1 & 2) Yes, I don't believe your 2TB going to exceed the SATA1 transfer rate anyway so any SATA will do.

3 & 4) Not worth while for the SAS controller as the SAS HDD is freaking expensive, only useful on server file storage system, RAID, etc. (Does SAS card even use PCI slot? )
You can buy those PCI SATA card, not sure about price, but PCI still has limits of 133MB/s so don't expect performance if you only able to utilize PCI slot.

Thanks

The reason I need about 3 HDD is because I needed to do a RAID5 back-up and it requires 3 HDD to do so.

Erm, I think you need to takes your time to read up what's RAID, for your info it's not backup but rather just redundancy.
Backup is a form of another media which will be in separate physical form, either tape, optical disk, hard disk, SSD, etc. Backup can also be through the use of Cloud base (Internet web storage).
Don't confuse RAID with backup, those are 2 different concept altogether.

hello.. im new to NAS.. i wanna buy WD mybook live 3TB.. for home user only..

juz wanna ask, r we can play video when browse through it? no need to download it back rght? if i want watch movie inside de hdd, juz open it in media player or must download it? coz juz now all it seller explain to me i cant understand.. lol.. hope u all can clarify much better., thanx in advance!!

With that budget for hardware it will be hard. 2x 2TB HDD is going to cost u RM700+? Add the SAS card I think you will burst your budget already.

I'm in the midst of putting CAT6 into my new place. The 305m cable per box is super heavy. Per box, they are RM 530. Ouch. Between CAT6 and CAT5e, the difference is about RM 0.10 per foot. CAT6 is a no brainer then.

I'm also thinking about 24 port switches which are fanless but now having thoughts about getting a 48 port instead. Thought of putting them in my study but on second thoughts, putting the switch and all the wires into the store room and run a patch panel there would be a better idea.

1. Yes. SATA 3 is backward compatible to SATA 2 and SATA 1.

2. I believe your motherboard is SATA 1 which is only capable of 1.5Gbit/s transfer rate. SATA 2 is 3Gbit/s and SATA 3 is 6Gbit/s. Not possible to get 3Gbit/s transfer rate in a 1.5Gbit/s capable board. I'm afraid that you'll be stuck at 1.5 Gbit/s speeds which is still plenty fast.

As a separate question is how are you going to connect your NAS? Your onboard network card can transfer max 12.5MB/s. If you're fine with that, you should not worry how fast your SATA drives connect.

Problem is even if you did find a RAID PCI card, you'll be limited to 133MB/s of the PCI slot and further limited to 12.5MB/s on the 100Mbit LAN. In my opinion, it's not worth it. I assume you want to create a RAID array with a RAID card? Your RAID array will be bottlenecked by the PCI bandwidth.

RM 1K is quite tight. How many drives you plan to get? If you can still find the N36L HP Microserver, they go for RM 699 with 2GB memory, 1x 250GB OS drive, 1x Gigabit LAN, built-in video card and 1x DVDROM. Can fit 4 drives comfortably and perhaps can run 24/7 at lower power than your current setup.

Actually, some mechanical drives are already exceeding the 150MB/s transfer rates.

Yup, SAS is super expensive.

That's correct. Unless you run a server grade PCI-X slot which has 533MB/s bandwidth or you use older motherboards that have 66MHz or 64 bit PCI card, a PCI RAID card for more than 3 drives is not worth it.

I got an synology ds1812+ today, started off with 5 seagate 3tb on SHR and upgraded another 2GB ram. Being a first time user, I wasn't realise that the package come with the installation disc is DSM 4.0. How do I upgrade from DSM 4.0 to DSM 4.1.

I have installed DSM 4.0 on one of the LAN interface. Can I still install DSM 4.1 on the remaining LAN?

Edit: I found the answer -> control panel -> DSM setting/update

This post has been edited by ronaldjoe: Nov 11 2012, 07:06 AM

Some serious **** there with the 1812... Anyway, the 3TB Seagates are Barracudas? What's the performance like?

Those Seagate Barracuda are ST3000DM001, listed in Synology HDD list. It's compatible with 4TB, but 4TB cost a lot $$$ more. Performance wise it is more like of those normal Synology.

Personally I find the user interface in DSM is handy and easy to use. I haven't tried to run benchmark yet as I am overseas this week. I use it mainly to mount ISO for media sharing over DNLA.

I was contemplating over the price for some time as well, I bought it finally as it would cost about the same of an MBA from apple. Then I said why not.

