Nas on Pieter Viljoen's Blog

Synology DS2411+ Performance Review

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:43:00 +0000

In my last post I compared the performance of Synology DS1511+ against the QNAP TS-859 Pro. As I finished writing that post, Synology announced the new Synology DS2411+.
Instead of using a DS1511+ and DX510 extender for 10 disks, the DS2411+ offers 12 disks in a single device. The price difference is also marginal, DS1511+ is $836, the DX510 is $500, and the DS2411+ is $1700. That is a difference of only $364, and well worth it for the extra storage space, and the reliability and stability of all drives in one enclosure. I ended up returning my DX510 and DS1511+, and got a DS2411+ instead.

Synology DS1511+ vs. QNAP TS-859 Pro, iSCSI MPIO Performance

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:50:00 +0000

I have been very happy with my QNAP TS-859 Pro (Amazon), but I’ve run out of space while archiving my media collection, and I needed to expand the storage capacity. You can read about my experience with the TS-859 Pro here, and my experience archiving my media collection here.
My primary objective with this project is storage capacity expansion, and my secondary objective is improved performance.

My choices for storage capacity expansion included:

Archiving my CD, DVD and BD collection

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:03:00 +0000

I am about two thirds done archiving my entire CD, DVD, and BD collection to network storage. I have been ripping on a part time basis for about 5 months, and so far I’ve ripped over 700 discs.

I have considered archiving my media collection for some time, but just never got around to it. Recently our toddler discovered how to open discs and use them as toys, so storing the discs safely quickly became a priority. I’d like to give you some insight into what I’ve learned and what process I follow.

Data Robotics DroboPro vs. QNAP TS-859 Pro

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 07:30:00 +0000

I previously wrote about my impressions of the DroboPro, and in case I was not clear, I was not impressed.

I recently read the announcement of the new QNAP TS-859 Pro, and from the literature it seemed like a great device, high performance, feature rich, and power saving.

The TS-859 Pro is now available, and I compared it with the DroboPro, and against a regular W2K8R2 file server.

DroboPro Impressions

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:49:00 +0000

In this post I am describing, and partly reviewing, my experience using a DroboPro over iSCSI.

I have been aware of the Drobo storage devices for some time now, but never used one or knew anybody that owned one.

Recently a coworker’s large home RAID system had a controller failure, and after recovering the data, he migrated to a DroboPro using iSCSI.

After he told me how quiet the device is, and how little power it uses, I wanted to try one out myself.

Hitachi Ultrastar and Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB drives

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:54:00 +0000

In my previous post I talked about Western Digital RE4-GP 2TB drive problems.

In this post I present my test results for 2TB drives from Seagate and Hitachi.

The test setup is the same as for the RE4-GP testing, except that I only tested 4 drives from each manufacturer.

Unlike the enterprise class WD RE4-GP and Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 drives, the Seagate Barracuda LP drive is a desktop drive.

The equivalent should have been a Seagate Constellation ES drive, but as far as I know the 2TB drives are not yet available.

Western Digital RE4-GP 2TB Drive Problems

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:16:00 +0000

In my previous two posts I described my research into the power saving features of various enterprise class RAID controllers.

In this post I detail the results of my testing of the Western Digital RE4-GP enterprise class “green” drives when used with hardware RAID controllers from Adaptec, Areca, and LSI.

To summarize, the RE4-GP drive fails with a variety of problems, Adaptec, Areca, and LSI acknowledge the problem and lay blame on WD, yet WD insists there are no known problems with the RE4-GP drives.

Power Saving RAID Controller (Continued)

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:20:00 +0000

This post continues from my last post on power saving RAID controllers.

It turns out the Adaptec 5 series controllers are not that workstation friendly.

I was testing with Western Digital drives; 1TB Caviar Black WD1001FALS, 2TB Caviar Green WD20EADS, and 1TB RE3 WD1002FBYS.

I also wanted to test with the new 2TB RE4-GP WD2002FYPS drives, but they are on backorder.

I found that the Caviar Black WD1001FALS and Caviar Green WD20EADS drives were just dropping out of the array for no apparent reason, yet they were still listed in ASM as if nothing was wrong.

Power Saving SATA RAID Controller

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:37:00 +0000

I’ve been a longtime user of Adaptec SATA RAID cards (3805, 5805, 51245), but over the years I’ve become more energy saving conscious, and the Adaptec controllers did not support Windows power management.

My workstations are normally running in the “Balanced” power mode so that they will go to sleep after an hour, but sometimes I need to run computationally intensive tasks that leave the machines running 24/7.

During these periods the disks don’t need to be on and I want the disks to spin down, like they would had they been directly connected and not in a RAID configuration.