In case you want my opinion...
I vote StarTech Enclosure.
Add a couple more to that pile since then. :)
Of course that was only for the picture. I run them side by side due to heat rising.
I got the new case ordered and should have it early next week.
You know, you could have left them side-by-side and turned the camera sideways.... :)
How's this:
[Actually, it looks like they are floating in mid air over a kitchen counter]
My system is fighting me every step of the way!
Copied/converted my HDD boot drive to the 1TB SSD drive. But for some reason it created a 540GB reserve parition and 400GB or so C drive. Had to pull the SSD from the server to put in a workstation 8.1 machine to run a "free" home partition adjustment tool. Got this done and put back in the server. Moved my Plex MetaData which normally ran from drive D to C and so far so good.
I had been coping data to different external WD My Drive 4TBs so I could pull the drive from the enclose and have the data prepopulated. Pulled the first drive from the enclosure and windows wouldn't recognize it. :(
Did some research and found that the little add-in board WD uses inside the enclose also does AES encryption and locks the GPT making the drive unusable without the enclosure.
Put the drive back in the enclosure and again it works.
So I shuffle more data around to free up one of the 4TB external drives. Pulled this drive from the enclose and again Windows wouldn't recognize it. Disk Manager could see the partitions but would not change or allow formatting, nothing.
Pulled up the cmd DiskPart.exe and ran a CLEAN on the drive which did work. After this was able to format it NTFS.
So now I'm copying what was the pre-populated drive over to it. After this drive is free I'll repeat a few more times. :)
Slowly but surely getting there. With the way my luck has been running I think I'm going to build a one drive array (one data, one parity) just to make sure I don't hit any other snags with software or drivers. :)
Just thought I'd update you guys,
Carlo
I now have 17TB uploaded to Amazon Cloud Storage and still going.
It seems that FlexRaid's Transparent Raid product isn't so "flexible" after all. I tried setting up a 3 disk RAID last night which had one parity and 2 data drives. It created the array but would not start the storage pool.
It's giving a rather cryptic error message and searching their forums turns up a few of the same with no answers (so much for support).
I do however have an idea that the problem is that it doesn't like "mixed" partition types. One disk was MBR and one was GPT based. I'll test this theory later when I get the 2nd drive empty and can re-format it with GPT.
However, in the mean time I've quickly got tired of all the drive letters and having to remember to update Plex everytime I move files from one drive to another so I setup StableBit's DrivePool and have all the local drives (at least) mapped as one drive letter to simplify things.
In theory TRAID works a lot like DrivePool except it can use real-time parity. FlexRaid also has another product called Raid-F which is non real-time parity over the file system. The parity gets ran manually (can be setup as a system task) when ever you want. Raid-F can also do drive pooling.
From reading a lot of different forums it would appear that TRAID even with recent improvements is slower than Raid-F for writing and a bit slower for reading. Since I'm mostly concerned with read speed (writing 2nd) I plan on now doing a test of all 3 products once I have 3 full disks I can use.
TRAID with real-time parity
Raid-F with non real-time parity
DrivePool with freeware SnapRaid for parity
Some of the pros and cons so far:
TRAID is picky about the disks. It doesn't like to use many USB disk (non of my WD externals). It should provide real-time parity but will probably be slower than the other two solutions.
Raid-F can do drive pooling and non real-time parity AND can also use network drives which is unique and could come in handy.
DrivePool has by far the easiest interface and setup. It works with every drive I've tried it with. It does not do parity at all and will require the use of the freeware SnapRaid to achieve parity.
What I also don't like about TRAID is that in order to add new disks (ie 2nd parity disk) you have to remove the RAID setup and create a new array. No data is lost doing this but it can take a day or more to build the parity disks. During this period of time a single disk failure will cause loss of data. SnapRaid on the other hand can allow you to add additional parity drives without touching the previous parity drives so you are constantly protected. Not sure how Raid-F does this but I believe it's similar to TRAID.
The good thing I've found is that SnapRaid can be used against the raw disks making up any of the FlexRaid arrays so this is comforting to know. I haven't tried yet but it also appears that SnapRaid could generate it's parity to a 2nd NAS over the internet which could come in handy.
So as you can tell I'm in "investigative" mode and will be trying a few different things to see what is going to be the most flexible and probably the best read times (all else being equal) while making sure to have full parity protection.
Carlo
I tried to do the personal media agent and followed your steps but it won't let me create the library. I'm attaching screenshots of the message as well as the agents and scanner setup in my folders.
Yes, the ability to use custom scanners got broke in the last set of releases.
