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AusGAF 9 - F*** Off, We're Full (Of People With Different Ethnic Backgrounds)
- Thread starter Kritz
- Start date
Exactly. Covering large geographical surfaces is YOUR mother's line of expertise.
Fight the good fight code warrior...
roosters93
Member
Hey Shaneus, you've got a NAS setup right? What's yours (or anyone else who has one) like? Doing an initial inquiry as to whether they're for me and if one can be had for cheap(ish).
Certainly do! The one I bought is far from cheapish though and considered to be more extreme for home use or more suitable for a small business. The device itself (Thecus N7700PRO v1) cost me around $700 or so as a display model, at the time they were going for about $1000 and the new models which just come with a 64-bit OS (the v2) run at about a grand as well. Seven bay.
Depending on what you want, you'll probably want to pay at least ~$300 for a good one. The more expensive ones tend to transfer data faster as they have better CPUs (despite being standalone devices, they're still technically using "software RAID", meaning that it consumes cycles to do anything read/write-related) and allow you to run additional software packages on them (Thecus has "modules", you can get thrid-party ones that automatically trawl Usenet for music/TV/movies, Dropbox... even run things like Teamspeak or a Minecraft server). Cheaper ones may not have these features and will probably be a good deal slower with data transfer as they tend to hammer the CPU more.
What's yer budget (not counting disks) and how many drives were you looking at?
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
No video editing. It would take way too long and I'm no good with a video camera.
Holy carp! Thanks man!VKS:
Not sure if you already have an SSD so I put one in each build. If it's for productivity rather than gaming, you're better off putting the money towards one since you'll see a huge improvement in responsiveness. Prices from Umart. If you buy this stuff you can get OEM copies of Windows from them too.
This is the "I never ever want to overclock" build. You can still chuck a dedicated video card in down the track if you want. You can upgrade the mbd if you want more expansion options or the CPU if you need grunt.
The "I'll probably overclock at some point because I like free performance" build. Last gen CPU because it's cheaper and supposedly overclocks better than the new one:
The "I'd like to overclock but I'd also like the latest CPU":
I've never had an SSD. Thanks to software bloat, however, it currently takes about ten minutes from when I hit the power button to getting full desktop functionality. This should help enourmously.
Jables Swan
Member
Played Galaxy Trucker and Power Grid today.
Both are great but Galaxy Trucker is so damn good. Lost half my ship when a tiny meteor ran into my pilot cabin. Decided to risk going with engines after that point but hit open space soon after. What a laugh that game is.
Power Grid is great too but a lot of maths to get your head around. Need to be smarter next game and think 3 turns ahead.
Also Rezbit the master of 7 Wonders today. Dat science.
Both are great but Galaxy Trucker is so damn good. Lost half my ship when a tiny meteor ran into my pilot cabin. Decided to risk going with engines after that point but hit open space soon after. What a laugh that game is.
Power Grid is great too but a lot of maths to get your head around. Need to be smarter next game and think 3 turns ahead.
Also Rezbit the master of 7 Wonders today. Dat science.
So scientific.
Also dat Enterprise ship in Galaxy Trucker, big-ass meteor cutting three ships in half haha.
Jables Swan
Member
The meteor was more dangerous than the pirates. Great game.
The science form the wonder and then dat guild. Best scientist ever!
roosters93
Member
Certainly do! The one I bought is far from cheapish though and considered to be more extreme for home use or more suitable for a small business. The device itself (Thecus N7700PRO v1) cost me around $700 or so as a display model, at the time they were going for about $1000 and the new models which just come with a 64-bit OS (the v2) run at about a grand as well. Seven bay.
Depending on what you want, you'll probably want to pay at least ~$300 for a good one. The more expensive ones tend to transfer data faster as they have better CPUs (despite being standalone devices, they're still technically using "software RAID", meaning that it consumes cycles to do anything read/write-related) and allow you to run additional software packages on them (Thecus has "modules", you can get thrid-party ones that automatically trawl Usenet for music/TV/movies, Dropbox... even run things like Teamspeak or a Minecraft server). Cheaper ones may not have these features and will probably be a good deal slower with data transfer as they tend to hammer the CPU more.
