June 19, 201313 yr It's a nice unit; very low power; and would provide the RAID protection you should have for this. For about the same price you could build an Atom-based UnRAID in a Lian-Li PC-Q25B case with a SuperMicro Atom motherboard -- and with the free version of UnRAID it would support 3 drives instead of the 2 in the QNAP unit. [And with a paid license you could go up to 6 drives in that case] The QNAP has the advantage of being completely ready ... no building on your part except plugging in a couple drives. It will also have FAR better write speeds than an UnRAID, since it's a RAID-1. Up to you which you'd prefer.
June 19, 201313 yr Author It's a nice unit; very low power; and would provide the RAID protection you should have for this. For about the same price you could build an Atom-based UnRAID in a Lian-Li PC-Q25B case with a SuperMicro Atom motherboard -- and with the free version of UnRAID it would support 3 drives instead of the 2 in the QNAP unit. [And with a paid license you could go up to 6 drives in that case] The QNAP has the advantage of being completely ready ... no building on your part except plugging in a couple drives. It will also have FAR better write speeds than an UnRAID, since it's a RAID-1. Up to you which you'd prefer. Did a little comparison.. LIAN LI PC-Q25B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case Diablotek DA Series PSDA250 250W ATX Power Supply SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPA-H-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard DDR2 667 CORSAIR 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Total with Taxes + Shipped = Grand Total: $427.86 The QNAP = Grand Total $451.99 I went with the qnap Pro's 1 - 2 Year Warranty 2 - Don't have to play with anything, though I still can 3 - Hotswap ... I know it's only 2 bay but w/e 4 - Better Processor 5 - Can upgrade memory, though 1gb should be enough...... Con's 1 - Stuck with 2 Bays?
June 19, 201313 yr It's a nice unit; very low power; and would provide the RAID protection you should have for this. For about the same price you could build an Atom-based UnRAID in a Lian-Li PC-Q25B case with a SuperMicro Atom motherboard -- and with the free version of UnRAID it would support 3 drives instead of the 2 in the QNAP unit. [And with a paid license you could go up to 6 drives in that case] The QNAP has the advantage of being completely ready ... no building on your part except plugging in a couple drives. It will also have FAR better write speeds than an UnRAID, since it's a RAID-1. Up to you which you'd prefer. Did a little comparison.. LIAN LI PC-Q25B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case Diablotek DA Series PSDA250 250W ATX Power Supply SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPA-H-O Mini ITX Server Motherboard DDR2 667 CORSAIR 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Total with Taxes + Shipped = Grand Total: $427.86 The QNAP = Grand Total $451.99 I went with the qnap Pro's 1 - 2 Year Warranty 2 - Don't have to play with anything, though I still can 3 - Hotswap ... I know it's only 2 bay but w/e 4 - Better Processor 5 - Can upgrade memory, though 1gb should be enough...... Con's 1 - Stuck with 2 Bays? Not a bad choice ==> but your "Pros" have a few errors/oversights ... 1 - 2 Year Warranty => True, and it's on the whole system. But the SuperMicro board has a 3-year warranty. Further, neither warranty applies to the drives, which are the most likely thing to fail 2 - Don't have to play with anything, though I still can ==> Agree. 3 - Hotswap ... I know it's only 2 bay but w/e => The PC-Q25B has 5 hot-swap bays ... you simply pull off the side cover (no screws or latches) to access them. 4 - Better Processor => Not true. An Atom D525 (the CPU on the SuperMicro X7SPA-D525-O board I suggested) scores 694 on PassMark's CPUMark. There are two dual-core 1.86GHz Atom CPU's currently shipping: the D2500, and the D2550. The QNAP specifications do NOT say which of those they use. The D2500 scores 407 on PassMark; the D2550 (which, like the D525, is hyperthreaded) scores 704 ... essentially a tie with the D525. So the processor is either essentially the same; or is significantly less powerful than the one on the SuperMicro board. 5 - Can upgrade memory, though 1gb should be enough...... ==> This is of course also true with the X7SPA-H-D2525 board (which you can install 8GB on, compared to a max of 3GB on the QNAP)
June 19, 201313 yr I did find a reference that shows the QNAP uses the D2550 ... the hyperthreaded version of the 1.86GHz Atom => so it is a marginally "better" CPU than the D525 ... although as I noted above, I'd consider 694 and 704 essentially tied [a 1.4% difference hardly matters ]
June 19, 201313 yr The QNAP is nice. You will like it. From what I see, It has all the services you'll need. I checked and it has an eSATA port on it. If you really needed speed, you could possibly put an external eSATA SSD on it. Then back that up periodically to the protected raid1 array. If you really wanted SSD, they have the cool 2.5" to 3.5" adapters. It's very nice, I almost want one. I went down that road a long time ago before unRAID. I had all these lil nas boxes around the house. Kuro, Thecus, ReadNAS... I had a bunch of them!!! This QNAP is nice, plug and play. I would be very happy with it to offload my interactive users to it.
