QNAP External SATA Disk Enclosure

[Paul_B]

As the promised QNAP slave seems to have vanished into the ether is anyone using a fanless external drive cage with eSATA for the QNAP TS-101 and using QRAID?

I specifically do not want to use the much slower USB interface

[bonze]

What are the advantages of a RAID drive?
I would like to do a backup of my ripped music (about 130 GB) but can't see the point in having a 2nd drive permanently running.

[Paul_B]

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

With a QNAP TS-101 implementation of RAID 1 you have disk mirroring. Therefore anything that is written to one disk is written to the other. Therefore, if one disks fails it doesn't matter because the same data is on the second disk. Swap them over and off you go.

I am not sure exactly how QNAP implement RAID through software as I am only familiar with hardware RAID and Windows drivers. In which case when the hardware controller sends the same instruction to both mirrored disks at the same time.

[jimbo_l]

I have an (amusingly named) Icybox SATA enclosure. I can't see my exact model on their website but it's like this - http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/pro..._objectID=3769 - except it only has an SATA interface. It's fanless and seems to perform its job well.

Installing an HDD in it is pretty simple although there's not much room inside; the cables get pretty squashed up.

It's worth noting that you'll need an SATA -> eSATA cable, which isn't supplied. I also had to cut a lot of the cable's connector's rubber surround off, as the QNAP eSATA connector is recessed and the connector thus did not fit. This may have been down to the cable I was using, I'm not sure.

I think QNAP's Q-RAID really just uses Linux rsync underneath. My impressions of Q-RAID are mixed:

* It's simple enough to add a drive - you just plug it in, go to the QNAP eSATA page and select the Q-RAID 1 option. It then chunters away and syncs the disk. This takes hours (depending on how much data you have).

* Once the data has been synced you can eject the disk from the same eSATA page if you want to, and then switch it off. The next time you turn it on it will normally resync OK. I did have a problem once where it failed to sync and I had to start from scratch, though, which didn't fill me with confidence.

* The biggest problem is that the reported available space on the external drive is always substantially less than on the internal drive (I have no idea why this is). I bought an identical model drive to the internal disk, so I know they're the same size, so it looks like there's a problem with the QNAP software there. I haven't had any problems at the moment but as I add more music I assume it will eventually think that the external disk is full. I know at least one other user has also seen this problem.

* When the external disk is switched on it also seems to prevent both of the disks from sleeping. Some people aren't bothered by this but my disks are in my bedroom so I would prefer them to sleep. What I end up doing at the moment is switching the disk on, waiting for it to sync and then ejecting and switching it off again in order to get the QNAP to sleep. This kind of defeats the object of a RAID disk though of course.

HTH.

[bonze]

I've been looking into backing up the data on my TS-101 again, and have been trying to make sense of the QRAID feature.

I have a 300Gb Maxtor disk which is now about half full.
If the QRAID is not hardware based would it matter that the mirror disk is not exactly the same make & size?
There seems to be a lack of Maxtor 300Gb SATA disks.
Could I use a 320Gb disk? Seagate for example??

[dinkydong]

My 2 cents here. I'm using the Qnap TS-101 without the slimserver installed. Connected a Zoom Xtreme ZX-13 eSATA enclosure (with built-in 8cm fan) in QRAID1 configuration. I've got no issues with the QRAID process, although the external drive has some space wasted (apparently a known issue with rsync, something about operating/tmp files). Now, I sort of regretted getting an eSATA enclosure with a fan (added noise!) because once the syncing process is completed, based on your pre-designated sleep time, Qnap will power down BOTH harddisks, yes B-O-T-H! When a read access is required, ONLY the main harddisk will power up. When a sync is required, the external harddisk powers up then. So, a passively cooled external enclosure will be ideal in this case!