Right, so I know RAID set ups are to do with how multiple hard drives work with each other in a storage capacity, but which is which?

At the mo I have a single NAS drive with a 400gb drive in it. This is getting filled up quicker than I thought it would. I could open it up and stick a 750gb drive in, but after that, drives get pretty damn expensive!!!!

So would it be work going for a NAS box that does RAID configs, and running multiple discs?

If so, what config? I know you can have mirror discs - so if you have 2x 500gb drives and set them to mirror you still only have 500gb of storage, but you have a live backup of that 500gb drive in the other 500gb drive - what RAID is this?

Next, If I have a NAS box with 4 500gb drives, how could I get the PC's connected to it (via network) to see it as a total capacity of 2tb? Which RAID config would this be?

Cos the problem with my NAS box is that whilt I can connect an external drive to it (either USB2 or eSATA) it is a seperate drive and not shown as a continuation of the NAS box, as in total storage capacity....

 

RAID 1

RAID 0, assuming data is spread across the discs (e.g. one file could be chopped in four pieces, one on each drive). Otherwise it's not RAID, just lots of discs together.

RAID is explained here in full: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Some NAS boxes will allow up to two drives that can be used as RAID 0 or 1, anything which supports more drives will become seriously expensive, and that's without drives in it !!!

 

Thanks Froggy!

I don't think my box supports RAID at all, and is only a single disc enclosure - with just the USB and eSATA connections on the back for expansion. I plugged a 320gb external HDD into it and it showed up, and let me put stuff on it and access it, but it shows as a folder in the NAS drive explorer view on the PC. Basically, what I have done with my NAS server is set up 4 folders (VIDEO, MUSIC, PICTURES, FILES) and then mapped them as network drives so they show up in the MY COMPUTER window as drives (like C, D etc) What I woul like to do is have more storage but continue to use these folders

On my downstairs PC, I didn't bother mapping the folders as drives, instead I just click in the NAS drive shortcut I made (which basically takes you to MY NETWORK PLACES > NAS DRIVE) which shows the 4 folders as just 4 folders. So, by adding more storage to my current NAS, I would end up having to use two folders to search for music, or two folders to see the video's etc.

I'd basically like to add more gb's, and then when the 400gb is full, stick stuff on the next HDD, then when I click on VIDEO's folder, all the vids are in there, not just the ones that are on the 400gb drive and have to navigate to a different folder to see the other vids....

 

My pleasure

The only thing that I am aware will do this, is the new microsoft windows home server (iirc) which sees all drives you install in the box as one single huge storage facility.

Or, a dedicated NAS solution which is more advanced that the "home user" ones, but as I said, they don't come cheap since they are essentially professional tools.

Your next problem will be data safety which RAID does help with, at the expense of storage space. Backup is an altogether different matter.

Question: Do you really need to keep all this data

 

Whatever you do, don't take the drives out of your current box and put them somewhere else, you will probably loose all your data, not all nas enclosures use the same file structures

Just thought you could also rescue an old PC, and install a couple of IDE or SATA PCI cards in there, beef up the power supply and install up to 8 drives in there. There's a standalone utility called NASLite (http://www.serverelements.com/naslite-2-hdd.php) which may well do what you need. Sort of home-made windows home server.

 

It's basically that I am building a collection of films/movies and watch more via a computer than I do via a DVD player nowadays. If I borrow a film and decide I like it, instead of copy it to a DVD, I tend to rip to image, then compress to AVI, and also I would say that 99.999999% of music playback is done via PC now, and I have thousands and thousands of songs in my MP3 collection. With the advantage of having a SFF desktop hooked into my AV set up downstairs, it means all music playback and movie watching is at fingertips all in one place, so my need for storage is growing!

I kinda hoped that by plugging the 320gb I had in my PC (as a second/slave drive) into my NAS server (which is also my wired + wifi router and internet/mail server) I could increase the total storage capcity from 400gb to 720gb, but it seems it won't let me do this. Only way round I can see it is to use a front end programme to display the content, allowing multiple datapath locations for the data - like how I use WMP for music - doesn't matter WHERE the files are stored, all music is accessed through WMP interface, not file folder explorer. So if I ran MediaPortal or MCE, I could access films from there all in one place, even tho the files are stored in different locations.

However, this SFF desktop isn't specced enough for that (1.8 P4, 128mb of RAM on a 5yr old office PC ) and the problem that the USB drive wouldn't do the same thing my NAS does - whilst the power is always on for my NAS, providing the ethernet router and internet server with constant power, the drive itself spins up and down depending on use - but the USB drive would permantly be on 24/7 - not good! So I'd have to unplug it, re-plug it, unplug it etc - pain in the ass when your watching something or listening to something and need to go upstairs and turn the USB drive on to continue!

 

I understand what you're trying to do, I usually drop a movie I haven't watched for ages / don't like much anymore before saving a new one
Likewise, I have 100's of DVD's, most of which only gather dust on a shelf, they very rarely see the tray of my DVD player.

Maybe you need to have a ruthless sort through your collection, otherwise, the storage solution you will need will be expensive.

 

I already have - I only culled around 10 or so movies

 

Chicken !

 

I only keep the ones I like anyway - if I "procure" ( ) a film, watch it, and thin it's shit, it goes in the bin anyway.

As for storage, I was thinking maybe something like this;

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Buffalo-Terast...sid=p1638.m122

Discontinued now (Buffalo changed the product design to either rackmount, or as a "Pro" device, neither of which I need - so will have to find one second hand) as that does RAID configs upto 2TB - which is a LOT of space!!!!

 

Was just thinking you could get a raid controller for your SFF PC which has eSATA (external SATA) ports and an enclosure for drives. Some examples here:

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/...&sourceid=2020

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=83205

Not personal recommendations, I have never used either

 

That would work, be careful it only takes IDE drives, this could be a problem in the future. Not sure if IDE will remain in use for much longer

 

Surly the easiest and cheapest way would be to buy some bigger sized internal HDD's, put them in one of ur pc's and share them across the network,

You can get 1tb drives now for like 150quid.

 

Only problem with that is it requires the "host" PC to be on in order to use the data on them. Also, having had a 320gb drive as a secondary storage device in my (main) PC, for some reason, it will only transfer in PMA ONLY mode, and not ULTRA DMA, so whilst playback of MP3 upto 320k is faultless, any larger bitrate files, such as lossless audio tracks or DVD rips, AVI's etc, the playback is stuttery and you get sound dropouts and "pops" - not good!

The bonus to the NAS server I've had so far have been great - can turn my PC on downstairs and play all my media, or the same with my PC upstairs. I've even had it playing a film to the downstairs PC and me upstairs listening to the audio stored on it simultaniously with no probs!

Frog - Yeah I must admit, I thought that about the IDE vs SATA