Plex is aware of it and looking into it.
https://forums.plex.tv/topic/161021-quick-fix-needed-customer-scanners-broke-in-new-version-of-plex/
Carlo
wow thank you for your informative post. I was going to go Windows Storage but now i think i will go back to FreeNAS and ZFS. I am going to purchase Norco 4224 case that can handle 24 HDD so this server should last me quite some time :)
I use to run Plex but now i run MB or Emby its now called. I find the transcoding to be alot better and do like how you can choose what speeds/badnwidth you want on the fly. I also found cpu levels are not as high to transcode probably because its using windows drivers.
Interesting username TiT. :)
I'm looking at different cases and storage cabinets right now myself. One of them is the exact case you mentioned (Norco 4224) but that case is extremely loud when running. I'm leaning more toward a couple of other solutions but haven't quite made up my mind yet.
I'd seriously skip storage spaces for media. I also "outed" ZFS as a candidate also because it's not flexible (powerful yes) and flexibility is my #1 priority along with quick recovery if ever needed. But of course it all depends on our individual needs.
I run both Emby and Plex (along with Madsonic) but my users only have access to Plex currently. Emby is used by me for easy PVR control but little else for "production". I've found the opposite from you and why I run Plex as my main server (besides other things like more polished clients and more of them). With Plex you can handle more simultaneous streams then with Emby. They go about things a bit differently.
Plex basically only transcodes enough to stay ahead of the clients X seconds which is configurable. Emby on the other hand goes balls to the walls full transcode until it's completed (currently in a state of re-working). So unless one of the Emby streams is completed you can get extra contention when a new client starts to watch a show. It may not be able to keep up with that client because it's also processing other transcodes (which are probably far ahead of that client). Emby has a problem with this in that if a client pauses or quits the video the transcode may or may not shut down. You can cause it grief by starting to watch a move, quit, start another, quit, start another, etc. Emby will continue to try and transcode the videos no one is using.
There are also difference in the "command lines" being passed to ffmpeg that they both use internally and the quality settings aren't the same. So sometimes this can be like comparing apples to oranges unless you know what they are both doing at any given time.
Also don't know if you are aware but you can certainly do the same thing with Plex and change the speed/bandwidth settings used by the client. Plex has done this for a long time while it's fairly new in Emby and they just recently changed this up a bit too.
Don't take any of this as a put down on Emby. I like it a lot but it's just not as polished as Plex and doesn't have the usability that Plex has. Most of the dev work on Emby is centered around the server where it's evened out with Plex (servers and clients). Emby dev work has numinous times made changes that break client functionality and make the client un-usable for a while. This to me is not tolerable if I have people using it. With that said:
I like a lot of things better on Emby's Server then I do Plex. Sometimes because they do break client functionality they can re-work something they don't like and improve the server. I much prefer:
- user management of Emby (info on my server vs Plex.TV)
- security of Emby and use of SSL
- PVR compatibility
- Ability to completely run offline with no Internet needed
- Source Code that is pretty well written and maintained
- The way media is cataloged in Emby (ie more library types, mixed libraries, 3D movies, movie collections or box sets)
- Straight use of un-modified ffmpeg vs a custom version. With Emby you can replace ffmpeg with your own version which I do often testing GPU processing and distributed encoding which I have working.
- Syncing is also better in Emby at present and has more customization options. Although this will change soon with Plex I believe.
- I also prefer the way Emby handles media files. Plex has a "hands off" attitude to not touch your media or it's directories. It keeps all meta-data in it's own folders including BIF/index files. Emby on the other hand can create NFO files in the directories where your music lives and can create the BIF files there also. If you ever have to re-load a library it will use this information already created. Plex on the other hand has a special meta-data folder(s) which uses GUID type names for everything making it impossible to work with unless you cross-check everything with the database. Loose the database and all the meta info is worthless.
So "generally" speaking I sort of think the Emby server is more powerful for my use then Plex's is, but at the end of the day if you don't have the needed clients which work and have a polished feel to them it almost doesn't matter.
That's my 2 cents, but of course everyone's needs and wants are different,
Carlo
Yeah that cool, you have alot more experience and also giving it out to more people. I am just doing for my family. However with the Norco you can make it alot more quiet by replacing the 80mm fans in the middle with larger 120mm this should help alot. I've been using HP Microserver N36L since January 2011 and it hasn't missed a beat, so this is why im scared to move away from zfs. in that time i've wipe Freenas and replaced usb boot disk about 10 times and never lost the pool. At the moment i use MCM to get all the meta data etc and it just works with Emby that is another positive for me. I know with emby you can have watch folder and it will automatically grab file rename it and put it in the correct fodlers for TV show. Just waiting for them to be able to do that with Movies :)
I'm in limbo right now. I haven't gotten around to figuring out which box(s) I want to order. I'm considering:
http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/8-bay-removable-hard-drive-enclosure~S358BU33ERM
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8969655&csid=_61
http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?model=DAGE415U20-PM#.VUv8ZPlVhBc
Each has plus and minus.
