I think you might be a bit optimistic there with 35W if you use more than 2 disks.

My reasons for saying this are:

- 10 to 15W spin up power per drive (you can get around this to a point with staggered spin up)

- 80% efficient PSU at a guess

- Circa 7W operating power for the drives

- CPU and cooling will all require power too.

so 4 drives = 28W just for the running drives + CPU + RAID hardware if not done in the CPU + any other bits on the system board + power losses + cooling

and you need 21W + 15W to allow for the last drive to spin up anyway.

I think something like a via eden or atom or even a low power mobile core2 would fit in the less than 100W bracket and do a lot more than just NAS.

My Readynas Duo with 1x1.5TB ecogreen HDD draws about 17watts in use and under 10watts in standby.

I've measured it.

My Readynas Duo with 1x1.5TB ecogreen HDD draws about 17watts in use and under 10watts in standby.

I've measured it.

Right, so as I said that's with 1 drive.

What is the power useage at spin up when the drive is using most power to get itself moving?

Your 10w in standby is not insignificant and kid of works with my approx 7w per drive figure for it running.

Also my example clearly said with more than 2 drives.

Edited 6 May, 201016 yr by cheezemonkhai

A bit more expensive, but well worth the extra cash.

Clicky

I have 4tb in mine.

Right, so as I said that's with 1 drive.

What is the power useage at spin up when the drive is using most power to get itself moving?

Your 10w in standby is not insignificant and kid of works with my approx 7w per drive figure for it running.

Also my example clearly said with more than 2 drives.

No need to get all defensive mate, I'm not challenging you - just pointing out to readers of the thread what a real world power utilisation is like on a Readynas with 1 drive.

Good review site that, lots of NAS listed.

I am against a server on grounds of power consumption. The dedicated NAS boxes are around 35w vs maybe 85w minimum on a server.

The review for the WHS machine that I posted quotes this for power consumption:

"As for power consumption, there's room for improvement but it's not that much above others of this ilk clocking up 40W at idle and 44.9W under load."

That's running an Atom CPU on (I guess) a mini itx board.

The review for the WHS machine that I posted quotes this for power consumption:

"As for power consumption, there's room for improvement but it's not that much above others of this ilk clocking up 40W at idle and 44.9W under load."

That's running an Atom CPU on (I guess) a mini itx board.

Fair point as I missed that. Question is the WHS duplication thingy as good as raid.

Still got a couple of weeks before the TV card I want hits the shelf so still some time to decide.

Fair point as I missed that. Question is the WHS duplication thingy as good as raid.

Still got a couple of weeks before the TV card I want hits the shelf so still some time to decide.

Tick the box for Duplication on a particular folder and the folder is duplicated across multiple disks so yes, it's the same theoretically as RAID 1.

It's better than Raid really as you can prioritise your data to save space, if you have some downloaded films on there that you have watched once but you aren't really that bothered about protecting you don't need to duplicate them, duplication turned off for that folder leaving more space for critical files.

I'm afraid the discussion around better or not than RAID isn't really a real conversation as there are many versions of RAID and each vendor does different things.

All RAID is, is an set of way to use multiple disks to provide some level of redundancy (except for zero)

I'm afraid the discussion around better or not than RAID isn't really a real conversation as there are many versions of RAID and each vendor does different things.

All RAID is, is an set of way to use multiple disks to provide some level of redundancy (except for zero)

Is it a real conversation if we narrow it down to RAID 1 NAS vs WHS Duplication?

I have a GF9300 motherboard (closest thing to a laptop board), with a C2Q 2.6, 8GB RAM and 4 x 1TB drives in it.

It runs at just under 100w. (admittedly ~130 when starting up)

In it's original spec with 2 x 500GB drives it was ~80w.

It concurrently runs 3 instances of Windows (each for a different purpose), FreeNAS, and a remote access server (like Citrix) all under virtualbox.

It is not noisy, hot or too hungry.

Nice though NAS boxes are, they are a point solution that do one thing well (NAS) and other things very badly (torrent for example).

(But that's what most of us want one for)

I'm afraid the discussion around better or not than RAID isn't really a real conversation as there are many versions of RAID and each vendor does different things.

All RAID is, is an set of way to use multiple disks to provide some level of redundancy (except for zero)

True.

I use either RAID1 (mirror) or RAID4 (Netapp) or RAID7+1 (EMC)

Depends how many copies of the parity stripe you want when you get past RAID 5.

Phil

Is it a real conversation if we narrow it down to RAID 1 NAS vs WHS Duplication?

Every vendors RAID chip does different things to the discs, so you can't count on it.

From my view, WHS is just software Raid1, with the CPU overhead that comes with that.

We use the NetGear ReadyNAS NVX's at work and have also used Bufallo Terastations and so far the NetGears have been very good although we have managed to make them freeze up a couple of times when running large NT backups to them. Putting them on GB/ full ethernet is essential. They do iSCSI (tried and tested on a 10mb hub - awesome! ), you can play with the RAID (although it took us a while to figure out how to change this as it's not obvious) and they power themselves back on if the power is taken away and put back on again - very handy if you don't have a UPS and the device is in a remote location that loses power a lot (we do). They don't have a lock on the front though so nothing stopping someone yanking the disks if they wanted to which the Bufallo's do have.

We use the NetGear ReadyNAS NVX's at work and have also used Bufallo Terastations and so far the NetGears have been very good although we have managed to make them freeze up a couple of times when running large NT backups to them. Putting them on GB/ full ethernet is essential. They do iSCSI (tried and tested on a 10mb hub - awesome! ), you can play with the RAID (although it took us a while to figure out how to change this as it's not obvious) and they power themselves back on if the power is taken away and put back on again - very handy if you don't have a UPS and the device is in a remote location that loses power a lot (we do). They don't have a lock on the front though so nothing stopping someone yanking the disks if they wanted to which the Bufallo's do have.

It might be very handy, but in truth it would probably kill the drives in the event of an unstable power situation or if you had an inrush and the voltage picks up after power failure.

If I'm honest, I'd rather have it off or at least the option to have power off after power loss.

I currently have a Lacie EDmini 500 gb and was thinking of replacing it as it isnt the most reliable, was looking at these ones QNAP TS-219p has anyone else one of these? what do you think?

Thanks

Dallan