What's yer budget (not counting disks) and how many drives were you looking at?
My budget probably is $300 lol. I was thinking something like this. Dudes on whirlpool have even exceeded the listed capacity and put an ssd in the optical bay to run wms2011 heh
Thanks for all the info! Yours or something like it would be amazing one day in the future. Reading a description for it claims speeds of >300MB/s, that's sick as fuck! But yeah, I'll be contenting myself with something more ordinary for the moment.
Any recommendations for particular drives? My first instinct would to just stick WD reds in.
rooster, I just bought one of those (a second hand N40L actually). Haven't set it up yet. My main piece of advice with whatever home storage solution you go with is to forget about RAID and just come up with some sort of solution to duplicate whatever data is really important to you.
I'm going to use this: http://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Overview
Why? "If something goes wrong with your server, you can simply plug in any pooled disk to any computer that can read NTFS and all your pooled files that are stored on that disk are fully accessible under a special hidden folder. Everything is stored as standard NTFS files."
Can't do that with RAID. Not even Windows drive pooling ("storage spaces") can do that. If your RAID controller dies and you've lost access to your data, the only way to get it back usually is buy an identical controller again. Easy in the corporate space, but on the home user end it's a crap shoot. You don't want to have to be chasing down specific model numbers of things and buying an identical old thing again just to get your data back.
Also it runs on Windows so it's easy for you to configure and gets lots of internet help if you have problems. I'd probably recommend going up to at least 4GB on your HP so it runs smoothly. Note that the 2GB it comes with is ECC RAM which isn't regular desktop RAM. You can either chuck that away and put regular RAM in, or just buy another 2GB (or more?) ECC stick. They're only ~$15 iirc.
Also make sure your making regular backups of the important stuff. Plug a USB drive in and set up a scheduled copy to it.
I'm going to use this: http://stablebit.com/DrivePool/Overview
Why? "If something goes wrong with your server, you can simply plug in any pooled disk to any computer that can read NTFS and all your pooled files that are stored on that disk are fully accessible under a special hidden folder. Everything is stored as standard NTFS files."
Can't do that with RAID. Not even Windows drive pooling ("storage spaces") can do that. If your RAID controller dies and you've lost access to your data, the only way to get it back usually is buy an identical controller again. Easy in the corporate space, but on the home user end it's a crap shoot. You don't want to have to be chasing down specific model numbers of things and buying an identical old thing again just to get your data back.
Also it runs on Windows so it's easy for you to configure and gets lots of internet help if you have problems. I'd probably recommend going up to at least 4GB on your HP so it runs smoothly. Note that the 2GB it comes with is ECC RAM which isn't regular desktop RAM. You can either chuck that away and put regular RAM in, or just buy another 2GB (or more?) ECC stick. They're only ~$15 iirc.
Also make sure your making regular backups of the important stuff. Plug a USB drive in and set up a scheduled copy to it.
I hear that a lot about those Proliant boxes... I have a feeling though that they might have different versions/series' of them so I guess check if you get one, you get one that has the best processor possible in it. And I also think you might be able to chuck in a GPU w/ hardware decoding and have it as a media box if you like. It's basically (literally) a mini-PC. But for what you want to spend, if the number of slots is right, I doubt you could find better.
As for drives, I honestly have no idea... I normally just buy what a guy at work (who knows a lot more about drives than I do) suggests I buy, which has traditionally been Hitachi but these days I honestly couldn't tell you
Edit: I was going to say (looks like Fred covered it) but going by the first Whirlpool thread that appeared, you could probably save yourself another $100-150 by tracking down a second hand N40L , then take what you saved and get even more storage.
roosters93
Member
Cheers fred. I did see someone talking about using drivepool on whirlpool but didn't really consider it. This is all new to me and RAID was sounding pretty good but yeah the idea did pop into my head, what if my micro server were to fail rather than just a drive and drivepool sounds like a excellent tool in mitigating such a problem.
Probably wouldn't have even noticed it was ECC RAM so thanks heaps for pointing that out before I wasted some money.
