Flashie

Just another thing - Even if i do have to redownload any of my games, big or small; anything taking longer than 5 minutes to download stops halfway and says "Disk Write Error" and needs to be manually restarted. Please help Dont want to face the reality that I've just wasted $1 300 on something that looks really cool; but doesnt function

So the order from below has arrived. I've set up the LACP Link aggregation on the switch as well as on the NAS. Setup the NAS and created an iSCSI Lun targeted to the my gaming PC and my test PC (Before i connect the rest of the house up to it). I've created a file called "SteamLibrary (5TB)" and set up both my gaming PC as well as the test PC (Both have their own seperate steam accounts with the same games that were used for testing) to recognize it as a Steam Library. I then popped Garry's Mod from my gaming PC's Steam Common file over into the Steam Common file of the LUN (The 'SteamLibrary (5TB)'). In theory; If i go onto the test PC (which recognizes the file in the LUN as a Steam Library), and hit "Install" on Garry's Mod to that directory; it will discover the existing files and not redownload the game. As the picture shows below: But it isnt doing that. It gets to the point on the test machine and my gaming PC; where it discovers the files; and then starts allocating disk space (as it would do if it didnt discover any files) and then starts redownloading the entire game again... This is not an option for me as there are easily a dozen games that are 60GB + that I'm not willing to redownload because i already have them. What did i do wrong or what am i missing out on here?

The chances are likely it would if your cards been running hot for a while already. Just make use of a reputable brand of thermal paste and I see no reason why it would not. In my case - the card no longer had insane overheating to the point of shut-down; as well as coming back to life for regular use in gaming (so i sold it for x3 the cost a week later). While you're in there - It wouldn't hurt to clean out any dust that's collected up on the fan blades or fins of the heatsink

I've personally done this on a 2nd hand R9 290 Twin Frozr card in an attempt to resurrect it from a previous heat-related death (I took possession of it after buying it as 'dead' off of a client). I unfortunately do not have pictures that i can recall of the inside of the card but there was nothing tricky in the design of the card that would break or be damaged if done in any different manner from that of a regular GTX or AMD cards. Simply unscrew all visible screws; Undo the fan connector from the header; and give a little tug to get the heatsink+fans off.

Xero even I have heard about here in SA (Was on one of those early-morning news shows as a sit-down presentation). I assume companies that are on the same standard as Microsoft; Apple; IBM would all have custom solutions in place tailor made for them?

Every town? Wouldn't there be something that would more popularly used in a single state than another rather? I've done bookkeeping for rental-management through means of a robust excel spreadsheet before; But would large corporate companies really use a similar fashion to do their bookkeeping?

Hello Just like to find out from you bunch. Considering that I'm doing a tonne of Accounting studies right now toward a specific software used throughout my country; I'd like to know what is used internationally - as its highly likely I'm to immigrate in the short-to-mid term future. Here across South Africa we use a software called Sage Pastel which requires some form of Accounting education before use. What is the most-used accounting software over in America and Canada? (Not Freshbooks; I'm talking about the more behind the scenes than that for the average consumer/business owner)

60 degrees at idle? That aint normal

It's got a 24-port variant on the site as well: http://www.wootware.co.za/dell-x1026-managed-24-port-gigabit-switch.html This one is $97 (currency converted). Just about the only difference between these and the others are that they lack POE - which at this stage is not something needed in my household. Everything on that site is new unless its in the 'Open Box' section

Whats your opinion on a switch as such for the job of the LACP connection for the NAS; http://www.wootware.co.za/dell-x1018-managed-16-port-gigabit-switch.html Again - A really cheap alternative to the other switches that are available and the specs are to match; Would this be capable of the LACP connection you mentioned in your first post? Why is this switch so cheap compared to all the others with similar specs? 16GbE ports; 2SFP ports and its managed; for basically $50 new

