Are the discs in RAID 5 configuration?

I'd be interested to know what compression ratio you get with FLAC.

Cheers,
BoB

Hi,

Configured with X-RAID. For my configuration it is the same as having Raid-5

Advantages of X-Raid is you can add additional drives later and/or change to bigger drives (one at a time allowing the files to be copied over), then when you reboot, it expands to the full size.

But as mine is Fully loaded, can't grow it (or at least till we have bigger hard drives than 1TB).

I'll look at my compression ratio tonight.

Edit: Take a look here for some details.

If you can just drop disks in and it resizes, you might have a JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) setup and not an actual RAID. So, be careful.

You just made-up that acronym , didn't you ? Come on, admit it...

dave

No, I didn't sadly, it's a wonderful acronym. JBOD is described in wikipedia's Standard RAID levels page

That's quite a lot more expensive than building a similar device yourself.

What's the advantage of it over a homebrew server? Low power consumption/noise?

So you get a usable 3TB?

When you say you can change for bigger drives if you were to replace 1 with a 1.5TB disk would you gain extra capacity? (leans towards JBOD as mentioned by Greg)

Or would you replace disk 1/4, wait for RAID to resync, then replace 2/4, wait for RAID to resync etc etc until all are replaced then the new, higher, capacity would be available after a restart?

EDIT: It appears that X-RAID automagically expands the file system and volume (if you have one big volume) when you add disks.

It is RAID but with the extras mentioned.

So yes from 4TB have 3Tb available.

To increase capacitiy you have to replace ALL the drives. As with other RAID formats, capacity is limited by the smallest drive.

To increase size you replace ALL discs one at a time, let the RAID recover, then replace the next one. Once finished reboot to get expand the capacity.

Yes not a cheap solution, you could build yourself cheaper. I also could have bought the same unit with a pair of 500's in, and bought the menory and hard drives cheaper elsewhere (ca. 200chf saving, plus 2 x 500Gb drives). BUT not all memory is compatible and/or drives and this was built and tested for me.

Quiter, I'd say no.

It runs Linux and as I said has all the things I was looking for already there straight out of the box.

So for me this was an easy solution (cost effective with regards to time etc..).

I was looking at the Thecus units: http://www.stegcomputer.ch/shop.asp

But these do not run Slimserver out of the box etc.. And just the case is 1000chf then 4 1Tb 'Greenpower' drives around 250 a pop so not looking far off what I paid.

Just looked at the manuals on-line, but could not see the picture I was looking for.

Basically with X-Raid, you can start with 1 drive, then add another later and have RAID 1 (loose 50% of drive), then add a 3rd and get effectively Raid 5, add a fourth expands the Raid set. Replace ALL drives with higher capacity, will grow your Volume.

From the On-line Manual:

X-RAID:

– One-volume technology, but supports volume expansion, either by with the addition of
more disks or the replacement of an existing disk with larger capacity disks.
– You can start out with one disk, and add up to three more disks when you need them or can
afford them.
– Volume management is automatic. Add a second disk, and it becomes a mirror to the first.
Add a third disk and your capacity doubles; add a fourth, and your capacity triples—the
expansion occurring while redundancy is maintained.
– In the future, you will be able to replace disks, one at a time, have each one finish
rebuilding and, after the last disk is replaced, your volume will automatically expand to
utilize the new capacity.

It's quite cool, it's not that clever though.

It sounds like a few scripts kicked off by mdadm, but they say that uses hardware so maybe there is more to it than meets the eye.

ZFS is probably the best option for storage, but I'd only trust it on Solaris at the moment and that means I'd have to live with it's woeful package manager.

Who knows. As long as it works. Not sure what the future will bring for Drive sizes, but for the moment the box is maxed out. Also guess it might take me a while to fill it .

Anyone using a Squeezebox as an alarm clock? I've been thinking of getting one to help me get up in the morning.

I'm ashamed* to say I use my iPhone.



*100 penguins died in the making of this sentence.

Good afternoon forum,
By any chance might anyone know something about Squeezebox receiver availability. I already have the Duet (receiver and remote) and would love to harness its multiroom capabilities by adding a second receiver.

Digitec have put their availability dates back again and again, and an email came this morning to say that the delivery had once again been delayed. So it's effectively indefinite. Other suppliers I have seen on Toppreise etc, are no better, with unknown lead times.

Willing to travel within reason, but would just love to have it in hand.

Can you receive BBC radio programs on the squeezebox

I discovered that Android has apps that support the Slimserver, so I now have the controller on my phone

I find the iPeng app for the iPhone much more useful than the Squeezebox (Duo) remote. The remote has a habit of requesting a firmware update, which, once complete, requests yet another update. So on, so forth. Really frustrating, and then don't get me started on trying to switch between synced collections/squeezeboxserver.com on the remote. Constantly libraries. The dial on the remote is a nuisance. Smartphone control all the way.

Until I can afford Sonos, that is ;-)

I too rarely used my SB3 remote after using iPeng (first the skin, then the app). There is at least one other iPhone app for Squeezeboxes, but I was alway happy enough with iPeng.

This thread will motivate me finally to set up the stereo and get my SB out of the moving box at last

I wish I never bought the remote. I have had the classic for a long time, then bought a receiver (without remote) which I was able to setup using some perl script wizzadry I found on the web as normally you need the remote to do this.

As I linked the classic and receiver together, the classic operated the receiver, or I could control this from a computer.

I then decided it would be useful to have the remote, so I bought the duet (receiver and remote). This second reciver will be installed on a different floor.

Since then I upgraded to an Android phone and can control it from that as well. But I didn't know this at the time