Anyone using a NAS with 2TB disks?

[Lifted]

I need to build a temp NAS that supports 1.5TB or 2TB disks. 4 to 8 bays. RAID 5.

Anyone here have anything like this running yet? Which enclosure and brand/model disks did you use?

 

[Lifted]

I've use promise as DAS storage before, but never NAS. Has anyone experience with Promise NAS products? I'm looking at this one at the moment.

Edit: Read that wrong, no NAS from promise. only DAS (SAS) or iSCSI. Might end up going this route though even though it will take a bit longer to get up and running.

 

[somethingsketchy]

There is the DroboPro (that supports up to 16TB - 2TB per drive - for total capacity). As far as I know, I believe this is the version of Drobo that has an integrated Ethernet port so it can act as a NAS.

However I've never owned a Drobo before (only seen reviews for their products) so I'm speculating that their products could fit into what you are looking for.

http://www.drobo.com/products/drobopro/ <- link to their product website

 

[Lifted]

It appears to be direct attach and iSCSI. I don't see NAS support anywhere after a quick glance. I'll give it a further look though. Thanks.

 

[Mark R]

I have a QNAP TS-410 with 4x 1.5TB (Seagate Barracuda LP 5900 rpm) disks. Works great, but the integrated Marvell processor is absurdly underpowered (write speeds are dire, because the CPU can't cope with the task of managing the filesystem and RAID).

Obviously, this is an extreme budget device, so it struggles and I knew it would struggle when I bought it. One thing I didn't count on, is that the most recent firmware update is quite bloated, and it starts swap-thrashing shortly after boot. So I had to put the old firmware back on.

That said, the QNAP was a breeze to set up, add RAID capacity and swap out faulty drives. It's got all the stuff you want, like e-mail and SMS alerts, alarm buzzers, status LEDs, blah. It works fine for iSCSI, and for windows file and printer sharing. I've got it set up as a standalone SOHO file server. It can integrate with active directory on enterprise networks (but I can't comment on how usable that is).

If I was buying again, I'd definitely get a higher end model though. The base model with a 1 GHz ARM CPU and 256 MB isn't enough. I also didn't appreciate how quickly I'd blow through 4.5 TB of storage, so realistically I'd want more than 4 bays.

If I was buying again, I'd get one of their new dual-core Atom series - like the TS-659, or even the TS-859. The 1.66 Ghz dual-core hyperthreaded CPU is more than adequate for a NAS (it's something like 15x more powerful than the Marvell CPU in my device), and it's got 1 GB of RAM, so you don't need to worry about firmware bloat.

Other things worth noting about the QNAP NAS is that it runs a standard linux installation. This means that you get the standard RAID system, that works best with multiple identical drives. The drobo is better in this regard with its 'beyond RAID' system capable of maximizing the capacity with multiple different capacity drives. However, the Drobo uses a proprietary, trade secret, algorithm of performing its RAID functions - so if there is a catastrophic system failure, your hope of getting your data back is slim. By contrast, with the QNAP, you can just plug the drives into the SATA ports on a linux PC, and they are detected automatically. I've tested this as a last ditch method of getting data back (plugged 3 out of 4 NAS drives into a linux PC, and they instantly detected as a degraded RAID array and mounted read-only ready for data recovery).

Other notes: QNAP currently only support up to 2TB per drive. Linux does have support for > 2TB drives when they become available - it's not clear whether these drives are supported on the new firmware, or whether a new firmware will be required.