dimaj Posted July 8, 2010 Share Posted July 8, 2010 Hey guys! I have a FreeNAS box at home that is filled with hard drives and I'm running out of space. Unfortunately my case doesn't have any more space to add new hard drives, so I was hoping to get some sort of an external rack with an eSATA connector. On top of that, I was wondering if it is possible to use a single eSATA connector to recognize that this device has x number of hard drives that I could use independently (i.e. if I have a 4-bay rack, I would like to have 2 of those 4 HDDs to be on Raid 0, etc). Thanks for your help. dimaj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ascorbic Posted July 8, 2010 Share Posted July 8, 2010 Hey guys! I have a FreeNAS box at home that is filled with hard drives and I'm running out of space. Unfortunately my case doesn't have any more space to add new hard drives, so I was hoping to get some sort of an external rack with an eSATA connector. On top of that, I was wondering if it is possible to use a single eSATA connector to recognize that this device has x number of hard drives that I could use independently (i.e. if I have a 4-bay rack, I would like to have 2 of those 4 HDDs to be on Raid 0, etc). Thanks for your help. dimaj You can use an eSata Hub or better yet an IcyDock. But if I was in your situation I would max out the existing machine with 2tb drives. The reason I prefer this approach is because when you connect multiple drives to your system via one eSata port you are limiting the bandwidth of all the external drives down to that one eSata connection. How many drives do you have now and what is the capacity of each? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 (edited) If you motherboard has a spare PCI-ex slot, you could purchase an E-sata add on card and use it to connect to a Qnap Desktop Nas Device. Plus you want to have some means of protection for your data as well. As raid 0 will compromise all the data, once a hdd dies in the array. Edited July 9, 2010 by Infiltrator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dimaj Posted July 9, 2010 Author Share Posted July 9, 2010 Thanks for your fast replies guys! I really like those products you have suggested, but I'm afraid, they're a bit out of my price range... I believe my MB does have an extra PCI-E slot that could be utilized for an e-SATA controller... As far as HDDs go, all I have at the moment are a bunch of 500GB drives and replacing 14 drives that are already installed in my box would be extremely expensive... I did get another idea though... I have another box (bigger than my current one) which is used for my ESXi server. I was trying to set it up for my FreeNAS, but there were some issues with the SAS controller I am using. Is it possible to plug in a bunch of drives into that box and link them to my NAS box w/out using FreeNAS VM? I have had some issues with a raid controller when using it as pass thru to access drives directly from the VM. Thanks again. dimaj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ascorbic Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 Thanks for your fast replies guys! I really like those products you have suggested, but I'm afraid, they're a bit out of my price range... I believe my MB does have an extra PCI-E slot that could be utilized for an e-SATA controller... As far as HDDs go, all I have at the moment are a bunch of 500GB drives and replacing 14 drives that are already installed in my box would be extremely expensive... I did get another idea though... I have another box (bigger than my current one) which is used for my ESXi server. I was trying to set it up for my FreeNAS, but there were some issues with the SAS controller I am using. Is it possible to plug in a bunch of drives into that box and link them to my NAS box w/out using FreeNAS VM? I have had some issues with a raid controller when using it as pass thru to access drives directly from the VM. Thanks again. dimaj So you have 7 tb over 14 drives. If you replaced everything with larger 2tb drives you would only need four drives (ten less, that is huge! think of the power savings) Once you max out the physical space in your machine you'd be at 28tb. I would set myself up to go down that path, that is four times your current capacity. You don't even need to buy four drives off the bat, but that will depend on your current configuration. If you can replace one 500gb drive wih one 2tb drive that would be 1.5tb's extra capacity. But, if a $100 eSata hub is out of your price range, how are you going to afford the extra disks to expand your capacity? If you are near filling up your current 7tb capacity and you are just going to reuse some old drives you are going to max that space out and be in this same situation in a very short while. Don't go with some hokey solution, it will just be a pain in the ass down the line. Let your NAS be your storage provider without wacky dependencies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dimaj Posted July 9, 2010 Author Share Posted July 9, 2010 So you have 7 tb over 14 drives. If you replaced everything with larger 2tb drives you would only need four drives (ten less, that is huge! think of the power savings) Once you max out the physical space in your machine you'd be at 28tb. I would set myself up to go down that path, that is four times your current capacity. You don't even need to buy four drives off the bat, but that will depend on your current configuration. If you can replace one 500gb drive wih one 2tb drive that would be 1.5tb's extra capacity. But, if a $100 eSata hub is out of your price range, how are you going to afford the extra disks to expand your capacity? If you are near filling up your current 7tb capacity and you are just going to reuse some old drives you are going to max that space out and be in this same situation in a very short while. Don't go with some hokey solution, it will just be a pain in the ass down the line. Let your NAS be your storage provider without wacky dependencies. Sorry, I was lying... Apparently I have only 11 Drives... I got mislead since I have one with id ad14 and that's the number that stuck in my head... Well... I have those drives stacked up on a shelf just begging to be used :) As far as my configuration goes, I have: - 2 drives in Raid 1 (500GB / 1TB) - 8 drives in Raid 5 (3.5 TB / 4TB) - 1 drive in ZFS for the stuff I don't really care if I loose. (500GB / 500GB) What you said as far as the 2TB drives go makes perfect sense and I'll see if I can get some of those to replace my current ones. Thanks again! dimaj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted July 10, 2010 Share Posted July 10, 2010 I would definitely do what dimaj was suggesting. Backup all your data, and save yourself some electricity by replacing all those drives you have, with a couple of 2TB ones. It should be cheaper and more manageable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dimaj Posted July 10, 2010 Author Share Posted July 10, 2010 I would definitely do what dimaj was suggesting. Backup all your data, and save yourself some electricity by replacing all those drives you have, with a couple of 2TB ones. It should be cheaper and more manageable. You mean 'what ascorbic suggested'? :) I don't want to lose my Raid 1 and Raid 5 configurations... That would mean that I'll have to buy at least 5 HDDs which would run me $400-$500 and I'm not ready to spend that much. I would like to keep it as cheap as possible... So, the bottom line is that I'm SOL... I should not do any network transfers or any eSATA hubs as it will degrade the file I/O performance. Right? dimaj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted July 10, 2010 Share Posted July 10, 2010 You mean 'what ascorbic suggested'? :) I don't want to lose my Raid 1 and Raid 5 configurations... That would mean that I'll have to buy at least 5 HDDs which would run me $400-$500 and I'm not ready to spend that much. I would like to keep it as cheap as possible... So, the bottom line is that I'm SOL... I should not do any network transfers or any eSATA hubs as it will degrade the file I/O performance. Right? dimaj If you want to do some network transfer, what you need is an E-Sata controller, not a hub as it won't give you a good I/O response. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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