Basically I wanna share my experience with my recently bought Dlink DNS-320 NAS. Many of you should know by now the transfer rate sucks with this budget NAS (7-10MB/s).

Well, what i did for initial transfer of my media files (1.5T) that would takes 30+ hours with the NAS is
1. format the HDD with the NAS / other software to EXT3 filesystem.
2. install EXT2FSD to your PC (windows based)
3. plug the HDD to the PC
4. use EXT2FSD to mount the HDD as a physical drive (say Y:)
5. copy the files required to Y: using windows explorer
6. plug the HDD back to the NAS

and voila the whole process takes only 3-4 hours instead of 30+hours with less error.

Besides the transfer rate, the NAS is actually quite good, looks good, has many functions. Depends of what 1 require, if it is for home use 2-3 users it should performs quite well. Even with unifi 20Mbps download, it is up to the job (write at about 7-10MBps, eq to 55-80Mbps).

I would go for DIY Intel Atom, nowadays those cheap board already Gbps ready, and with Windows Server (if you can afford) or just FreeNAS you're ready to go Gbps speed with cheap DIY NAS.
This is where you need some experience setup a good NAS system that can perform almost every job that a server can do, for me I can have almost anything, from file server, BT, FTP, HTTP... etc. Anything a PC can do, with great Gbps transfer speed, up to 80MB/s from my WDC Green HDD. d(^.^)b

So from my rough estimation, changing the file format made your NAS transfer close to 75 - 100MB/s?

20Mbps Unifi maxes out at 2.3MB/s. That's easy peasy for any type of NAS.

Atom is pricey.

From his statement, he transfer his file to the HDD using EXT3 formatted on his PC and then just slot into the NAS for permanent application.
Well, this works if you don't transfer huge files that often, I just don't like detaching my PC chassis.. so much trouble, hehe
Is RM300 board + RAM expensive? I think those synology and other branded one is much more expensive IMO, plus I can plug-in another PCI SATA and expand my HDDs, well that's me anyway.

I personally think that is the cheapest route anybody should go too if they want to get a NAS/file server. If you dont mind getting a 7-10MB/s transfers get one of those Routers with built in USB port and plug in a HDD in that way. I remember some of them having torrent capability too.

Yup, in fact the DNS-320 also has a USB port, but judging from USB2.0 transfer speed it would pretty much same as the LAN... It a 1 off transfer, so i direct transfer to HDD from PC.

And yes, it has p2p capability, just d/l over 13GB yesterday on the NAS. You can even do schedule download, not bad for a RM225 NAS.

Only thing is I couldn't get the ftp server working, think got something to do with the VLAN of unifi. Anyhelp?

Hi Guys,

I need some advice. Currently my NAS is getting >106MB/s sustained read/write speed . What is the practical way to get link aggregation for a better speed. I would need extra 2 NICs and a managed switch for setup. What would be the recommend equipment for setup?

This post has been edited by ronaldjoe: Nov 17 2012, 10:17 PM

Pointless to get LAG for 1 pc, cannot see the performance also you need a 802.3ad switch, good luck finding it here, i have hunt high and low at lowyat for it still no luck. It only benefits when there is more than 1 computer drawing from it. Hit up Synology forums, plenty of resource there.

Seems like TP LInk 3210 is a good choice for startup. I could source from newegg. I am running the NAS for devices at home: HTPC, BD player, PC, laptops, iPad and iPhone and security monitoring and media streaming.

I have checked synology forum, seems like it's dying just there. The Wikipedia on synology seems useful to some extent.

On another note, I am selling off my used HDD (around 15pcs of them, ranging from 1.5TB to 2TB))
http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=2595991

This post has been edited by ronaldjoe: Nov 19 2012, 11:51 PM

Curious to know what's your NAS setup, is it a Synology or other branded NAS? Or a PC NAS?
I don't see anything that would require that much speed (>106MB/s), and especially at home, only few devices that I see benefit from your requirement, media streaming and HTPC.
If all your devices is getting or putting data into that single NAS at the same time, doubt even the HDD can sustain such intense IO, not to talk about the speed, yet.

It's a DS1812. I posted some info on it in earlier post.

I m looking for higher speed as my data in nas is about 15TB. Higher speeds yields more efficiency and reduce bottlenecks. I intended for higher speed as my devices are all SSD'ed and the NAS is capable of doing 200MB/s. I am giving it a thought on setting up a duplex gigabit connections for 200MB/s speed for certain connection point to make full benefit of it.

This post has been edited by ronaldjoe: Nov 20 2012, 05:26 PM