Network Attached Storage?

Kelly,

The product specifications say that it is SATA 1 and 2 compatible. The maximum size supported is 500Gb.

Here's the URL for the product:
http://www.infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=ReadyNAS%20NV

As far as drives is concerned, well, I won't mention brands because that will get us all on a brand war with no end. People have had different experiences with different brands. You'll find as many people with faulty Seagates as people who haven't had any problems using them for many years 24/7.

As far as drive capacity, that depends on your needs. If it was for my personal use I know I would be good enough with 250Gb drives. Four of them would make 0.7Tb storage which is quite nice for the type of files I deal with. Your mileage may vary.

I hope this helps,
Julian

That depends on your needs. First off, why NAS? Are you sharing your storage across multiple computers? If so, you might be better off just setting aside an old Mac as a file server and using cheaper storage on it.

barebones the ReadyNAS NV is about $620. With your budget of $750 leaves you with $130 for a single HDD or perhaps two 250 GB drives at ~80 a pop.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822329006

keep in mind that the RAID-X scheme looks promising but when it comes time to exapand or migrate your array to raid-5, you'll be running into all sorts of problems with OS X not being able to see the extra space

OS X will see this as 'free space' in disk utility but if you go to format that extra space you'll loose everything on the current and future partition.

Plus, iPartition and that SubRosaSoft disk utiltity cannot expand raid arrays. I have personally contacted them and they said it's not possible to expand a raid partition using their software.

This means that you'll either have to pony up for at least 3 hdd $$$ over the $620 you want to spend for raid 5 b/c raid 5 requires at least 3 hdds.

Perhaps the formatting software works differently than my raid utilitites, but I would expect if you migrated your array from say raid 0 or 1 to raid 5 you'll end up with disk utiltiy seeing extra sapce you will never be able to partition.

I'll double check on this for you.

I don't think that's correct. Since the ReadyNAS is a file server, running ordinary protocols (SMB/CIFS, NFS, AFP), you don't format it with OS X.

So, all the details about the RAID on the ReadyNAS are essentially invisible to the Mac client.

According to the Infrant manual, you can start with one drive, and add more whenever. Of course, RAID5 doesn't kick in until you've got 3 drives.

The more I read about this gadget, the more impressed I am. On my previous job, we used a bunch (a big bunch) of expensive, huge Network Appliance servers. In many ways, the ReadyNAS reminds me of those impressive gadgets, but the NetApps cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

yup tele_player you're right!

I've started a few threads on the infrant forums to clarify things if you or OP are interested

thread_1 | thread_2

the only questions left to be answered are about performance (MB/S) and the OCE/OLRM process

I agree it looks promising. One user using a Quad G5 7.4k packets and the ReadyNAS in raid-1 gets about 50 MB/S reads and 38 MB/S writes

here's the quote

'

QuickBench reported 50.5MB/s read and 38MB/s write, almost all the way from the 128k to 100MB test. That was an AFP chare.

'

pretty good. plus you can expand the array once it's full with 4 disks (need to confirm this)

I re-checked the user manual. Basically say if you have 4x500 GB or 4x250 GB disks in raid 5 and you want to expand the raid5 bigger you must replace all four drives. It's all four or none at all.

$$$$

I'd say I recommend this product, although I'm still waiting to confirm it's performance with Infrant.

Considering it supports quasi-jumbo frames (it'll only do ~7.4k), supports 750 GB seagates, has decent MB/S in raid 1, and is self contained NAS, producing a similar system based on a G4 would cost

computer - $100
raid controller - $175
gig-e card - $100

good review

looks like the nv has a 280 MHz proc and a 180 W psu. the g4 would have a 250 W psu + a 400 MHz proc and would be 244.99 less expensive than the ready Nas.

The advantages I see over the G4 option include size, quietness, expandability (you can't do OCE/OLRM on the rocketraid as they claim [no way to expand the partiton after OCE] )

I say for around $250 extra bucks it's prob. worth it. But then again you can't fold on the nas when it's not being used. On the G4 you could install folding apps to kick the downtime when it's not in use.

The only thing I'm wary about is the expansion on the ReadyNAS NV system. Can it really expand itself? Probably, but I'm waiting for confirmation.

That bit about what happens when you've already got four drives is kind of unavoidable.

Anything you cobble together with an old computer wouldn't be as small, flexible and integrated, probably wouldn't support hot-swap replacement of drives, and I think you might be underestimating the cost of a usable G4.

I wouldn't recommend anything I haven't used - but I'd personally give this thing a try if I needed a small NAS box.

no, they really are that cheap (well, plus shipping). I've bought a number of g4's off ebay with no problems for around that price (typing on one now =) )

the only future problem would be the psu but with only four drives that stock psu would probably handle it no prob. the apple site says it requires a 800 mhz processor for the gig-e nics. That doesn't really make sense though because with 9k frames it would only decrease cpu usage. Perhaps there's some sort of hardware incompatibiltiy. The old g4's are pretty hot too, dissipation wise, but they don't use more than 10 W I think peak cpu load.

I agree on the integration part. Plus the ReadyNAS NV supports expansion much better than the RocketRaid cards.

Once I fill up my space I'll probably be getting a few of these and then build them out as needed using X-Raid. Thanks to the OP for sparking the interest.

A user on the infrant site noted that the cpu used in the ReadyNAS performs the XOR calculations. It seems based on Tom's Hardware reviews that the writes are only jumbo framed. The reads are still at 1.5k. Infrant confirmed this.

This makes the unit perform at about 30 MB/S both ways. I assume if jumbo frames were not used the writes would be slower.

It's still pretty weak, but not that bad. The only hitch I can see is the STR being kind of low. But at 30 MB/S it's not too bad.

Although I can get those speeds over gig-e with 1.5k frames anyway. The 7.4k frames were probably added to speed up the writes on raid-5 I'm guessing.

I still think an old g4 is a better option purely based on cost. If you're not a poor college student like me then drop for a nas device I guess.

I've built a G4 raid-5 device similar to the one mentioned and it runs fine. The only problem is the expansion. If in the future I would want to expand I would have to drop all that money again for another g4, nic, and raid controller.

Supposedly with the ready nas you can simply swap the 4 disks out for 4 bigger ones.

Only hitch on that route is it would take a week to do it.

One cool feature I saw on the Infrant is this:

Let's say you have 4 250Gb drives in RAID 5. You can remove one 250Gb and put a 500Gb instead. The infrant box will use 250Gb out of the 500Gb and keep the RAID 5 integrity.

Now, you can start replacing the 250s one by one with 500Gbs, each time using half the hard drive in order to keep integrity. As soon as you put the last 500Gb drive on, the Infrant box will automatically grow the RAID 5 and use the entire 500Gb drives. Pretty cool!!

I hope this helps,
Julian