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Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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That's unfortunate for them. Have you used or compared them to the truenas hardware appliances?

There's no comparison. Drobos are slow, especially if you're using them in their special RAID mode. Almost any other way someone could get a RAID5-like setup will get something that reads and writes faster. The special sauce they add is that users can supposedly mix and match drives of different sizes and still get a stripe set with parity somehow, but I've never tried that. What I have been willing to do is slide spare drives from my spare stack into one large temporary volume to use while I'm moving data around. This has come in handy a few times since I no longer have a bunch of desktops sitting around to shove drives into.
 

Handruin

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That sounds very similar to the way unRAID tries to make it easier to just add in hdds without planning but still offers parity protection. I tried it for a bit during their demo but it didn't work well for me.

Tangentially related to HDDs, I'm seeing those Seagate earning reports in the news that storage demand is down. I'm hoping it might translate into sales or lower HDD prices for my upcoming upgrade.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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$150 is more or less my sweet spot for drive purchases. I've seen 14TB SAS system pulls for not much more than that, so we're getting there.
 

LunarMist

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Drobo filed for Chapter 11 this week. I have some Drobo hardware and it's been fine-ish. No complaints in particular but I've always liked Synology better for all the same stuff.
They have a bad reputation for lack of service and most of the market was quite low end, e.g., the type of people that used mismatched size/speed non-raid drives. Today those types are typically using dual drive RAID 1 upright book style devices with 2x16TB drives or something like that. Then they use the clouds for backups.
 

LunarMist

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Back in the '10s many photographers used the Drobo USB DAS units. Now the MACs are using 2-4 external NVMe in RAID 0 connected with TB.
It's just normal for them to have for example 4x4TB SSD in software RAID 0 containing all their data. Apparently a NAS is too archaic and clashes with the MAC user's decor.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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An acquaintance of mine has one of the 500 most popular accounts on Onlyfans. She's making low seven figures per year from adult modeling. The library of work she's done in the last three year is actually her personal fortune.

I got involved in her operation because she was doing all her editing work on one of the old Xeon-based Mac Pros. She knew it had an SSD (good on her for knowing that) and two drives that she THOUGHT were backing each other up. She had a WD MyCloud drive sitting over on the corner of her desk, but it had filled up and she'd never bothered to replace or upgrade it.

Her Mac Pro died. She didn't know what happened and it was during lock down and it was an emergency. Didn't want to take it to Apple because of what she was using it for.

Turned out the Mac had just died. Needed a new logic board. But the two hard drives she had, the only place she was keeping 6.somethingTB of Sony Raw files and all the edits (less the random stuff she was posting or that made to iCloud from her laptop), was two ~10 year old drives in RAID0. I had to sit and draw on a whiteboard to explain that RAID doesn't mean backup and RAID0 specifically means the opposite of backup.

I wound up setting up a pair of 36TB FreeNAS systems that run syncthing between them; one with her and the other at her shooting space, and having both of them set up to send data to BackBlaze. That's also how I got involved in helping people with their lockdown careers in internet modeling.
 

Handruin

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That's a good crossover use of IT skills and photography to help others in the OF world.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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It's exactly the thing LM was describing and actually almost exactly the reasoning as well. New Apple stuff in particular just doesn't consider storage at all.

I set up a NextCloud system and run that for people I know just to give them a place to dump their "work" photos. Turns out not many people have a good handle on what photos are where in their life, especially for people who hop between phone ecosystems and may not have an actual personal computer in their lives.
 

Handruin

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I've gravitated to recommending BackBlaze subscriptions for similar reasons. It's pretty good at finding all the photos, etc and simplified enough for those who aren't as tech savvy.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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I did a fun little experiment with my students today. We set up a small RAIDZ1 on a Linux system using 3x2TB drives, copied some data to it and then installed OpenZFS on Windows, plugged in our drives and imported the existing zpool. It's not perfect, because it mounted read-only, but we're also talking about mounting a non-native filesystem on Windows. Those are usually read-only anyway. I keep forgetting that OpenZFS on Windows even exists, but now I kind of want to play with it more.
 

Handruin

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That's actually really neat I wasn't aware OpenZFS would work on Windows even in read-only mode.
 

LunarMist

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I tried some of the WD DC drives and they are so must quieter than the Seagate Exnos, that it is not even funny!
 

LunarMist

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Just the 18TB H550 something. I guess the WD Gold are no longer made. They sound like the old Seagate Enterprise 10TB, not the nasty 18TB Seagates.

