Network storage

[steingra]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

Could very likely be your NAS PC isn't beefy enough to support the amount of data coming across the system (both in and out). Could also be the PCI implementation on the board (is it a Via chipset board). That's one of the problems of using a PC as a NAS box, it's not really designed for that job, whereas a real NAS box has caching, low system overhead, etc, to keep the data moving as quickly as possible.

That is interesting point. I really like this NASLite software. Its inexpensive, but seems solid. And it could mean I dont need yet another Windows XP license because NASLite has its own basic OS. And with many less lines of code in it vs. the 40,000,000 million lines of code in Windows XP (or however many it is)...seems like it could be a stable little box.

BUT! can it be fast enough?

And while it might be appealing to dredge up some old 233 Mhz Pentium II PC, it might not be a good match for the task of being a PC-based NAS. For the cost of it, I am willing to try it. Heck, even if its not fast enough for SageTV backend storage, I can use it for an extra backup location for data on my other PC's. So I dont see it as a waste of time.

Maybe if I use newer PC (pentium III) with ata/133 drives, it might be OK?

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by steingra

So you are saying that your NASLite was working just fine as a backend storage solution for your SageTV recordings...until you installed 4.1.6 beta?

yes. Everything was fine until I installed 4.1.6 then it went nuts. My NASLite system is an amd 2700+ with 512mb or ram and a gb network. I can transfer a DVD in about 7 minutes as compared to 220min. with a 100mb network.

[steingra]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

yes. Everything was fine until I installed 4.1.6 then it went nuts. My NASLite system is an amd 2700+ with 512mb or ram and a gb network. I can transfer a DVD in about 7 minutes as compared to 220min. with a 100mb network.

are you saying with a 1Gbps network card, it takes 7 minutes, and otherwise it takes 220 minutes to transfer like 4.7GB of data?

[heffe2001]

Something sounds wrong if it takes 220 minutes to transfer 8g. I routinely transfer large files over my 100-base network segments, and it's NEVER taken that long to move a DVD image. Are you using a switch on your 100mb network, or was it a hub?

[lotusvball]

My 100mb network is a switch and so is my 1gb network. I actually never time how long it really took on the 100mb, I just went off of the windows transfer window, which we all know is inacurate, and it stated 220 min.

[Kimper]

hmm, About 8-10 min to move 5gig DVD on my 100mb network.

[Nightrader_]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

Has anyone looked at Server Elements. They have a product that can turn any old system into a NAS. I just set mine up and it is awesome. I plan on adding another harddrive to give me a TB. http://www.serverelements.com/ I went with NASLite+ for 24.95. Since I already had the hardware is was much cheaper than going with an additional full system.

I stumbled across this, FreeNAS

http://www.freenas.org/

From FreeNAS website:
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC protocols, local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 16MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key. The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by Nightrader_

I stumbled across this, FreeNAS

http://www.freenas.org/

From FreeNAS website:
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC protocols, local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 16MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key. The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

A number of people I talked to said that this is fine, but there were many issues. Stability being the first and the next was support. Because it is a free product you will only get so much support. Server elements is working on a version two that is rumored to SATA support along with many new features that may make this an interesting product for the media server area. My system has been running for 3 months without one reboot needed. Rock solid, I even forget it exists. I am getting ready to build another system with an old pc. 4TB of data. I will fill the addition 2tb up in about a month. DVD's

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Nightrader_

I stumbled across this, FreeNAS

http://www.freenas.org/

From FreeNAS website:
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC protocols, local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 16MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key. The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.

This is what I am currently running on an old P4 1.5 GHz with 2 x 400 GB drives.They are currently working on some issues with their implementaion of software RAID, but I'm not using that yet. (I tried but the drives wouldn't format). But I'm running the latest (v6.4) and have had no stability issues whatsover. Been up over a month and it just runs. Both drives are shared out, one for DVDs and the other for TV. Excellent transfer rates with a GB NIC. About 3-4 minutes to copy 4.3GB of data. No stutters from 3 clients playing the same recording.

Gerry

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by gplasky

This is what I am currently running on an old P4 1.5 GHz with 2 x 400 GB drives.They are currently working on some issues with their implementaion of software RAID, but I'm not using that yet. (I tried but the drives wouldn't format). But I'm running the latest (v6.4) and have had no stability issues whatsover. Been up over a month and it just runs. Both drives are shared out, one for DVDs and the other for TV. Excellent transfer rates with a GB NIC. About 3-4 minutes to copy 4.3GB of data. No stutters from 3 clients playing the same recording.

Gerry

How easy was implementation?

[tmiranda]

I've been looking into NASLite as well as FreeNAS and have decided to try out NASLite. NASLite seems more stable and has better performance.

For those having performance issues, I believe there are two version of NASLite: NASLite and NASLite+. The "+" version has code written specififcally for various IDE chipsets so the performance is much better than NASLite which uses generic IDE drivers. From what I've read in their forums NASLite+ saturates a 100 MB network even when being run on very modest hardware. (I'm talking 1 GHz CPUs). The bigger issue seems to be making sure the old PC supports UDMA 100.