I'm in limbo right now. I haven't gotten around to figuring out which box(s) I want to order. I'm considering:
http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/8-bay-removable-hard-drive-enclosure~S358BU33ERM
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8969655&csid=_61
http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?model=DAGE415U20-PM#.VUv8ZPlVhBc
Each has plus and minus.
That 15 bay enclosure looks interesting
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
I'm in limbo right now. I haven't gotten around to figuring out which box(s) I want to order. I'm considering:
http://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/8-bay-removable-hard-drive-enclosure~S358BU33ERM
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8969655&csid=_61
http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?model=DAGE415U20-PM#.VUv8ZPlVhBc
Each has plus and minus.
Id also just fan mod the norco. cheaper and more drive bays in a nice 4u rackable unit. Im thinking about one the next time i expand and need more drives
I tried to do the personal media agent and followed your steps but it won't let me create the library. I'm attaching screenshots of the message as well as the agents and scanner setup in my folders.
@rbeatse,
Check your Web version and make sure it updated to Version 2.4.4.
Once done try the custom scanners again.
Should be working correctly now.
Carlo
Id also just fan mod the norco. cheaper and more drive bays in a nice 4u rackable unit. Im thinking about one the next time i expand and need more drives
I've thought about this for sure. Same with some SuperMicro cases.
If I do that then I'm basically building a new server as I don't want to "gut" the server I'm presently using.
If I go with the DAGE415U20-PM 15 bay controller it uses 3 eSATA ports (5 drives per eSata port) - 3x eSATA-Port Multiplier
$687 - http://www.antarespro.com/Search.aspx?key=DAGE415U20-PM&SearchGo.x=9&SearchGo.y=3
The DAGE412U40DEBK is 12 bay and uses 3x miniSAS (SFF8088)
$463 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8969657&csid=_61
The DAGE412U40DESL-ES is the 12 bay eSata version of above (12 seperate eSate ports on back)
$417 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8969658&csid=_61
The DAGE1240DESL-3MS is a 12 bay minSAS Tower version of above
$544 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8969649&csid=_61
The StarTech S358BU33ERM is only 8 bay but in a tower config and is a bit unique. It supports 8 drives via 1 eSATA connector OR can be used via USB3 and supports UASP (serial SCSI over USB).
The StarTech is the most flexible and probably the quietest unit of the three although I'm not sure if it will have the airflow the others have. I also really want closer to 15 drives so I'd need two of them. However with the flexibility of these boxes I'm not sure having 2 would be a bad thing. They would probably hold their value better for resale if I ever wanted to do that.
A couple of the boxes would require me to pickup a SAS card which aren't cheap. While I'd probably get higher performance from that setup I really don't need it for the media server (keeping the goal in mind).
Option anxiety :)
Carlo
OK, I'm feeling a little stupid here but where do I see what version of PlexWeb I am running? I know I can see that I am using the latest version of PMS in the settings but is the web a different download?@rbeatse,
Check your Web version and make sure it updated to Version 2.4.4.
Once done try the custom scanners again.
Should be working correctly now.
Carlo
OK Carlo, I'm not trying to hijack your thread here, but you're running multiple external drives like I am (only you have a larger quantity), and I am having one problem with these USB-3 type external cases...
As you know, I run two external enclosures, each with 4 drives. The problem is, when Plex wants to access something on, say, the 4th drive in one of the enclosures... and it's been a while since that drive has been accessed (read: it parked and spun down), then all of a sudden my drives start spinning up... sequentially... one at a time... ugh. By the time the fourth drive is up to speed, my Plex client (Samsung app) comes up with an error saying something to the effect of "That data is not accessible... blah, blah, blah." Of couse all I do is wait a bit and hit "OK" and all is well.
When I look at your list of choices, and see 8-10-12-15 drives... I only imagine how long it might take for Plex to access something on the 9th drive for example.
I understand that the purpose of sequential start-up is to not place too much load on the power supply (since initial spin-up takes the most power). And I've tried every setting inside of Windows 7 to not have the drives go into sleep mode (which appear to only effect internal drives and not externally attached devices).
But so many of these larger SATA drives are now "Green" and have settings in the firmware that cause them to spin down and park. I cannot figure out how to just keep all my plates spinning at once, so to speak.
Thoughts on this?
[Edit... I'm going to start another thread on this... thanx anyway]
Just leave them all spinning all the time. They will last longer and the power draw is really not a big factor, even at those quantities. That assumes you have a choice about the spinning down.
That assumes you have a choice about the spinning down.
And therein lies the problem.
Without choice, my 3TB Seagates spin down, regardless of any Windows 7 settings. Was wondering if anyone had alternate solutions.
