My first NAS

[redone632]

I'm going to be building a new computer, so I've decided to dedicate the computer that it will be replacing, as our home NAS/printer server. But before I dump a load of cash on the upgrades and finalizing everything I'd just like your guys input on it. I don't want to buy too much so that I'm wasting money because I'm being bottlenecked somewhere.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.2 Ghz
ASUS P5B Motherboard
2x OCZ 1 GB DDR2 800 RAM
nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX
2x WD Black 1TB 32 MB Cache Hard Drives (RAID 0)
Onboard Gigabit Ethernet

One of the things I'm stuck on is a good RAID controller for this. I've done some looking around and it seems that the price on the controllers can be anywhere as low as $30 to as high as $200 for what I can tell, the same controller. Also, would I see a significant difference in upgrading to 4 GB of RAM?

Example
SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller Card - $30.79
vs
HighPoint RocketRAID 3120 PCI-Express x1 SATA True Hardware RAID Controller - $158.99

I also have a D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N router on the way to replace my old Linksys WRT54G router which doesn't support Gigabit 10/100/1000.

I will be using this NAS for pictures, videos, video streaming, printing.

Clients are:
2 Vista Home Premium Computers (Wired Gigabit)
1 Vista Home Premium Computer (Wireless N)
2 Vista Home Premium Laptops (Wireless G)
1 Vista Ultimate Laptop (Wireless G)
Playstation 3 (Wired Gigabit)
Xbox 360 (Wireless G Gaming Adapter)

I've read Tim's recent article on Windows Vista SP1 for the OS on the NAS and it's performance seems very good. I was wondering if there were any free alternatives available with similar results and compatibility(as I need to run several streaming programs to stream videos to the PS3).

I've been mulling over this for the past month or so reading article after article and I've decided to run it past you guys as a last check before I place my order Any suggestions/help would be much appreciated.

 

[thiggins]

Since most of your clients are Vista, you will get best performance running Vista on the NAS/Server (SP1, of course).

But if you are running mostly wireless, even draft 11n, you won't be able to take advantage of the high speeds that Vista SP1 can provide. Whatever, you do, make sure the server/NAS is connected via gigabit Ethernet to the router. That way you won't cut throughput in half from two wireless hops (nas to router, router to client).

Skip the RAID controller and use the onboard BIOS RAID. For RAID 0 you won't see a difference in using the controller.

The more memory you have in your NAS, the better. So 4GB of RAM is a better investment than the RAID controller.

 

[redone632]

Thanks for the response I will be connecting the NAS via wired Gigabit. What do you think would be the max quality I will be able to view on the Wireless N, Wireless G, and Wired Gigabit connections? I'm looking at streaming HD video in 1080p, 720p, or lower quality.

Also, I've read up on the motherboard and it says it supported 4x SATA hard drives but then bellow that in the manual it says 1x Internal SATA 1x External SATA RAID 0 or 1. Which makes me think that it can only do RAID with one internal and one external even though it supports 4 internal connections. Or am I reading that wrong?

Here's the manual

Installing 4 GB of RAM will require me to run 64-bit Vista, correct?

Sorry for all the questions, I just don't want to set up all this stuff and find out I missed something

 

[owen1978]

Hi,

Im currently on a similar project, this server your building is it, going to be used as a desktop pc? i see that you are putting in a decent gfx card, you going to use for gaming?

 

[redone632]

Hi,

Im currently on a similar project, this server your building is it, going to be used as a desktop pc? i see that you are putting in a decent gfx card, you going to use for gaming?

This is a computer that is being replaced by a newer one that I'm buying. Instead of throwing it out I decided to turn it into a NAS/Server with a few additions, like the hard drives.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the response I will be connecting the NAS via wired Gigabit. What do you think would be the max quality I will be able to view on the Wireless N, Wireless G, and Wired Gigabit connections? I'm looking at streaming HD video in 1080p, 720p, or lower quality.

Wired gigabit will support all formats. 11g will support standard def only. Draft 11n might support HD. See Video Streaming Need To Know: Part 2 - The Real World and HD Streaming Smackdown: Draft 11n vs. Powerline

Also, I've read up on the motherboard and it says it supported 4x SATA hard drives but then bellow that in the manual it says 1x Internal SATA 1x External SATA RAID 0 or 1. Which makes me think that it can only do RAID with one internal and one external even though it supports 4 internal connections. Or am I reading that wrong?

Just check the BIOS settings on the motherboard when you enable RAID mode for the SATA drives. If it has an Intel SATA controller, I'd be surprised if it didn't support RAID0 on the internal drives.

Installing 4 GB of RAM will require me to run 64-bit Vista, correct?

No.

 

[claykin]

Just check the BIOS settings on the motherboard when you enable RAID mode for the SATA drives. If it has an Intel SATA controller, I'd be surprised if it didn't support RAID0 on the internal drives.
No.

Asus P5B has an ICH8 southbridge (6 ports SATA II no RAID) and a JMicron 363 2 port RAID 0/1 controller.