June 19, 201313 yr Agree -- the QNAP is a very nice box. And has one BIG advantage over UnRAID that wasn't listed in your "Pros": It will have MUCH faster write speeds.
June 19, 201313 yr Author I did find a reference that shows the QNAP uses the D2550 ... the hyperthreaded version of the 1.86GHz Atom => so it is a marginally "better" CPU than the D525 ... although as I noted above, I'd consider 694 and 704 essentially tied [a 1.4% difference hardly matters ] But....... the board I priced was a D510 ... 1.6ghz vs 1.8Xghz putting the D525 mobo in would have increased the cost to pretty much par with the qnap The QNAP is nice. You will like it. From what I see, It has all the services you'll need. I checked and it has an eSATA port on it. If you really needed speed, you could possibly put an external eSATA SSD on it. Then back that up periodically to the protected raid1 array. If you really wanted SSD, they have the cool 2.5" to 3.5" adapters. It's very nice, I almost want one. I went down that road a long time ago before unRAID. I had all these lil nas boxes around the house. Kuro, Thecus, ReadNAS... I had a bunch of them!!! This QNAP is nice, plug and play. I would be very happy with it to offload my interactive users to it. Planning on Going Raid 1.. with either 2 Red Drives... or 7200 Segate drives constellation? nas? ones? Then plugging a small USB 3.0 2.5" Drive and do backups Monthly and store elsewhere... I have a 500gb wd, which is more than enough Honestly I would have preferred a sinology, there OS is a lot nicer.. but at the same time.. it doesn't really matter.. once it's set up.. it's setup. Just want to leave it and let it do it's thing Agree -- the QNAP is a very nice box. And has one BIG advantage over UnRAID that wasn't listed in your "Pros": It will have MUCH faster write speeds. turn off parity.. problem solved LOL
June 19, 201313 yr But....... the board I priced was a D510 ... 1.6ghz vs 1.8Xghz putting the D525 mobo in would have increased the cost to pretty much par with the qnap I haven't seen the D510 board any cheaper than the newer D525 board ... did you see it for less than $175? http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-X7SPA5 Planning on Going Raid 1.. with either 2 Red Drives... or 7200 Segate drives constellation? nas? ones? Then plugging a small USB 3.0 2.5" Drive and do backups Monthly and store elsewhere... I have a 500gb wd, which is more than enough That should work nicely. I'd use a pair of WD Reds, which are plenty fast enough. turn off parity.. problem solved LOL Obviously I wouldn't recommend running without fault-tolerance. But a cache drive would do the trick -- writes would then be as fast as the QNAP.
June 19, 201313 yr ... but the bottom line is you already bought the QNAP, so no reason to second guess the choice. It's a very nice box -- it'll do everything you want, and very nicely at that.
June 19, 201313 yr Author ... but the bottom line is you already bought the QNAP, so no reason to second guess the choice. It's a very nice box -- it'll do everything you want, and very nicely at that. Indeed thanks for all the suggestions, after further reading on the unit.. the reviews are amazing.... only con is it's to expensive.. except I got it for $110 off... who knows maybe a new model is coming out? I'm happy!!
June 19, 201313 yr Agree -- the QNAP is a very nice box. And has one BIG advantage over UnRAID that wasn't listed in your "Pros": It will have MUCH faster write speeds. But you can setup cache drive on unRAID then you will have faster write speed as well. Im I missing something?
June 19, 201313 yr Agree -- the QNAP is a very nice box. And has one BIG advantage over UnRAID that wasn't listed in your "Pros": It will have MUCH faster write speeds. But you can setup cache drive on unRAID then you will have faster write speed as well. Im I missing something? Only thing you're missing is the comment I made at the end of Reply #32
June 19, 201313 yr You can technically movie the entire user profile directory (C:\Users\John) to another location by booting into Safe Mode, Command Prompt only and then moving the files and creating a hard juncture to the new location. In theory, it works. It's safer to use the Windows Location thing mentioned previously to move all available folders to the new location. Won't move everything such as the AppData but you can get your desktop & documents off of the C partition if you have a SSD boot with a data drive. I use True Image to create drive images - and you have the option of excluding certain directories if that data is backed up elsewhere to reduce file size - and you can mount the backups for access.