How does performance work in Raid 6? If there are 6 total drives for example, is the theoretical maximum R/W MB/sec. based on the 6 drives or 4 drives?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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How does performance work in Raid 6? If there are 6 total drives for example, is the theoretical maximum R/W MB/sec. based on the 6 drives or 4 drives?

RAID6 is always kind of iffy and write speed depends a lot on implementation but in my experience with HDDs, it's usually about as fast as write speed of between one half and two drives for an array of five or six, depending on stripe sizes, caching strategy etc. That's generalizing across RAIDz2, Storage Spaces, LVM and fancier LSI HBAs. You don't pick RAID6 for speed.
 

LunarMist

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I thought RIAD 6 pretty well replaced 5 in the last ten years due to the large sizes of the drives and the unrecoverable error rates.

[Q=1, T=1] Dikcmark of 64GB is 981.675 MB/s reads and 737.551 MB/s writes on the empty drives. It's 1214.602/1043.598 MB/s with the Q=8, T=1. Randomized 4K performance is the suck though. I have no idea who controls the stripers. How do I know in DSM6?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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If you have software RAID, it should be a parameter you can set at creation of the array, but if you're seeing 700MB/sec sequential writes, you have NOTHING to complain about.
 

LunarMist

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It is Synology, old software version DSM 6. They are on 7 for a year or two.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Synology just uses Linux LVM so if you're REALLY ambitious you might try creating your array with your drives attached to a Linux host and mdadm like the wind to set your chunk size to something bigger like 64 or 128k. :D

But honestly, you're getting 2x one HDD worth of write speed, and that's really damned good for mechanical drives in RAID6.
 

ddrueding

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Also keep in mind that even though Synology does use Linux, it resets huge chunks of the OS on updates. I've just about given up using it in methods not supported by the factory web UI.
 

LunarMist

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I did the last DSM6 update in 2022, but will not update it again unless there is some good reason.
I'm holding onto this old NAS for dear life, since the new ones require those ridiculous $650 for 18TB Syndology branded Toshiba drives.
 

LunarMist

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Do you have an XS/XS+ after generation 21? I'm pretty sure all of those are very aggresive about the drives. Thre older models like mine just give a single warning. The more consumerish models (mostly ARMans or Celerons) also don't care. I suppose legally they cannot cripple the older models too much the way they can with the new ones.

Are you using DSM 7 and if so is there any value to it (other than Linux security updates that I don't care about).
 

LunarMist

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You did not segregate valuables from bulky items like furniture? Ouch. :(
 

ddrueding

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You did not segregate valuables from bulky items like furniture? Ouch. :(
The truly valuable items were separated and flown in suitcases (jewelry, cash, laptop). The non-valuable items (like furniture) were given/thrown away at the source. Only the semi-valuable items (computers, other electronics, heirlooms) are in the container. I'd honestly be happy to never see any of it again, but the Mrs. is more sentimental than I am.
 

LunarMist

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I suppose there are different priorities. I would take one of my Nads if the buildings were in flames. Nothing other than people and pets would be as important as my data.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Back in April 2020, my apartment building had a fire in one of the units. I was on my elliptical when it happened, and I could just BARELY hear the alarm from that came from the other half of the building. The alarms on my side didn't go off.

My place is a few blocks from the closest fire station, so there were firemen on scene by the time I was sure I was hearing something somewhere, and once they saw me poke my head out the door downstairs, they made me come out, even though I was wearing nothing but my shoes and shorts. I told them I have pets and would like to get some clothes on and they were like "Come out or we'll make you." I didn't even have my phone.

I live ~500 feet from the shore of Lake Michigan and an early April night is not exactly a warm time to begin with. Fortunately, I did have some clothes in my car, but my car was also blocked in by the gathering collection of emergency vehicles.

As it turned out, somebody had a failed methamphetamine experiment going on the other side of my building, literally as far away from my unit as it could have been, but I had to sit in my car for eight hours because the city hadn't serviced hydrants in my neighborhood in a couple years. All the water lines were overgrown with vegetation. We just had to wait for pump trucks to show up and then for every other emergency vehicle to be shuffled out of the way so the water and hoses could get close enough to do anything useful. Putting out the fire took two minutes, tops, but there was another four hours of waiting while the building was checked for burning in the walls and roof. During all that time, nobody went in to get my pets (and two of them wouldn't have let a stranger touch them anyway) and even though I was sure my place was as safe as it could be, the level of anguish I had about my cats was probably one of if not the worst feelings I've ever had in my life.