Being in IT myself and having worked a year in a store i know that it isnt regular (but it does happen) that drives just up and die; especially externals. After working on the drives physically and examining the enclosures internally it was evident that the drives experienced a drop or two in its lifetime. This is why i convert all the externals (Buy them cheaper than internals at 7200RPM; pop em out of the enclosure and now you have an internal) that I own to internals rather than leaving on the desk and neatly cable managing them as part of the setup. Personally - I've had 3 hard drives die on me. One slightly before the 4 year mark and 2 after the 1 week marks (Really beyond pathetic Dell Refurbished drives that Dell Warranty Services give in place of replacing it with a new one) I apologize for not having mentioned this before in the original post; The drives that did die were both externals (Which for the life of me i dont understand why my brother didnt want them converted to internals rather). Both of which I can safely assume took a knock, beating or drop (Maybe even all 3). Most of the data that was lost could easily be replaced - Majority being games; movies; series; anime; music; pictures and screenshots. My brother hasn't any backups of a good deal of that data that cant be replicated such as the screenshots and pictures, but as for the games; movies and music - they're all regularly available online and can easily be re-downloaded. I personally keep backups of my larger games on a separate internal drive; with ALL my 'precious family photos'; documents and files uploaded to either Dropbox; Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. At this stage; I feel a NAS would be a worthy investment due to the redundancy over the data stored on it. Having all the data in a centralized location would of course prevent unnecessary duplicates being locally stored on our computers; Rather just have 1 copy that both of us can access to from the NAS. The NAS would also provide the necessary backup-facilities for our one mission-critical computer (containing irreplaceable documents) to do so without the use of regular backups to physical external drives which are stored where the NAS would go anyway. The point made about the TV series and movies that should not be stored locally (with access to sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime); I'd agree to - but only up till a point. We living where we do (South Africa) only have access to a (VERY) limited library of these movies and series available on Netflix and Amazon Prime compared to the library's available to American and European users. Our ISP's do not provide speeds of greater than 10mbps down (0.8 up) in most areas of the country (If only fibre was a thing to us smaller cities ); So we don't really have the kind of access to just load up a video and stream it - thats why most resort to downloading. We however are fortunate enough to be able to afford an 8Mbps down ADSL line; and therefore I do prefer to stream than download myself - Thats where i share your sentiment.

Thanks for the reply We will still have our regular desktop storage drives in the Gaming PC's. My PC still having its 6TB of storage and SSD; and the other gaming PC only having 4TB. Worst case scenario - we play the games from the NAS; but I'd like to make assurance in the case of that (Which is the purpose of this topic). The majority of the time; the games we will primarily be playing will either be installed on our SSD's or internals with a backup on the NAS. If ever we would like load times to be better; we could just copy the files from the NAS and have them locally on our systems. The majority of the On-NAS usage would be for movies, series and music. Like i say - The gaming on the NAS would be a bad/worst case scenario that i'd like to have made assurance for in the case that we do resort to that

Thanks for all the help tonight guys; Taking all of you guys' advice in mind i've decided to go with 5 of the Western Digital Reds (Regular ones 5400RPM); 4 in use of the NAS and 1 as a spare in the case of failure (to ensure the systems back up as soon as possible). Thanks for all the replies guys I've learnt a lot tonight; Just a pity it isnt the Business Studies i was meant to be learning for tomorrows exam

How would the Regular WD Reds of 5400 rpm compare to the likes of a Seagate Ironwolf 5900RPM drive? The seagate coming in evens cheaper than the regular WD Red; as well as being a NAS drive itself

Is it really going to take that long to load up a game from the NAS ?

I was looking at the WD Red Pro on the site I'm on but that was actually the drive that turned out being more expensive than the SSHD - But i noticed you mentioned that they are designed to be running 24/7 and not turned on and off the entire time like a desktop does (Considering that the NAS will more likely than not, be on and stationary in the network room). The WD Golds run at 7200RPM as well and cost $62 (where im living) less than that of the WD Pro's. (Under the assumption that the Datacenter drives are also meant to run 24/7) Wouldn't the Gold's run at better randoms than the regular Reds; meaning better Price/Performance against the Red Pro's? Or is there a factor I'm being ignorant toward here in the gold drives? (Apologies to my lack of knowledge about hard drives; Not really my field of expertise)

I've just checked out the WD Red and the WD Gold; both are available on the site im shopping from. The WD Red and Red pro being 5.4k RPM and the Gold being 7.2k RPM. If I buy 4 of the WD Reds; I'll be able to afford a 5th in the case of failure of one of the drives (Then theres no need to wait on an order come the time one fail's - they arnt regularly available here locally). But if i go for the WD Gold I'll be able to afford only 4 of them as they are only slightly cheaper than those SSHD's that were shown earlier. (The SSHD's also being 7200RPM and then giving the functionality of being used with decent performance on a regular PC after its life as a NAS drive (Not saying the WD Gold's wont though). Would the 7200RPM improvement in game-load times and randoms be worth investing in the WD Gold's over the WD Reds at the cost of 1 extra-spare drive? The Seagate Enterprise drives are far out of my budget (Being more expensive than the damn SSHD's ); but the Seagate IronWolf NAS drive looking like a great option (Coming in cheaper than even the WD Reds; as well as being 5900RPM instead of 5400RPM)

The protection from vibrations - is that now in reference to the 5400RPM or the 7200RPM (or both?)? I'd have thought that the NAS have its own system in place to counter-act that too though. You mention they're designed to be run 24/7; would this mean that their lifespan is generally greater than that of a regular desktop drive; say a WD Black? (Minding that there is always a chance it will crash, from day 1 till day 9002, etc.) Because Ultimately we're looking for something that will at least last longer than 4 years. This networks had some terrible losses in data due to the 2 failed drives this quarter (Both not mine though; I actually back up my data offsite ); The one being 3 years old and the other only 2 years.