June 19, 201313 yr I should add that I've had issues getting backup software to backup to the UnRAID share, keeps getting a network dropped error (not limited to True Image). I back up to an external hard drive currently. That said, I haven't tried backing up to an UnRAID share recently, likely since Beta 11.
June 20, 201313 yr Author I should add that I've had issues getting backup software to backup to the UnRAID share, keeps getting a network dropped error (not limited to True Image). I back up to an external hard drive currently. That said, I haven't tried backing up to an UnRAID share recently, likely since Beta 11. Was it happening to all machines or just 1?
June 20, 201313 yr Was it happening to all machines or just 1? Sorry, I don't rightly recall. No issues with a W/D NAS.
June 20, 201313 yr Author Update bought 3 X 3TB Reds 2 for new nas.. 1 for unraid machine.. going to swap 1 - 2tb green for a 3 red.. as parity should I preclear.. the other 2 also? then put it in qnap?
June 20, 201313 yr The beauty of the preclear process is a confidence test. You get the smart log before and after a work out. You can see if sectors have been re-allocated or are pending reallocation. It's worth the time invested for peace of mind.
June 20, 201313 yr Author The beauty of the preclear process is a confidence test. You get the smart log before and after a work out. You can see if sectors have been re-allocated or are pending reallocation. It's worth the time invested for peace of mind. Yea, wasn't sure if QNAP had anything similar? Before putting live in the array.. pretty sure I still have the preclear script on flash drive.. I just remembered, I have all sata ports used up... can I just unplug 3 of them .. then plug into new drives? as long as I don't start the array , it should be okay? And do I need to invoke -A?
June 20, 201313 yr The beauty of the preclear process is a confidence test. You get the smart log before and after a work out. You can see if sectors have been re-allocated or are pending reallocation. It's worth the time invested for peace of mind. Yea, wasn't sure if QNAP had anything similar? Before putting live in the array.. pretty sure I still have the preclear script on flash drive.. I just remembered, I have all sata ports used up... can I just unplug 3 of them .. then plug into new drives? as long as I don't start the array , it should be okay? And do I need to invoke -A? if emhttp gets started, it's going to detect the drives have been changed. it might update the superblock and give you grief. So you will need to prevent emhttp from starting up. Me.. well I would only unplug the cache drive and just do them serially, but that's me being overly cautious. As far as -A I dunno, It should not matter since it's going to be erased by qnap anyway. This is just a confidence test.
June 20, 201313 yr You don't need -A with 3TB drives (actually you don't need it at all if you're running v5). While it's true that if you don't start the array it'll be okay with a few drives missing; UnRAID will notice that on boot and may balk a bit. I'd create a new "Basic" UnRAID disk on a different flash drive; and just boot to that to run the preclear script. Since it won't have any disks assigned, you'll just see the Flash drive ... and can copy the preclear script and run it with no problem. ... so you can preclear as many drives at once as you like
June 20, 201313 yr FWIW, I have one of these for eSATA operations, Works good for quick loading and preclearing. http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/35in-eSATA-USB-Black-SATA-External-Hard-Drive-Enclosure~SAT3510BU2E
June 20, 201313 yr Author I'm in idiot.... I was going to post what garycase just said..but he posted before me.. then weebo posted about esata.. Then I remembered the whole point of the qnap was to replace my current computer that just has qnap/sickbeard on lol thus.. I have a whole spare computer to use
June 20, 201313 yr FWIW, I have one of these for eSATA operations, Works good for quick loading and preclearing. http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/35in-eSATA-USB-Black-SATA-External-Hard-Drive-Enclosure~SAT3510BU2E That's definitely a "cosmetically nicer" unit than what I use ... but I like my little BlacX units, and they work for both 3.5" and 2.5" drives (and hold 2 drives at-a-time): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112
June 20, 201313 yr FWIW, I have one of these for eSATA operations, Works good for quick loading and preclearing. http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/35in-eSATA-USB-Black-SATA-External-Hard-Drive-Enclosure~SAT3510BU2E That's definitely a "cosmetically nicer" unit than what I use ... but I like my little BlacX units, and they work for both 3.5" and 2.5" drives (and hold 2 drives at-a-time): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112 I have a few units like that. When doing something as long as preclear, you want to have a fan moving air nearby. I usually end up getting the models with the eSATA, USB and the built in card reader.
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