I am in the process of setting up a system using an old Syntax board with a built in 800 MHz VIA Samuel 2 (don't laugh, it was free and it runs fanless so it is really quiet!) and a 160 GB WD hard drive. When I have some results I will post them here.

Edit: Corrected CPU speed and name.

[tmiranda]

The results so far are very promising! I did some "unscientific" testing by copying a 4.1 GB file to a NASLite disk and another shared disk on my network. The results: 8:30 to copy to the NASLite drive and 6:50 to the other network drive. This is obviously not an apples to apples comparison because there are tons of uncontrolled variables.

Looking at my network usage I see that when copying to the NASLite drive the transfer rate is about 80 mpbs. When copying to the other network drive the transfer rate is about 88 mbps.

I consider this extremely good considering the NASLite box is low end and the other network drive is in a pretty decent box (Dell 400SC with 2.6 GHz Celeron and the drive is SATA.)

I've just added the NASLite drive to my Sage recording drives and as I type 2 shows are being recorded to the new drive. The real test comes when I try to play the recordings but I am very optimistic at this point.

For $25 NASLite rocks. And in case I did not mention it, install and setup could not be easier.

[spike5884]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

For $25 NASLite rocks. And in case I did not mention it, install and setup could not be easier.

So, the above set-up & testing was done with NASLite and not NASLite+. Correct? If so, why did you decide against NASLite+?

[tmiranda]

No, I used NASLite+ which costs $24.95. I just got lazy in my post and did not type the "+".

[steingra]

Has anyone used NASLite here, and then tried to tell SageTV to delete video files (that exist on the NASLite computer)

My first NASLite computer/server is working fine, except SageTV doesnt have permissions to delete files (at least that is what it appears to be)

All files the SageTV created on the NASLite Server, are owned by a user called NAS-User. And I cant change permissions on them, from a WIndows XP machine, can only view the permissions.

I was hoping someone may have encountered this problem and dealt with it.

Thanks

EDIT: I ended up just rebooting both the main sagetv server and the NASLite server, and then everything worked fine. Guess things just got locked up. So I was able to delete eveything I wanted to just fine, without doing anything extra. Just opened up a SageTV client, and did Crtl-W to mark all the shows as watched, and deleted the folder with everything in it.

[lotusvball]

I have no problem deleting files on the NASlite+ server.

[Hades]

I just took a look at naslite+ usb, and im kinda dissapointed that it does not support RAID in any shape or form.. i kinda like the redundancy factor i get with RAID5,also i find it much less of a pain with ONE big partition..the spare current drives i have are only 160gb also.

Maybe version 2 of naslite will support it ? (i think its still in beta..and they seem very hush-hush about it on the forums.
Though i did think naslite was a breeze to setup,freenas took a bit longer..(okay much longer )


Gonna try freenas now, (supports software RAID (0,1,5)

EDIT1: Freenas seems to be working well (.66) Software RAID5 setup and functioning fine...

EDIT2: Hmm,scratch that, RAID5 just gone FUBAR after doing a test to put the array into standby,now i cannot recover the mount point... D`oh!!

[jgsouthard]

I can't tell from previous posts in this thread whether anyone is using NASLite+ on a 100Mb LAN with SageTV. It sounds like the OP is using 1Gb LAN.

Can 100Mb LAN keep up with SageTV recordings on separate network file storage, say recording two shows with two tuners, while simultaneously watching an earlier recording? Anyone tried this?

I just set up a NASLite+ file server at our church, after using Debian w/Samba for the last couple of years. NASLite+ was SO simple that I wish I'd switched to it a long time ago. It doesn't give me all of the functions that I'd like (e.g. secure remote FTP, share security, RAID, etc.), but it's great for what it does. I looked at OpenFiler and FreeNAS as well (as well as continuing with my previous Linux roll-my-own approach), but NASLite+ was by far the easiest to set up and maintain.

I have SageTV at home on a standalone home-brew PVR running two tuners (Hauppauge PVR-250's). I'm running out of hard drive space for recordings, and I either need to buy bigger hard drives for the PVR or start recording over the network to other storage. I'd like to consider networked storage, since I need it for some other backup purposes as well.

My PVR has a 100Mb NIC, is connected to a 100Mb home network, and I have several 100Mb switches that I don't want to have to replace. I'm thinking of using an older computer to set up a NASLite+ file server to use for PVR recordings, and it also has a 100Mb NIC.

I know I'd be OK with Gb LAN, but I'm not so sure about 100Mb....

[tmiranda]

I have a two tuner system connected to a NASLite+ USB system over a 100 MB LAN and have never had any problems even when recording two shows and playing 2 shows simultaneously. My NASLite+ box is using a REALLY low end CPU / motherboard combination.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jgsouthard

I can't tell from previous posts in this thread whether anyone is using NASLite+ on a 100Mb LAN with SageTV. It sounds like the OP is using 1Gb LAN.

Can 100Mb LAN keep up with SageTV recordings on separate network file storage, say recording two shows with two tuners, while simultaneously watching an earlier recording?

On a 100TX full duplex connection you should be able to get to about 4-5 simutaneous recordings.