I hear that a lot about those Proliant boxes... I have a feeling though that they might have different versions/series' of them so I guess check if you get one, you get one that has the best processor possible in it. And I also think you might be able to chuck in a GPU w/ hardware decoding and have it as a media box if you like. It's basically (literally) a mini-PC. But for what you want to spend, if the number of slots is right, I doubt you could find better.
As for drives, I honestly have no idea... I normally just buy what a guy at work (who knows a lot more about drives than I do) suggests I buy, which has traditionally been Hitachi but these days I honestly couldn't tell you
Edit: I was going to say (looks like Fred covered it) but going by the first Whirlpool thread that appeared, you could probably save yourself another $100-150 by tracking down a second hand N40L , then take what you saved and get even more storage.
Ooh possibly picking up a cheaper one certainly appeals to my interests.
Thanks again shaneus.
Jables Swan
Member
GoddyofAus
Banned
Possible Pacific Rim spoilers:
Hoh, boy.
It's looking more and more likely from all the T.V Spots that in the movie, Striker Eureka has a one on one battle with a Kaiju in Downtown Sydney.
Hoh, boy.
ConfusedCat
Banned
The last of us is game of the generation
bodyboarder
Member
One of my favourite games last year.
Mind you, I don't know the exact specifications of each so there could be more differences... but as I understand it, they both use the same form factor case (ergo, same number of drives can be used) so the only difference is the processor. If that's the case, I doubt there's much difference in the data-providing capability between the two... just the other stuff (apps etc.) you can do at the same time.Ooh possibly picking up a cheaper one certainly appeals to my interests.
Thanks again shaneus.
codswallop
Member
I use a 5-bay Synology NAS. It uses its own proprietary 'RAID' which I think works in other *nix boxes should the hardware fail.
I have a hot swap disk and 4x3TB disks in it. It can support dual network if you have a switch that supports it (I don't) but otherwise transfers at 1Gb sustained fine.
Just like Shaneus' NAS you can install other apps (surveillance, Plex, DNS, VOIP, Sick Beard, SABnzbd etc). The one I have also allows two further expansion units with 5-bays each.
Pretty happy with it. Was about 800 without the disks.
Before that I used a custom built Windows Home Server box but decided to change when the new version came it because it didn't support the disk expansion stuff any more.
I have a hot swap disk and 4x3TB disks in it. It can support dual network if you have a switch that supports it (I don't) but otherwise transfers at 1Gb sustained fine.
Just like Shaneus' NAS you can install other apps (surveillance, Plex, DNS, VOIP, Sick Beard, SABnzbd etc). The one I have also allows two further expansion units with 5-bays each.
Pretty happy with it. Was about 800 without the disks.
Before that I used a custom built Windows Home Server box but decided to change when the new version came it because it didn't support the disk expansion stuff any more.
Yeah, it's not worth the hassle. No one needs hot swapping in a home storage situation. If your shit dies the first thing you're going to want to do is plug the drive in somewhere else and see if your stuff is still there. You're not always going to have four bays free, maybe you only have a laptop and a drive caddy. Avoiding RAID makes recovery easier.
The other benefit is, you don't need uniform drive sizes. You can just use whatever drives you have lying around, and when you want to upgrade the space you can do it by just replacing one drive.
Mine was $165 with 4GB! They pop up on OCAU from time to time. Here's an N40L with 16GB for $200: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1089654 I was pretty close to just buying a N54L new though. The main reason I prefer the N40L is it uses less power. It has less CPU grunt though, so if you're planning on running a bit of stuff on it, the N54L might be better for you.
I think Synology, QNAP and Thecus are the main pro-home NAS brands... there may be one more, but the name escapes me. But I don't think you can go wrong with that HP setup, provided you don't mind tinkering and playing with it (because there's bound to be multitudes of options for setting up RAID on it, if you choose that path).
This is going to sound incredibly weird, but I honestly have no idea why I never thought of doing something like that before. Makes me wish I did it before I upgraded my NAS software and had to move all the software off so I could recreate the array :/
If you're weird then we both are. I'm on my third NAS and I'm only just seeing the light now (recently anyway).
codswallop
Member
Yeah, in a home environment where you're not going to courier a replacement disk or card, the software faux RAID makes more sense for recoverability.