Apologies - We were originally planning to get the SSHD's when we were solely looking at replacing the failed HDD's in our desktop systems; Looks like it wasn't taken out of the checkout by the time i wrote this. What would be the next best option for these NAS drives that would at the very least (most likely) get 4 years + out of them; but without hindering performance to the 2 gaming PC's that will be making use of them? - I was recommended the WD Reds twice now; But now I see one reply recommending 5400RPM over 7200RPM; Could somebody link a newegg example of a good drive to use in the NAS that wont hinder the performance/speed that the gaming computers will be running from when playing games from the NAS?

Hey guys; (I'm aware I've got another topic on this thread - but its got a different overall idea). I'm about to buy a NAS for our home network. We plan to use it for our Steam Libraries (Which we will play from the NAS using our gaming computers), as well as Movies, Files and Document storage. The NAS I'm about to buy is the QNAP TS431P 4-Bay NAS (Click to view). I plan on running 4x 4TB SSHD's in a RAID 5 array. Would this be capable of serving 4 computers on the network all at once (At most, 2 playing games from the NAS; and 1 editing a Word Document)? How would security work on this? (Say I have a word document that says 'hello' but I do not want User2 to have access to this document) Would we be able to see and use this 12TB Raid 5 Volume (4TB as a failover because of RAID 5 requirements) as we do a regular external hard drive/logic drive on Windows? All the computers in this scenario are Windows Thanks in advance Would appreciate any reassurance at this stage as its a tonne of cash x) Flashie

Sorry, Im not finish with you yet I came across this deal: http://www.wootware.co.za/qnap-ts431p-4-bay-sata3-6gbps-1-7ghz-dual-core-1gb-ddr3-nas-enclosure.html Its price is actually really amazingly excellent for where i live; and the specs just look amazing. Would this be able to do all that we discussed earlier? A side note/question: How do you set it up? Just pop in the 4TB drive; throw on an ethernet cable; and the computers on the network can detect it? Or does it require prior setup through software? (Or maybe evens work like a firmware page of a router where you physically have to go to 192.168.1.1?)

Thanks for the help

Thanks for the reply I've got a couple of questions doe. For the sake of discussion; lets assume we use the RAID 5 array with 5x4TB drives: What kind of hardware would be required for a system to run such an array for the network? If the RAID 5 is in a separate computer connected to the network; Would the 2 Gaming PC's and the 2 Regular desktops be able to do game and work to and from this RAID 5 PC across the network? (Our current network runs over CAT5e cabling. What sort of OS would be needed to run this PC? If we start off with only Three 4TB HDD's to begin with; are we able to just add in the other 2 over time as we acquire them or would the array need to be re-setup?

Hi; We've got 4 main computers in the house and a pretty regular-consumer-grade network. Of the 4 computers in our house 2 are gaming PC's (one being mine) and 2 light-load machines (Web browsing, emails, etc.) Each Gaming tower had roughly 10TB of mechanical storage available in itself, coupled with a boot SSD. Here comes the problem Lately we've had drives failing shortly after each other (None from my PC though; but we'd like to minimize the risk of mass data-loss in the case it does). The one gaming PC (Which was re-done half a year back with an i7-6700k; Z170A MSI Carbon Mobo and 16GB DDR4 2400MHz RAM) - had two of its drives fail within this last quarter. That's a total of 6TB that has been lost in data as well as storage capacity for that computer. We'd like to consider more options rather than just replacing the failed drives and re-assembling all the data by redownloading it. Not sure about the US, but where I live; hard drives are costly - we cant afford to keep dishing out cash on new drives. What would be the best option here for a possible RAID-solution where there wont be data loss in case a drive or two fail? I'm considering a form of a server to assume the responsibility for such a solution; and then just have all the computers on the network read and write to and from that. I'd like to hear you guys' opinion on the best option plz In b4 i need to buy 5x4TB HDD's

Going on aesthetics - I really like the phone; and honestly though (not being much of a follower on the up-and-coming less-known branded phones) this is the first time I'm seeing/hearing about it. I really dislike the front camera right up on the screen there though. I personally do not use either of my personal-driver phones' front cameras for any purpose and think its something that is holding us back from phones being a massive, insane high res screen with the display in the front and functionality tech at the back (Only times i ever use the front camera is when i open it up accidentally:)