cdcollura
EF5
Good day all,
Edit: Many of these NAS servers claim "Gigabit" performance but are limited by the "iSCSI" actuality of 100 (not 1000) over a network! For speed, have the drive(s) IN the machine you are working on (connected by SATA-2 or such)!
Above: Looks familiar? The Iomega IX-200 seems like an awesome solution to storing HD video / archiving? That it IS ... What is is NOT - However - Is "fast"!
I picked up one of these things at Tiger Direct for roughly $850. With RAID 1,5,10, JBOD (bunch of drive) options and a total of 8 TB of storage, I figured I can safely archive all 3.5 TB of digitized photos or slides, video, HD video, and audio ranging from chasing to family / special events, as well as stream over my LAN through a set-top WD Live box I also have. The "backup" part this is perfect for (if you are really patient), but when trying to play / access the videos or data, that's another story.
The unit "claims" it has a Gigabit LAN (2 10/100/1000 ports) capability. Plugging it in was a breeze, and configuration was a snap. With four 2-TB SATA-2 drives (8 TB total) ... I configured it to RAID-5 (about 6 TB). This required a low-level format, which takes about an hour per 250 GB, so I let that do it's thing overnight. The next day, I was ready to back-up and go.
I tried copying a 5 GB HD video file from my laptop to my main PC, and since it was the new Gigabit LAN, this took roughly 50 seconds at about 125 MB/S. However, I tried to copy to the Iomega drive, and it CRAWLED at 12.5 MB/S, decaying to 7.5 MB/S, basically 100 LAN speeds, and took about 8 minutes.
I questioned the RAID-5, then tried the same thing with RAID-10 (two 4-TB mirrors of two drives spanned together) ... Still, it crawled, made no difference. Same results from NO RAID, so that ruled out that. Double-checked the LAN speed and it was honking with everything else at full Gigabit (100+ MB/S).
Note: Net speeds ... 10 ~ 1 MB/S, 100 ~ 12 MB/S, 1000 (Gigabit) ~ 120 MB/S (there are 8-bits plus parity to a Byte).
I was able to yank out one of the SATA drives from the Iomega unit, and plug it into a spare slot on my PC motherboard. The same 5 GB test file flew along at at least 150 MB/S, copying in roughly 30 seconds ... Same as my other internal drives did. The conclusion was the crappy interface for the LAN on the Iomega unit (bringing the unit to my job, on their system, also confirmed this).
With my copy of 3.5 TB of data taking about a hapof a week to copy to the Iomega RAID, I was very discouraged. Even worse, the 5 GB file would not even play. I'd click on it, and it just sit there, after 20 seconds, it jumped, then media player crashed, really hard - so hard, I had to reboot the PC into safe mode! Playing a smaller MPG file, a bit faster, but also froze. Another attempt even blue-screened my machine! All these video files played perfectly from my USB 2.0 based 2 TB drive.
I deleted (re-formatted) and returned the Iomega unit to Tiger Direct via RMA, eating the shipping. As an experiment, I bought a "My Book" DUO from Western Digital the same day at Besy Buy. This is basically RAID-1 (mirror) of two 2 TB drives. It also "claims" to have a single Gigabit interface. I tried this one, and basically the SAME results: Got no more than 11 MB/S transfer rates. At least this one was much easier to return ;-(
The final decision was to simply buy two 3 TB SATA drives (about $219 each) and place them as a mirror (RAID-1) in my PC, and removed the older 1 TB drive and put it into a spare USB 2.0 enclosure. It took only a few hours to copy my data to the internal 3-TB mirror (leaving out some non-essentials I backed up on the spare USB one anyway. The speed is awesome, because its using the RAID-1 off the PC's motherboard. Over the network, the copy rate is at least 125 MB/S.
The point of this WHOLE thing ... Those NAS devices are really great for storage, backups, or even cloud computing. But don't even try to use them for accessing / playing video over a network (let alone editing video). They made a super deal simply because they put garbage network adapters into them.
A little more research on RAID ... If you go online to Tiger Direct (or any other site / store), a "good" RAID controller you place in your computer via PCIe / PCI can set you back at LEAST $500. I am sure the Iomega / WD folks put ones that costed 1/20th of that!