My apartment was the only unit in the building that had nearly no smoke damage and it was determined that my place was also safe from carbon monoxide, probably because my balcony door had been open the whole time. My cats were fine. I found them all huddled under my bed. They didn't turn power back on until morning, either, and wiping down my walls took care of the actual "damage" I had.

For everyone else, the Red Cross was on the scene and getting shit done hours before the fire was out. Most of my neighbors spent the next month in a hotel that was apparently funded by the Red Cross. Most of the people living in my building did not have renter's insurance and most of them lost everything they had, including pets, entirely from smoke and carbon monoxide. The building itself was pretty resilient to the fire. It didn't actually spread out of the original unit. The smoke sure did.

I wound up being the only official tenant in the building for about seven months while all the other apartments were rehabbed. I used the other apartments on my floor as photography space for a while, which is maybe the only good thing about the experience.

Definitely grab shoes, pants and a hoodie or something when you're getting out of a fire alarm situation and grab your pets or NASes or whatever because the fire people sure as shit won't care about anything you think is valuable. I keep a bug-out bag with essentials by my front door and another in my car, and there's also a dedicated space now where I leave my phone, keys, laptop and camera bags and a cat carrier..
 

jtr1962

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Unfortunately, in this lawsuit happy society the authorities are going to be overly cautious getting people away from a fire. That said, not letting people retrieve pets (or having firemen do so) is inexcusable. If there were children still in the building they would get them.

This is all why I'm happy living in a single family detached home. While in theory a fire could spread from a neighbor's home, it's not very likely. It's highly unlikely a fire will start in my place. It's even more unlikely I would fail to notice it before it got out of control. I likely wouldn't even bother calling the fire department if a fire started that I managed to put out. I couldn't imagine the hell getting my mother out of the house would be, not to mention fire departments are blunt instruments. They would probably break all my windows and put a bunch of holes in the roof, even if the fire was out.
 

LunarMist

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Individual houses sure do burn down and with high winds so do neighboring structures and whole blocks, but maybe not so much in NYC.
Anyway the point was that a NAS would be more valuable than a computer that can easily be replaced. The Dabnish keyboard is kind of whacky so I might be ordering a US spec one.
 

ddrueding

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I absolutely felt uncomfortable in an apartment in the US. Wood-framed walls between me and people I don't trust is a no.

Here all the walls are foot-thick concrete + insulation + 2 layers of brick. The floor/ceiling is also pre-stressed concrete panels. All the doors between the apartments and into the stair and elevator spaces are rated for at least 4 hours in a fire and air-tight. Fire sprinklers aren't a thing in the apartments, but are in all the common spaces and parking areas have them.
 

ddrueding

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But you have no ventilation or AC?
Dedicated air exchanger per unit. Brings in fresh air, does a thermal exchange with the outgoing stale air, and circulates that fresh air to every room. You can manually adjust the airflow rate, or leave it to monitor conditions and adjust accordingly. This is the system that I plan to tap into for my AC intake/exhaust/circulation if I decide to go that route.

Though honestly even in July and August the average high is 21C. I'm probably too lazy to do the install.
 

LunarMist

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I lived in Europe for years and the summers were bad indoors.
At 21°C outside it will probably be hotter indoors and fresh air probably humid. One of the best benefits of AC is that it drops humidity to 40%.
 

ddrueding

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Fortunately my apartment faces mostly north and a bit east. And since the building is only 2 years old the windows are absolutely absurd in their ability to insulate all the things. We shall see.
 

jtr1962

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I lived in Europe for years and the summers were bad indoors.
At 21°C outside it will probably be hotter indoors and fresh air probably humid. One of the best benefits of AC is that it drops humidity to 40%.
My house typically holds ~15°F above outdoor temperature. If it's in the high 40s or above, the house is comfortable without heating. Unfortunately, that means once it gets past the 60s outside, indoors starts to become uncomfortable. Opening windows can help to some extent, but the hard fact is once it's past about 75°F outside, I need the A/C.

I wish the average high here in summers was only 21°C. I have a feeling if global warming continues places like Norway/Sweden/Denmark, and Canada, are going to be attractive places for climate change refugees. The southern USA will probably become a ghost town.
 

LunarMist

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The problem with good insulation is that it keeps all the heat and humidity in. I find that in a medicorely insulated place that I turn on the AC to 70°F when the temperature outside is >55°F. That must be all due to internal energy. If the home were well insulated, it would be worse.
 
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