[jvdb]

Or you can deal with writing at 4MB/s like I did on my WD drives.

Wow, what hardware was this running on?

My newest home file server is an Atom D510MO board with 4 x WD20EADS drives in a raidz1. Average write speed over samba is around 30MB/sec. I know this is not stellar performance, but I suspect the bottleneck is either the Atom proc, or the crappy realtek ethernet card (these are known to be slow under freenas/freebsd).

I build this system specifically to cut down on my power usage. Having 4 computers running all the time + AC in the summer was getting to be pretty expensive. This system idles at under 50watts (all drives spinning).

[darkscout]

Wow, what hardware was this running on?

My newest home file server is an Atom D510MO board with 4 x WD20EADS drives in a raidz1. Average write speed over samba is around 30MB/sec. I know this is not stellar performance, but I suspect the bottleneck is either the Atom proc, or the crappy realtek ethernet card (these are known to be slow under freenas/freebsd).

I build this system specifically to cut down on my power usage. It idles at under 50watts (all drives spinning).

OpenSolaris now Solaris Express 11. RAIDz2. (Irreplaceable family photos on this setup too).

ASUS M3N78 PRO AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8300 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 4050e Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor
8GB RAM.
SYBA SD-LP-PEX2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller.

[jvdb]

OpenSolaris now Solaris Express 11. RAIDz2. (Irreplaceable family photos on this setup too).

ASUS M3N78 PRO AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8300 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 4050e Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor
8GB RAM.
SYBA SD-LP-PEX2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller.

weird, I wonder if you had samba problems. was it this slow with local copies?

Was it EARS drives? I heard the first gen EARS drives were really slow with the 4k -> 512b cluster emulation firmware, supposedly it's better, but still not great.

I have built almost the exact same movie server I have for 4 other friends. All have close to equal performance. The one that complains has really slow copy speeds from his Mac Pro, but I think those problems are more related to the samba built into Mac OS.

[poofyhairguy]

also I should just buy all the drives at once instead of expanding?

It is much better to buy them one at a time, so you don't get a bad batch. It happens.

what about the hds jvdb? darkscout says to stay away from wd... i have also read to stay away from seagate.... any info on that?

Seagates were bad in 2010, safe in 2011. Go Seagate. It changes yearly it seems (2010 were WD's year, 2009 Samsung's year, etc.).

One more thing, consider Unraid. I love it.

[Tbtf]

thanks for all the input guys, i apreciate all the feedback, i guess i will switch out with seagate drives and check out unraid. i am open to which software to install, i just read that freenas was the best from a reliable source. ill check out unraid as well

[PANiCnz]

Wow, what hardware was this running on?

My newest home file server is an Atom D510MO board with 4 x WD20EADS drives in a raidz1. Average write speed over samba is around 30MB/sec. I know this is not stellar performance, but I suspect the bottleneck is either the Atom proc, or the crappy realtek ethernet card (these are known to be slow under freenas/freebsd).

I build this system specifically to cut down on my power usage. Having 4 computers running all the time + AC in the summer was getting to be pretty expensive. This system idles at under 50watts (all drives spinning).

Atom isn't really fast enough for ZFS but you should still get around 60-70MB/sec.

In your case I suspect it's your drive selection in particular the WD Greens, they are terrible in a RAID setup.

[jvdb]

Atom isn't really fast enough for ZFS but you should still get around 60-70MB/sec.

Correct. I knew these 5400rpm drives would be slower, they only need to be fast enough to stream up to 2 blu-ray ISOs at a time (I'll never be watching more than that in my house). The system is more than capable of doing that (looks like streaming a full blu-ray ISO requires around 5-10MB/sec read, I am getting around exactly what you quoted-- 60-70MB/sec read about half that in write)

In your case I suspect it's your drive selection in particular the WD Greens, they are terrible in a RAID setup

Say what you want about them, these drives/setup have been running for over 6 months without a single problem at under 50 watts. I wish I could say my XBMC clients were as reliable as this server.

The one fault of using an Atom; If you're running Sab at the same time, it can cause your video streams to choke when running PAR. I now have Sab pause my queue automatically when I'm home from work and resume around the time I go to sleep.

[bmcclure937]

So you get your choice:
You can "RMA" drives (which I have no problem with, and most failures are going to be bathtub failures anyway).

Or you can deal with writing at 4MB/s like I did on my WD drives.

Yikes! I am running 3x1TB WD10EADS drives in a RAIDZ and have never experienced 4MB/s

[Tbtf]

I eventually would like to have 4 htpc clients, i have 3 atm. So 4 worst case scenario is 4 would be streaming at the same time. Would this be sufficient for 1080p x264 encoded files?


I am talking about the green drives by the way, or should I get something with a faster write speed?

[bmcclure937]

The bottleneck would most-likely be your NIC (or home network in general), not the drives! The drives can support 4 streams... if you have them in a RAIDZ then you would need to ensure the read speeds from that pool can support enough throughput for 4 streams.

If ZFS performance is lacking, then using a beefier CPU and adding more RAM can help with ZFS speeds! Honestly, the drives should not be the issue here. The 5400rpm high-density green drives are adequate (IMO).

[darkscout]

The bottleneck would most-likely be your NIC (or home network in general), not the drives! The drives can support 4 streams... if you have them in a RAIDZ then you would need to ensure the read speeds from that pool can support enough throughput for 4 streams.

If ZFS performance is lacking, then using a beefier CPU and adding more RAM can help with ZFS speeds! Honestly, the drives should not be the issue here. The 5400rpm high-density green drives are adequate (IMO).

I thought the same thing. Until I did a rsync from my boot mirror.

I tried to my VBox array (which are 200GB and 300GB IDE drives back in the day in "mirror" for my virtualbox zvols.)

[Tbtf]

I eventually would like to have 4 htpc clients, i have 3 atm. So 4 worst case scenario is 4 would be streaming at the same time. Would this be sufficient for 1080p x264 encoded files?


I am talking about the green drives by the way, or should I get something with a faster write speed?

I am about to order the parts but I do not know what Seagate HD model to order can anyone help with that?

I dont want my NAS to be to loud, or consuming to much power(driving my electricity bill through the roof).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822148413
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822145298
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822145298
Western Digital 2TB WD20EADS SATA2 Power-saving Hard Drive

[jvdb]

I am about to order the parts but I do not know what Seagate HD model to order can anyone help with that?

I dont want my NAS to be to loud, or consuming to much power(driving my electricity bill through the roof).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822148413
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822145298
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822145298
Western Digital 2TB WD20EADS SATA2 Power-saving Hard Drive

The problem with asking a question like this is that you will get different answers from different people. It's like asking if you should buy a Ford or a Chevy.

Honestly any of these drives will work. If you're looking at unraid, I think they have a page on which hardware to choose (including hard drives).

Edit: found the page.

http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/inde...isk_Drives

[poofyhairguy]

I dont want my NAS to be to loud, or consuming to much power(driving my electricity bill through the roof).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822148413
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822145298
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822145298
Western Digital 2TB WD20EADS SATA2 Power-saving Hard Drive

In one of my Unraid servers, I have each one of those drives. For Unraid the only really bad drives are Samsung drives. Just be sure if you get WD Greens, to jumper them.

[jvdb]

Just be sure if you get WD Greens, to jumper them.

Just to clarify. Jumper the EARS, the EADS do not require it.