DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

I have answered some of your questions.  Keep in mind I don't use raid on the DNS-323 so I don't know exactly how reliable it is, but my guess is that it is OK since even though you see posts on it, you have to remember people don't come to sites like this to make posts bragging about how good things work for them, then post about problems.  So if you don't see tons of people warning against it, it probably isn't that bad.

dcx_badass wrote:

Right, not a PC newby by any stretch but new to NAS, read a lot of threads but couldn't find answers for them all, so here goes:

I'm reading that the Raid 1 is somewhat unreliable and rsync ia better option is this true? As the main reason I am buying the NAS tbh is for a [none PC dependant] Raid 1 array.

Personally I rather have a place to backup to instead of a copy of my mistakes.  Raid 1 is only good for drive failures, I have had very few of them in 35+ years I have been working with computers, but I have had tons of times I have deleted things by mistake or I wanted to go back to old copies, rsync with links (to only copy what has changed) gives a backup for these problems.

For sure if you like your data at all you better have another way to back up your data if you use any form of raid, which is not a backup.

dcx_badass wrote:

Transfer speeds? I'm seeing roughly 15-25mb/s read/write speeds (merged for the sake of ease), this to me seems really slow, especially over gigabit as I currently get 10-12mb/s over 100meg network from my desktop to my original xbox, so the nas on a gigabit I'd be expecting a lot higher speeds?

The transfer speed is limited because of the small amount of memory and speed of the DNS-323's processor, which is geared to lower power usage over high performance.  You might be able to get some better performance with jumbo frames, but the performance you are reporting is typical.

dcx_badass wrote:

Next, I'm fine with FTP, SSH etc. but I presume this isn't needed just to put files on, does it appear in my computer mapped as a network drive so I can copy paste etc in explorer.

You certainly don't have to use FTP, SSH, ... I would guess most people never do and just either use SMB or NFS to serve up their files and that is it.

dcx_badass wrote:

I'd want to use as a network share for my media, so music to itunes and then movies to XBMC as a network share that it could index etc. Does it support the protocols for this (Samba seems the easiest).

Typically music and movies need protocols other then Samba, but I don't do any of this so others can answer this.

dcx_badass wrote:

Next, getting the data on the NAS, I see the drives have to be EXT2? Now due to the slow transfer speeds (mentioned above), can I set up a RAID 1, pull a drive back out the NAS, connect it via sata to my PC and then fill it via explorer (i need an ext2 driver for windows?), then once the data is on via explorer, slot it back in the NAS and the raid 1 will be fine and it will mirror it to both drives, as 2TB over LAN at those speeds seems awful tbh.

I'd be using it direct to my desktop atm as I'm not in a position to have it connected to the router (for the next 18 months), I understand this would be fine etc. Anyway by the time I've got the NAS, and two 2TB drives (Samsung F4's), I'm looking at spending quite a big chunk of money so one it to totally fit my needs.

Thanks.

If you were going to do this on a PC you would certainly need a EXT2 driver, whether you can get it to work with the fact resyncing and such for raid I will leave to others.

dcx_badass wrote:

Right, not a PC newby by any stretch but new to NAS, read a lot of threads but couldn't find answers for them all, so here goes:

I'm reading that the Raid 1 is somewhat unreliable and rsync ia better option is this true? As the main reason I am buying the NAS tbh is for a [none PC dependant] Raid 1 array.

chriso wrote:

Personally I rather have a place to backup to instead of a copy of my mistakes.  Raid 1 is only good for drive failures, I have had very few of them in 35+ years I have been working with computers, but I have had tons of times I have deleted things by mistake or I wanted to go back to old copies, rsync with links (to only copy what has changed) gives a backup for these problems.

For sure if you like your data at all you better have another way to back up your data if you use any form of raid, which is not a backup.

These remarks highlight the problem with RAID1 and consumer NAS units - a misunderstanding of what RAID1 is all about and how & when it should be used.

RAID1 is about high availability of your data - and should be used to reduce or eliminate the impact (or cost) of the downtime that results when a disk fails.

If this is what you need, rsync is simply not an option, and if this is not what you need, then RAID1 is not the answer to your needs.

So why can't I use raid 1 as a back up against hardware failure. The only time I'll lose data is if a drive dies, raid 1 solves this. If there's a fire or I'm burgled losing some data will be the lease of my problems, the most important stuff will be on an external drive 200 miles away, for this I trust raid 1 will suffice. The stuff on the raid will be an inconvenience if lost, but not life ending.

