March 12, 200917 yr Anyone tried this puppy? http://www.norco.com.cn/en/Storage%20Array/NS-520.htm http://www.habeyusa.com/StorageArray/ns520.html I'm considering it for a friend who needs a home NAS, and putting unRAID on it for him. Might make a nice "unRAID-Mini" ... particularly with a place in the front for a little dot-matrix display panel.
March 12, 200917 yr It seems somewhat limited ... 1 - 5 drives. Possibility to add three more - but would require separate enclosure for them. That's still only 8. 2 - 180 watt PSU. It looks like some non-standard configuration. Could be pricey to replace with few if any options. 3 - Cooling limited. PSU + 1 120mm fan. I'd recommend a larger setup with room to expand.
March 12, 200917 yr Author I'm aware of the limitations... everyone is not looking for a 16 drive monster! This is for someone who will unlikely exceed 3TB of space for many years. In fact, I am starting him out with only 1TB. 5 drives (plus the internal bay for cache) will last him for many years, at least until SATA is probably replaced by something else. He is using a 120GB internal and 400GB external drive now, and those are not even close to full. Plus 2TB drives will be standard later this year. 4TB drives in 2 years, etc. This will be storage, plus an applications platform (BubbaRaid) for 'always-on' apps. Actually, I think the cooling should be excellent. A single 120mm exhaust fan, and seal up the other air intakes around the case so air is drawn in over the drives should be excellent. I would probably want to vent the air-intake for the PSU to the outside though, so the 120mm exhaust does not starve it.
March 12, 200917 yr I have the Norco DS-520G It's very similar. It requires SODIMM. I have 1GB. It has a spot for a Compact Flash, and an IDE Laptop drive (both are populated). It uses 35 watts when drives are spun down. It's fast enough for a small home unit. One thing that is not mentioned, the external SATA are port multiplier capable with the right hardware. With a Norco external 5 drive bay I have 10 drives available. So an installation can have up 20 drives with this unit. The Issue I had was a bios adjustment had to be made in regards to ACPI/Power. This prevents the unit from powering off via sofware. Also initialization of the 5 Drive ESATA unit had detection issues in bios, yet with the latest betas it came up. I'm pretty happy with it. I sold my ReadyNAS NV+, I'll sell off my Thecus 5200BR and and use this instead with unRAID.
March 12, 200917 yr I'm aware of the limitations... everyone is not looking for a 16 drive monster! This is for someone who will unlikely exceed 3TB of space for many years. In fact, I am starting him out with only 1TB. 5 drives (plus the internal bay for cache) will last him for many years, at least until SATA is probably replaced by something else. He is using a 120GB internal and 400GB external drive now, and those are not even close to full. Plus 2TB drives will be standard later this year. 4TB drives in 2 years, etc. This will be storage, plus an applications platform (BubbaRaid) for 'always-on' apps. Actually, I think the cooling should be excellent. A single 120mm exhaust fan, and seal up the other air intakes around the case so air is drawn in over the drives should be excellent. I would probably want to vent the air-intake for the PSU to the outside though, so the 120mm exhaust does not starve it. Sounds like you've thought it through and understand the pros and cons. I'd still suggest specing a more standard configuration (std. motherboard and PSU), explaining the facts, and letting your friend choose. That way if their MB or PSU fails a year from now and they are unable to find a replacement, or looking at a huge cost because there is only one choice, at least they can't blame you!
March 12, 200917 yr Author Unfortunately, there is no small case like this that takes stock hardware and 5 drive bays for anywhere close to a reasonable price. This MUST be a small portable system. One of the values of unRAID is that if the hardware fails, you can replace it with ANY other unRAID box, and you are good to go. Considering I can buy this one for under $300, there ain't much risk.
March 12, 200917 yr Considering I can buy this one for under $300, there ain't much risk. Where??? That's a good deal !!
March 12, 200917 yr With small footprint cheap enough hardware I would defintaely be interested in several smaller arrays than a couple of huge ones. There alot of advantages to this approach.