I'd also say that you should still keep an offsite copy of your REALLY important data elsewhere. I have an external 2TB drive for photos and documents that I bring home once a month, leaving at work the rest of the time, will need to upgrade that soon.
Edit: I keep forgetting about the $25 Google Play credit I have (and maybe some of you do too) that expires in a week. Got some suggestions for Android games and apps that are good? I asked on Twitter as little while back and got a free good answers.
shanshan310
Member
Wow, the gold coast hospital is surprisingly awful, and I went with low expectations. Absolutely no parking at all.
GoddyofAus
Banned
Does anyone know if an Origin code I bought on GMG using a proxy would work for Aus? They seem region based.
Jables Swan
Member
My body can't wait for this movie. Bring it!
That's why I went with unRaid. Since the files are actually stored on the HDDs themselves and not split across multiple drives. It uses some old stupid linux filesystem though, So it's not as easy as drivepool since it's NTFS. But there are ways to read the files without issues.
Plus it runs off a USB!
There's a lot of solutions out there, Really just depends on what you want from it and how easy or crazy you want to go. Do let me know how the drivepool goes.
I was tempted to use W8s raid setup as well, at some point in time.
bodyboarder
Member
If it was anything better then awful I would have been shocked. I take it since you had time to look for a park everything's alright? Unless the ambulance couldn't find one, which could have very well happened mind you.
reptilescorpio
Member
Free DLC for Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II (PC, XBOX360 and PS3)
Now you get to be disapoint in Far Cry 3 like the rest of us, even though it is a pretty sweet game in its own way.
My advice is smash down as much cereal as your body can take if you have a cold.
Or if you are already at work drown that fucker with tea.
Also yay EOM week! :/
It really is.
Now you get to be disapoint in Far Cry 3 like the rest of us, even though it is a pretty sweet game in its own way.
My advice is smash down as much cereal as your body can take if you have a cold.
Or if you are already at work drown that fucker with tea.
Also yay EOM week! :/
I ended up settling on Russian Circles - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63pDGJ-32Kg
And yeah, already at work... smashing as much typing as I can manage before I go for the tea and ibuprofen.
And yeah, already at work... smashing as much typing as I can manage before I go for the tea and ibuprofen.
reptilescorpio
Member
You need speed metal when you have a cold. GAF MD prescribes it.
Hotline Miami will be out next Wednesday for Vita/PS3/(maybe PS4?) crossplay, $10 or so.
Exclusive mask which turns on b&w (Flashes of Gameboy for me) mode.
Think I'm going to double up on this. Right price with crossplay.
Movie looks insane! Love Del Toro movies, Hellboy being one of my favourite superhero films.
Planet_JASE
Member
That was very nice. Reminded me of Godspeed You! Black Emperor / post-rock style music. Is this indicative of all their music? Or is this another one of those bands where I only like the song that is completely different from the rest of their catalogue?
Anyway, hope you feel better.
Pretty indicative tbh, if you enjoy that I suggest checking the albums Station and Geneva.
Not sure my head can cope
Planet_JASE
Member
DarthHomer
Member
Hotline Miami will be out next Wednesday for Vita/PS3/(maybe PS4?) crossplay, $10 or so.
Exclusive mask which turns on b&w (Flashes of Gameboy for me) mode.
Done. Fucking sold.
bodyboarder
Member
Many here running windows 8? Any problems/regrets from upgrading from 7.
I kind of hate it but I feel obligated to run it to learn it. The main problems are interface related. There is some really stupid shit like hidden UI elements and a bunch of stuff that needs more clicks than before. If you don't mind doing everything by keyboard it's ok. I've had no technical problems with it though, across many systems, so it's been good from that perspective.
This is seriously one of the worst design decisions ever.
FallbackPants
Member
Saw a preview for it before World War Z and my mate who was there thought it looked really shit. I don't think I can be friends with him anymore. I mean I was best man at his wedding but this is bigger than that. He apparently has no interest in being entertained.
reptilescorpio
Member
Wait, he think World War Z would be more entertaining than Pacific Rim? Is he anti-robot league or something?
Main issue if I had it would be no support for BF4 beta.