Drobo Alternative w/ "BeyondRaid"/"XRaid2"/"Hybrid Raid"

[mosco]

Are there any 4 bay external raid controllers that use something like these expansion techniques that isn't a drobo?

I have a synology now, but I am looking for something that isn't networked.

 

[murphyc]

The way all of those work is by creating partitions equal in size to the lowest common denominator drive, then using various RAID methods on those partitions, rather than the entire block device, in order to use all space for arbitrary sized drives. This is OK for NAS due to the GigE performance limit being about as fast (or slower than) single disk performance. It's not a real performance hit.

The only good reason for DAS is for better performance, which will be negatively impacted by these techniques. You're better off expanding by either rebuilding the array with all new larger drives, or by adding an expansion device.

Further, an array of the size you're indicating (at least 4TB, possibly 16TB) is large enough it's unwise to have it directly connected to a workstation.

If you're presently depending on SMB/CIFS, you're maybe getting 35MB/s transfer rates. Consider putting the NAS on a UPS (for safety) and configure for async NFS, with which you should be able to push ~100MB/s over GigE.

 

[WildW]

I noticed with some interest that Windows 8 will have a BeyondRaid style disk pooling feature called "Storage Spaces" built in. Looks like you can change things dynamically (i.e. add/change disks later on). http://www.anandtech.com/show/5307/windows-8s-storage-spaces-detailed

Given that Windows 8 is going to be a cheap upgrade, maybe an old PC with an XP licence could be given a new lease of life as a NAS. . .certainly cheaper than a Drobo, and I guess with a proper CPU it should perform better?

 

[murphyc]

ReFS and Storage Spaces are a Windows Server 2012 feature, however.