Using a Windows machine as a NAS

[Doramius]

Is there a reason why you aren't considering Toshiba, Seagate, or HGST NAS drives?  Many are even cheaper and more reliable than the WD Red.  A lot of people also don't realize HGST is Western Digital.

[kirashi]

11 hours ago, manikyath said:

with those two how are you intending to thet data to the clients? exactly: SMB

 

and owncloud... is a disaster of a resource hog, and not practical at all for local network storage.

I should have clarified: you'd still be using SMB, but the implementation of SMB on most Unix based environments is the more up-to-date better performing SAMBA implementation and not Microsoft's own proprietary implementation that brings its' performance issues.

 

Also, you're not wrong about OwnCloud being a hog - only suggested it as OP's first few posts lead me to believe they're not super familiar with configuring a custom NAS solution or rolling their own Unix box for this purpose.

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, kirashi said:

I should have clarified: you'd still be using SMB, but the implementation of SMB on most Unix based environments is the more up-to-date better performing SAMBA implementation and not Microsoft's own proprietary implementation that brings its' performance issues.

but... SMB is made by microsoft, and samba is the opensource "alternative" (reverse-)engineered after MS's specifications.

 

and i'm not sure where you're getting those ideas from, but i'd say the linus man and his very straight up choice for windows server (and wendell for that matter, in his SMB multichannel video) will agree with me if i say that purely because of the how and why behind samba, it is essentially always "limping along" on the feature side, not "more up to date".

[kirashi]

13 minutes ago, manikyath said:

but... SMB is made by microsoft, and samba is the opensource "alternative" (reverse-)engineered after MS's specifications.

 

and i'm not sure where you're getting those ideas from, but i'd say the linus man and his very straight up choice for windows server (and wendell for that matter, in his SMB multichannel video) will agree with me if i say that purely because of the how and why behind samba, it is essentially always "limping along" on the feature side, not "more up to date".

Welp, then I guess I'm just one of those people with bad luck, since SMB on all of my computers at home is is shoddy at best. I find it faster to fire up a FileZilla FTP server and client between devices in order to achieve around 75-95 MB/s transfer speeds, whereas SMB over Windows Home Group has always been an inconsistent 35-80 MB/s when transferring the exact same files.

 

And the odd time I attempted to SMB between an actual Windows SMB share (not HomeGroup) and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, I got a whopping 20-40 MB/s using the newer SAMBA 4.x implementation. Transferring files between my laptop over wired Ethernet when running the same Ubuntu 14.04 LTS OS and SAMBA version netted me a lot closer to Gbit speeds, around 65-85 MB/s, again using the same files for the test.

 

Maybe I just never got Windows to talk to Ubuntu correctly. Also, all systems were running SATA-based SSD's, so there was no bottlenecking from spinning HDDs.

 

For what it's worth, I'm not running any kind of enterprise grade hardware, nor am I familiar with Windows Server edition performance vs Windows Home or Pro SKUs. I'm also not arguing that a properly setup NAS and properly setup client devices can't be fast - obviously, when you've got the time to spend on research, you can make it happen. Linus did, and DAMN I'd love to have even just a properly configured 1Gbit NAS box.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, kirashi said:

I guess I'm just one of those people with bad luck

oh trust me, you're not, SMB is terrible

 

but it is actually pretty dang good once you set it up properly (which is supposed to be seamless between windows boxes, although version differences can cause oddities...)

and on the linux side of things, off memory, you can force it to prefer using a specific version, to match the one your serverside version will be preferring (the one that is default on the version of windows used, rather than a legacy)

 

and yes i defenately agree that (especially for remote accress) FTP is really good, but it is just also not very easy to implement seamlessly under the hood of most OSes.

 

that said, when i get my replacement hard drive for my server i could try out how FTP works out, and maybe i'll change my mind after dumping some time into the inner workings

[Spork829]

3 hours ago, Doramius said:

Is there a reason why you aren't considering Toshiba, Seagate, or HGST NAS drives?  Many are even cheaper and more reliable than the WD Red.  A lot of people also don't realize HGST is Western Digital.

Toshiba and Seagate I don't trust as much because of poor experiences. I can't find an HGST NAS drive for cheaper than a red.

