[mythtv-users] Warning/ Info About Network Disk from Unity Electronics

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Fri Jun 16 02:59:43 UTC 2006


On Jun 15, 2006, at 8:32 PM, Harry Orenstein wrote:

> On Thursday 15 June 2006 4:21 pm, Brian Wood wrote:
>> I received the pair of network drives that I ordered the other day
>> from Unity Electronics,
>>
>> Couple of things folks should know:
>>
>> Somehow I had believed that they were 2.5" drives, and we all know
>> that a 120GB NBB drive is a $150 item. Turns out that the drive in
>> the case appears to be a 3.5" drive, I'm not sure if this was their
>> error or mine at this point.
>>
>> Also, I had assumed that the "network server" in the case would be a
>> samba server, as are many other devices of this type. In fact it is
>> an "NDAS" server, something I had never heard of before, but it
>> treats the drive more as a directly attached disk and not an NAS  
>> device.
>>
>> Not really a problem, drivers are available for Mac and Linux, as
>> well as the supplied Windows drivers, and so far it seems to be much
>> faster than either an NFS or a Samba attached drive, great for video,
>> but there are apparently some limitations on multiple machines trying
>> simultaneous writes, something a Myth system is unlikely to want to
>> do with a video file anyway.
>>
>> I still think I got a good deal for the $79, in fact I may pick up a
>> couple more.
>>
>> If anyone bought one on my say so, and has a problem with the
>> discrepancies, I'd be willing to buy one or two from such users.
>>
>> Sorry to use up bandwidth here for this, and I'll certainly be more
>> careful about posting "deals" in the future :-)
>>
>> Brian Wood
>> beww at beww.org
>>
>>
>>
>
> You might also want to consider this:
>
> http://www.edn.com/article/CA6330099.html?spacedesc=features
>

Interesting, thanks.

Actually it's turning out that this could work great with my Myth  
system. It is very fast for network-based storage - 80Mbps max, none  
of my NFS drives can come close to that, so the Linux system can  
store video on it and any system on the network can see it, including  
Windows boxes, without the vagries of Samba.

I have a couple of SMC boxes that can receive media wirelessly from a  
proprietary Windows server, but the software will refuse to serve up  
any media that's stored on a network drive, but Windows thinks an  
NDAS drive is local - a good thing.

The ability to span/mirror exists, but I want to look into that a lot  
more before I'd trust my data to it, for example is it like RAID-0  
where if you lose 1 drive in an array you lose it all ? And those  
features will not work over an 802.11 link. Of course you could do  
that with software RAID on a Linux NFS server as well, but not as  
fast, and you'd want to run NFS and SMB if you wanted to talk to  
Windows boxes.

Looks like I could put 500GB drives into the cases, or even a couple  
of the new Seagate 750s.

I'm running one for storage from my EyeTV system on a Mac just now,  
just to test things out, and that older G5 needed more storage  
anyway :-)

The protocol has a very unfortunate name, trying to search the net  
for "NDAS" turns up a lot of hits about non-disclosure agreements :-)

One big problem though, although they claim "Linux Support" that  
should say "32-bit Linux support", the 64-but driver is being worked  
on but is not there yet. My Myth system is 32-bit, but the Gentoo box  
that I use to make DVDs is not, so at this point it won't be able to  
see those drives :-(

Anyway, thanks again, I'll try and keep the cases cool, especially if  
I put a 500 or bigger in there.


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