Drashna)]

It absolutely will.

Not too dissimilar to my setup, and mine runs fantastically.