[Spork829]

49 minutes ago, kirashi said:

-snip-

 

41 minutes ago, manikyath said:

-snip-

Lol I barely have any idea what you guys are talking about at this point

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, Spork829 said:

Toshiba and Seagate I don't trust as much because of poor experiences. I can't find an HGST NAS drive for cheaper than a red.

if you want me to tell me how my toshiba's are holding up, ask me in a year, and if i reply "what toshiba's?" you know they are unreliable as hell

[Spork829]

6 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if you want me to tell me how my toshiba's are holding up, ask me in a year, and if i reply "what toshiba's?" you know they are unreliable as hell

Yeah I've had one Toshiba drive and two Seagate drives die on me within 2 years of purchase. I've only ever had one WD drive die and it was 5 years old and abused.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Spork829 said:

Yeah I've had one Toshiba drive and two Seagate drives die on me within 2 years of purchase. I've only ever had one WD drive die and it was 5 years old and abused.

aside from a quite tragic toshiba loss (its twin is still in perfect condition, so i'm guessing i got a dud) i have a WD green that's somehow broken in the way i can only format it as NTFS (or fat32, i forgot), anything else and it'll just hang, and i have my coaster that is a seagate 40GB drive that died in storage

[Spork829]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

aside from a quite tragic toshiba loss (its twin is still in perfect condition, so i'm guessing i got a dud) i have a WD green that's somehow broken in the way i can only format it as NTFS (or fat32, i forgot), anything else and it'll just hang, and i have my coaster that is a seagate 40GB drive that died in storage

That's a strange case with the green. I remember a few months ago when that Toshiba drive died, I have no idea what happened, but my PC refused to boot to my good HDD when it was plugged in. Splash screen then nothing at all. Unplugged power and data to dead drive, worked fine.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Spork829 said:

That's a strange case with the green. I remember a few months ago when that Toshiba drive died, I have no idea what happened, but my PC refused to boot to my good HDD when it was plugged in. Splash screen then nothing at all. Unplugged power and data to dead drive, worked fine.

the latter is what my coaster turned into. what exact drive was it?

[Spork829]

18 minutes ago, manikyath said:

the latter is what my coaster turned into. what exact drive was it?

500 GB 2.5 inch laptop drive. Took it apart for the magnets and seem to have misplaced the top so I can't find the exact model.

[Doramius]

We've had to stop using WD because we ordered 500 drives for storage and we came out with 20% DOA.  We had them returned, and they sent us a new batch and still came up with a DOA of 12%.  We cancelled the whole order because the new data center had been sitting without storage for about 4 weeks.  We went Seagate and the DOA was 2 drives.  That was 6 years ago.  Most are still in production.  We've had a handful of WD's, but most have been replaced due to failure around 2 years of use.  I have seen higher failure rates amongst desktop Seagate drives, but the environments people were putting them in were 24/7 high data bandwidth when they aren't meant for that use.  Toshiba.....well, we don't use Toshiba.  I just threw the brand in there, but never really touched any of their enterprise drives unless it was already installed in a machine.  We have HGST in our environment, but they are essentially WD drives.  HGST is owned by WD.  Their NAS Deskstar drives are usually reasonably priced.  We don't use them in our enterprise environment, but I know many small private businesses that use them and haven't had much issue with small NAS setups.

[Spork829]

33 minutes ago, Doramius said:

We've had to stop using WD because we ordered 500 drives for storage and we came out with 20% DOA.  We had them returned, and they sent us a new batch and still came up with a DOA of 12%.  We cancelled the whole order because the new data center had been sitting without storage for about 4 weeks.  We went Seagate and the DOA was 2 drives.  That was 6 years ago.  Most are still in production.  We've had a handful of WD's, but most have been replaced due to failure around 2 years of use.  I have seen higher failure rates amongst desktop Seagate drives, but the environments people were putting them in were 24/7 high data bandwidth when they aren't meant for that use.  Toshiba.....well, we don't use Toshiba.  I just threw the brand in there, but never really touched any of their enterprise drives unless it was already installed in a machine.  We have HGST in our environment, but they are essentially WD drives.  HGST is owned by WD.  Their NAS Deskstar drives are usually reasonably priced.  We don't use them in our enterprise environment, but I know many small private businesses that use them and haven't had much issue with small NAS setups.

Interesting, were they drives with capacities that were multiples of 3? I've hard the 3 and 6TB model WD drives have higher failure rates than others, not sure if there's any truth to that though. Either way maybe I'll consider an HGST drive.

[Doramius]

I'd like to say they were SE?!?! drives, but but I'm pretty sure they were 4TB.  They were purchased around late 2010, early 2011.  It was a horrible fiasco.  I was surprised, myself, as I hadn't ever really had issues with WD before.  I hadn't had issues with Seagate either, but the pricing on the WDs was hard to pass up at the time.  After all the issues, we just bucked up the slightly higher cost on the Seagate, and hadn't many issues since.  I still use WDs in personal machines, here & there.  However, I've stuck to the Seagate for most enterprise grade items.  I haven't completely read through data sheets on the HGST drives, so I'm not entirely sure what WD is doing differently with those drives.  I know it is a different setup, but I tend to view HGST to WD the same way I view Maxtor to Seagate.  I don't think that's a correct view, but it does help to understand that WD and HGST are the same company.