March 12, 200917 yr Author I'll sell off my Thecus 5200BR I like the feature set in the Thecus , but hate the striped raid aspect... and the price. Here's a NS-520: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120376604972
March 12, 200917 yr That's pretty nifty, so nifty I might have to consider that and combine it with a 4 drive external enclosure I have, 9 drives should be enough. This is also a nice looking unit, however it would be more than $300 to get operational. http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33078&vpn=ES34069-BK-120&manufacture=CHENBRO
March 12, 200917 yr That's pretty nifty, so nifty I might have to consider that and combine it with a 4 drive external enclosure I have, 9 drives should be enough. This is also a nice looking unit, however it would be more than $300 to get operational. http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33078&vpn=ES34069-BK-120&manufacture=CHENBRO I have that chenbro case. It's nice. http://www.logicsupply.com/products/es34069 You need a PCI adapter and a PCI based sata card or a ITX board with 4 sata ports (there is an intel). Cool thing is you can get in internal SD card reader and boot unraid from that too (although the door does not close with the card inserted.. I took the door off). http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2031.msg14752#msg14752
March 12, 200917 yr Been doing some more reading and thinking about these micro arrays (made that term up but i think it sounds cool I think for my next unraid box I will try it. I would be very interested in hearing from Tom if he has any clever ideas about some sort of licensing deal since going this route means many more licenses needed. Perhaps a per disk cost. Tom if you do read this consider the potential of this. A user from all over the globe could source exact compatible and tested unRAID hardware.... immediately opens up your market.
March 12, 200917 yr Author I was thinking the same thing... I see so many people going ga-ga over a drobo or other NAS, who are never going to consider unRAID. They want small, clean, and "open-the-box-plug-in-and-use-it-immediately" toys. Bells-n-whistles-ana-da-blinkin-lights... ya! In all seriousness, if you could just rig a "reset button" to reset the unRAID config to factory specs (like a wireless router) it would be *perfect*.
March 13, 200917 yr I was thinking the same thing... I see so many people going ga-ga over a drobo or other NAS, who are never going to consider unRAID. They want small, clean, and "open-the-box-plug-in-and-use-it-immediately" toys. Bells-n-whistles-ana-da-blinkin-lights... ya! In all seriousness, if you could just rig a "reset button" to reset the unRAID config to factory specs (like a wireless router) it would be *perfect*. If unRAID could be tied to a compact flash in an IDE port that would work really well for this particular unit. All we need now is the new web gui to allow downloading from the website and re-installation onto the firmware drive (Compact flash or USB key) and it would work like a router unit. This is how the Ready NAS and Thecus 5200 is. The Thecus 5200 It is actually a PC minus the VGA connector. There have been people who have soldered the VGA connector on and loaded other NAS environments. In any case, the beauty of this particular unit is it's a fully functioning PC with built in VGA.
March 13, 200917 yr Author All we need now is the new web gui to allow downloading from the website and re-installation onto the firmware drive (Compact flash or USB key) I got one! ;D It is not fully finished, but as a proof-of-concept, it works. Browse to web site, click on link which launches a wizard that gets the latest unRAID, and sets up the flash for you. I'm just working on getting it to format the flash too.
March 25, 200917 yr All we need now is the new web gui to allow downloading from the website and re-installation onto the firmware drive (Compact flash or USB key) I got one! ;D ... ah ha you didnt actually mean you HAD one of these did you?
March 25, 200917 yr Author No, what my post said, was I had a gui that will install stuff to the unRAID flash from your Windows box, w/o swapping out the flash, or even rebooting unRAID.
August 29, 200916 yr Anyone tried this puppy? I got one of these a month ago, and it's been runnung pretty stable so far. There are some things that bother me: -- 1. The disks run slow -- 2. Whenever two or more disks are accessed at the same time, the system gets really, REALLY slow. If you look at htop at times like this you see a whole bunch of processes stuck in device-wait state Despite the above annoyances, it is still a pretty good deal for 300 bucks! It eats about 30 Watts at the plug when in heavy use, and for someone who only uses this to watch DVD movies off of it, it does a great job! Purko ============= EDIT: After some tweaking, and after unRAID version 4.5-beta11, the above problems are gone.
August 29, 200916 yr Author Now if someone would just make one of these nifty cases that takes a standard mini-ITX or micro-ATX mobo, we could rock it.
August 29, 200916 yr Have you posted a syslog for review? I have a norco-DS520G and it did not seem to have the IO issues explained here. I think I ended up turning off power management in the BIOS.
August 29, 200916 yr Have you posted a syslog for review? The syslog is right there attached at the end of my post.
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