Edit: Many of these NAS servers claim "Gigabit" performance but are limited by the "iSCSI" actuality of 100 (not 1000) over a network! For speed, have the drive(s) IN the machine you are working on (connected by SATA-2 or such)!
Above: Looks familiar? The Iomega IX-200 seems like an awesome solution to storing HD video / archiving? That it IS ... What is is NOT - However - Is "fast"!
I picked up one of these things at Tiger Direct for roughly $850. With RAID 1,5,10, JBOD (bunch of drive) options and a total of 8 TB of storage, I figured I can safely archive all 3.5 TB of digitized photos or slides, video, HD video, and audio ranging from chasing to family / special events, as well as stream over my LAN through a set-top WD Live box I also have. The "backup" part this is perfect for (if you are really patient), but when trying to play / access the videos or data, that's another story.
The unit "claims" it has a Gigabit LAN (2 10/100/1000 ports) capability. Plugging it in was a breeze, and configuration was a snap. With four 2-TB SATA-2 drives (8 TB total) ... I configured it to RAID-5 (about 6 TB). This required a low-level format, which takes about an hour per 250 GB, so I let that do it's thing overnight. The next day, I was ready to back-up and go.
I tried copying a 5 GB HD video file from my laptop to my main PC, and since it was the new Gigabit LAN, this took roughly 50 seconds at about 125 MB/S. However, I tried to copy to the Iomega drive, and it CRAWLED at 12.5 MB/S, decaying to 7.5 MB/S, basically 100 LAN speeds, and took about 8 minutes.
I questioned the RAID-5, then tried the same thing with RAID-10 (two 4-TB mirrors of two drives spanned together) ... Still, it crawled, made no difference. Same results from NO RAID, so that ruled out that. Double-checked the LAN speed and it was honking with everything else at full Gigabit (100+ MB/S).
Note: Net speeds ... 10 ~ 1 MB/S, 100 ~ 12 MB/S, 1000 (Gigabit) ~ 120 MB/S (there are 8-bits plus parity to a Byte).
I was able to yank out one of the SATA drives from the Iomega unit, and plug it into a spare slot on my PC motherboard. The same 5 GB test file flew along at at least 150 MB/S, copying in roughly 30 seconds ... Same as my other internal drives did. The conclusion was the crappy interface for the LAN on the Iomega unit (bringing the unit to my job, on their system, also confirmed this).
With my copy of 3.5 TB of data taking about a hapof a week to copy to the Iomega RAID, I was very discouraged. Even worse, the 5 GB file would not even play. I'd click on it, and it just sit there, after 20 seconds, it jumped, then media player crashed, really hard - so hard, I had to reboot the PC into safe mode! Playing a smaller MPG file, a bit faster, but also froze. Another attempt even blue-screened my machine! All these video files played perfectly from my USB 2.0 based 2 TB drive.
I deleted (re-formatted) and returned the Iomega unit to Tiger Direct via RMA, eating the shipping. As an experiment, I bought a "My Book" DUO from Western Digital the same day at Besy Buy. This is basically RAID-1 (mirror) of two 2 TB drives. It also "claims" to have a single Gigabit interface. I tried this one, and basically the SAME results: Got no more than 11 MB/S transfer rates. At least this one was much easier to return ;-(
The final decision was to simply buy two 3 TB SATA drives (about $219 each) and place them as a mirror (RAID-1) in my PC, and removed the older 1 TB drive and put it into a spare USB 2.0 enclosure. It took only a few hours to copy my data to the internal 3-TB mirror (leaving out some non-essentials I backed up on the spare USB one anyway. The speed is awesome, because its using the RAID-1 off the PC's motherboard. Over the network, the copy rate is at least 125 MB/S.
The point of this WHOLE thing ... Those NAS devices are really great for storage, backups, or even cloud computing. But don't even try to use them for accessing / playing video over a network (let alone editing video). They made a super deal simply because they put garbage network adapters into them.
A little more research on RAID ... If you go online to Tiger Direct (or any other site / store), a "good" RAID controller you place in your computer via PCIe / PCI can set you back at LEAST $500. I am sure the Iomega / WD folks put ones that costed 1/20th of that!
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