The P5BE uses the ICH8R which includes Intel's software based RAID. See here for more details:

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/313056.htm

Personally, I wouldn't trust the JMicron controller for my RAID needs, but thats me... If your serious about performance/reliability think twice about using a software RAID solution. Read up on hardware based RAID controllers. Look at Areca, 3Ware, Adaptec, Promise, LSI. They are more $$, but they keep the RAID processing in hardware as opposed to a software driver that robs your CPU and is prone to typical driver issues.

Have you thought about keeping it simple and using Windows Home Server with your existing hardware? It should do everything you need and can use your standard SATA II ports for Drive Extending (Microsoft's flavor of data redundancy). No RAID controller required. Your existing hardware should be a screamer running WHS.

 

[thiggins]

I defer to Claykin on the RAID issue...

 

[redone632]

I was under the assumption that Vista or any other 32-bit OS can only adress 2^32 bits of information and thus, it would be only able to see around 3.5 GB of RAM and I'd be wasting the rest. Or do I have that all wrong?

As far as the RAID controller goes, I'm looking at the 3ware 9650SE card but for $231 for something that isn't guaranteed to support my motherboard and might have problems with Vista, doesn't seem to be worth the price which is about the same as the hard drives I plan to put on. Are there any other cards that are cheaper that you would suggest? I only have room for PCI Express x1 and PCI slots.

 

[thiggins]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003/

 

[redone632]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003/

Wow, that cleared up a lot of confusion I had about that. Thanks

In your latest article you compare a single drive, and RAID 0 with two and three drives. I was wondering what card you used or if you just used the onboard controller?

Test Bed Volume Average Write (MB/s) Average Read (MB/s)
Single Drive 103.8 [plot] 92.2 [plot]
RAID 0 - 2 drive 100.2 [plot] 107.5 [plot]
RAID 0 - 3 drive 101.2 [plot] 105.2 [plot]

 

[redone632]

Also, are all these RAID controllers as bad as they sound for compatibility? I haven't found a single RAID controller that says it supports ASUS P5B motherboard and all I hear about is compatibility issues.

 

[thiggins]

In your latest article you compare a single drive, and RAID 0 with two and three drives. I was wondering what card you used or if you just used the onboard controller?

Onboard Intel RAID.

 

[claykin]

Also, are all these RAID controllers as bad as they sound for compatibility? I haven't found a single RAID controller that says it supports ASUS P5B motherboard and all I hear about is compatibility issues.

This is one of the reasons why I recommended Windows Home Server. While it may not be "cool" it works well with Intel based hardware and manages it Drive Extender redundancy feature without a RAID controller.

Are you sure you want to venture down the RAID path with your own PC hardware? Remember, you'll want matching disks (in a perfect world) when using RAID. With WHS this is not necessary.

 

[redone632]

I was going to buy the HighPoint RocketRAID 3120 as it is a Hardware RAID controller with a moderate price tag. But then I stumbled upon this article which shows the onboard RAID controller on the Intel ICH10R chipset actually out performs the HighPoint RocketRAID 3120 on all levels. So I've decided to not even bother with the controller cards as they seem too much of a gamble.

So now I'm looking at just getting a new motherboard that has the Intel ICH10R chipset, which is about the same price as the controller, but better and more reliable . I'm looking at the ASUS P5Q-EM which has an onboard video controller too so that will cut down on the cost also. I think this is also the same chipset Tim used so I should see similar results.

As for WHS, if I go with just the ASUS P5Q-EM I don't think there would be any reason for WHS as I don't see any compatibility issues happening.

I am planning on buying 2x 1 TB Western Digital 32 MB cache hard drives and run them in RAID 0.

I just did some research on WHS and it would seem like you don't actually log on it directly and there's no desktop per say, so I can't really install anything on it. However I'll need to run codecs/transcoders/streaming programs for my videos and music. I just came up with this in the 30 mins of looking around so if I'm wrong please correct me

Again, thanks for all your help this is making a possible disaster headache much better

 

[00Roush]

YOU DON'T NEED A NEW MOTHERBOARD!!!!

Yours will work just fine as it can run a software RAID with no problems. Windows XP and Vista can do software RAID 0 and RAID 1 right out of the box. Linux can also do software RAIDs also. So you should not need to replace anything. If anything I would just try it out and see where you stand. Then look at upgrading.

As for the RAID cards... you will only see the speed benefits when running complex RAID modes. RAID 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60 is where these cards will really shine. So basically if you are just running a RAID 0/1 array, just about all of the recent onboard setups will provide good performance.

As thiggins mentioned using Vista on the server and client will provide the best performance. Along with that I want to add that I have tested a few different OSes on the server and found that they still offer very good performance when a Vista PC is used as the client. For example with Win XP PRO on the server I measured 100+ MB/sec reads and writes for file copies using a two drive RAID 0 on both the client and server. As for the free OSes I have tried, FreeNAS, Openfiler, and Ubuntu Server, I found Ubuntu had the best performance. From what I recall read/write speeds were in the 75-90 MB/sec range using a single drive. My single drive testing with my Win XP PRO on the server are a bit faster at 80-100 MB/sec. This is just for file copies using copy and paste.

One thing I you might want to check into is how well Ubuntu (or any other linux version) supports printer sharing. I know you can share printers but I don't know how much functionality there is.

00Roush