Anyway thanks for the replies, typically since asking this the NAS is out of stock everywhere at the price I wanted.

dcx_badass wrote:

The only time I'll lose data is if a drive dies, raid 1 solves this.

There are other ways to lose data. They are more common than disk-failures
- Delete a file by accident
- Delete a directory by accident
- Overwrite wrong version of file
- Word cant open your doc because it has been corrupted (by word itself)
- Photoshop overwrites your file, loosing the original file
- Virus has infected your files
- Network/WLAN goes down while writing to file
- ...

raid will not protect you. Backup will.

You can add to the list. 
The drive controller fails and writes bad data to both drives.
One drive fails and you make a mistake on what you should do to rebuild a new drive messing up the original.
(Do you know how nervous you get when you realize that you just lost a drive and you need to rebuild, but you realize that you have never done it before, and if you make a mistake you can lose that data?)

You do say that you have a copy of important stuff elsewhere and that is the key, if the data you have on this NAS is not that important or can be recreated then there certainly isn't any reason you can use the other drive for RAID.

My data is actually backup up to the second drive and a copy goes to offline storage (local has the whole history, offline just the latest).  My data is very important to me.

Just bought one, £50 ($80, 60Euro). Thanks for the advice, can I use rsync to 1 TB external hard drive attached to the NAS (i know I need to do some customising to get it to take USB Storage).

Anyone got any recommendations on cool/essential stuff to do for it?

Right as for my getting files onto it. I have one 2TB drive and will be adding another in a week or two, can I set up the NAS with one drive then add the other later and it will set up the Raid 1 fine without having to wipe both drives (they will be the same model drives). Also can I format in the NAS, then pull the hdd, connect it to my PC via sata (will get an ext2 driver) and load the files up then put it back in the NAS (and then make it raid 1 in a few weeks).

Cheers guys!

Thanks, going to update straight to 1.10beta as I have Samsung F4 4k drives and it looks like it formats them properly, so I'll need that.

Is Fun plug enough for me or is Alt-F worth a go, or is it overkill for what I need? Whats with Ext2/3, whats the difference?

All set up, done it as EXT3. I know it's a bit slower, but I'm getting transfer speeds of 9-10.5MB/s, which TBH is awful, I know it wouldn't be really fast, but my Xbox from 2001 can FTP at these speeds and it's only got 100meg lan. How do I get 20+ like some are? I enabled jumbo frams on the NAS and my network card and it got slower, dropping to about 8MB/s.

Can I pull a drive and load it over sata then put it back in?

I'm using my DNS-323 on a gigabit connection (direct to NIC on motherboard), not even a router inbetween and my almost 10 year old xbox can pull the same speeds on 100meg as my DNS-323 can on gigabit!

It is working ok, the NAS is set to 1GBPS, my desktops status is showing the connection at 1GBPS. And as I say, my almost 10 year old xbox can get over 10MB/s over 100Mbs (it hits just over 11 sometimes), I knew the DNS-323 was slow, but I thought it would be faster than 10 year old hardware, especially over a much faster connection.

No idea what optware etc is.
As I say enabling jumbo frames makes it even slower.

Yep, mine is slow too.

I'm not clear if you settled on using RAID or not.  If not, then there is no reason why you could not plug the drive into a SATA port on a PC running linux or whatever and move the files to it faster that way, at least for the initial move.  I think that there is Windows software that will let you mount ext2/3 filesystems.

I'm not sure about all this if you are using RAID.

I think of this box as a somewhat slow file server and backup machine, and I can afford to let long file transfers take as long as they need to - overnight if needed.  It all depends on your needs.

The only real disappointment I had so far is storing large partition-level backups made from Acronis software.  It just took too long to copy those to the DNS, so I ended up putting them on a USB hard drive, attached to the machine I was backing up.  I do file-level backups to the DNS, and that is working fine.

I am using Raid 1. In the end it took 22, yes 22 hours to copy my 650GB. Anyway my friend might just buy it off me instead. Is there a way for me to convert the Raid 1 to a single drive without wiping it?
Just as it took so long to do these files I may aswell leave them on for him, but he only wants one drive (and I need some for my new NAS project). This DNS-323 is very cool, just not for me I on't think.

Thanks for all the help.