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Review: QNAP TS-431 NAS With Western Digital 1TB RED NAS Drives

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 4, 2016 by itnerd

I needed a new NAS box at home. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage by the way and in short it is a box that you plug into your network where you put one or more hard drives into so that everyone on your network can get access to the data stored on said NAS. I had been using a D-Link DNS-323 NAS with 1TB of storage for years. But I needed more storage than that. So I want on a mission to get a NAS box that I could grow into. After some research, I settled on the QNAP TS-431:

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The QNAP TS-431 is a NAS box that allows you to put four hard drives into it. From there, you can configure them in the following ways:

  • Single Disk: You use one disk and serve it up to those on your network.
  • JBOD: This is where you use multiple hard drives, but not in a RAID configuration, thus providing neither redundancy nor performance improvements. Hard drives may be handled independently as separate logical volumes, or they may be combined into a single logical volume using fancy software tricks. If you go this route (which I wouldn’t except for specific use cases), make sure that your data is always backed up.
  • RAID 0: This is when you take two or more disks and combine them to get large amounts of storage. For example, if you have four 1TB drives, you can use RAID 0 to get 4TB of storage. But if one drive fails, your data is gone. If you go this route (which I wouldn’t except for specific use cases), make sure that your data is always backed up.
  • RAID 1: This consists of an exact copy a set of data on two or more disks. A classic RAID 1 mirrored pair contains two disks. If one drive fails, your data is safe on the other drive.
  • RAID 5: This consists of three or more drives where they are combined to provide a single storage volume. To protect your data, roughly 2/3 of each drive is used for data and roughly 1/3 of each drive is used for what is called parity information which can help to rebuild your data in the event of the failure of a single drive.
  • RAID 6: This extends RAID 5 by adding more parity information to better help rebuild your drive in the event of a failure of a single disk. But you give up storage space in exchange.
  • RAID 10: This is a combination of RAID 0 and 1 with the purpose being to provide additional redundancy.
  • RAID 5 + spare: This is a RAID 5 setup with a spare drive that can step in to automatically replace a failed drive. In a classic RAID 5 setup, a user has to physically swap the drive out and start the recovery process.

This is the sort of data storage and protection options that until the last few years, only big businesses got access to after spending a pile of cash. These days, anyone has access to this level of data storage and protection.

So, in addition to the TS-431, I got my hands on four 1TB Western Digital RED drives. Why these drives? Unlike desktop hard drives, they’re specifically designed to run in a NAS box 24/7. Thus they won’t fail in this use case. My plan was to take all four drive and configure them for RAID 5. That would give me roughly 2.7TB of storage. Installing the drives into the NAS is easy. You have to put the drives into some plastic trays that allow you to remove and replace drive while the NAS is running. Simply get a screwdriver and screw the drives into the trays using the supplied screws.

Setup was kind of interesting. I tried to go to https://start.qnap.com to run through their automated setup. However that turned into a #fail when it tried to go to https://install.qnap.com and came back with an error 502 which is a bad gateway. In short, it couldn’t reach the website that I needed to go to next. So I resorted to plan “B”. I used a piece of software called QNAP Finder which comes in PC and Mac flavors to access and set up the NAS box. I’m glad that I went this route as I was able to configure the NAS exactly the way I wanted it, including the following:

  • This NAS box supports NFS for LINUX, AFP for Mac, and CIFS/SMB for Windows. That’s important as using the right network protocol can affect the speed of your NAS. Since we’re a Mac only home, I turned off everything but AFP.
  • It has two USB ports in the back and one in the front, so I configured one of the rear ones for a USB laser printer and the other for a UPS. The latter was configured to shut down if power goes out for more than 15 minutes, and start back up once power is restored. The former is being shared to all users of the home network.
  • It has two Gigabit Ethernet ports which I configured for Active Backup. Active Backup uses just one adapter, but it switches to the second adapter if the first adapter fails. I plugged one Ethernet cable into my router and one into my 4 port switch. There are other configurations that you can use to maximize speed or redundancy.
  • I had to update to the latest QNAP Turbo NAS System software (version 4.2 build 20151118 in my case) which makes this NAS box easy to manage using a web browser. The TS-431 has an iTunes like app stores where one can download additional “apps” to add functionality. Beyond the included Photo Station, Music Station and Download Station, apps such as Surveillance Station (Network surveillance and video management system) Notes Station (private cloud based notebooks) and Cloud Link (Remote access service) are available. Also available are developer tools such as Python, Perl, phpMyAdmin and Mantis to name a few. To view a complete list of available apps, visit QNAP’s App Center web page.
  • I set it up to notify myself and my wife via e-mail if anything bad happened to the NAS. I could have used push notifications via the QNAP app for iPhone, but I figured that using e-mail was good enough.
  • I turned off the network trash can to get additional storage as this NAS is simply being used to back up all the Macs in the house to and serve up media.

So, once it was set up and I had copied my data over, I got a chance to do some experimenting. Since I have a Roku 3, I tried out a Roku channel called Qmedia which allows you to stream media from your TS-431 to your Roku. Setting it up is dead easy as described here and it works well as long as you have media that the Roku supports. For example, the Roku 3 doesn’t play .avi files. Now the TS-431 does have the ability to transcode media from one format to another. But I’m not taking advantage of that as it cannot do that in real time and this isn’t why I got this NAS box. If real time transcoding is important to you, QNAP makes other NAS boxes that have this ability. Another thing that I should note is that the TS-431 supports DLNA and AirPlay streaming so you can get your media displayed on almost any device. Finally, you can create your own private cloud so that your files are always accessible via the Internet. However, I did not leverage this feature as I want my files to stay behind my firewall.

But the real question is, how does this setup work in terms of speed? Very well in fact. My old NAS took about 4 hours and 25 minutes to do the weekly back up my MacBook Pro. Now it takes 2 hours and 40 minutes. That performance is pretty good. Another note is that this NAS is very quiet which is important for home use.

What’s the price of this setup? I paid $395 CDN for the QNAP TS-431. I also paid $89 CDN for each of the four 1TB Western Digital Red hard drives. That works out to a total of $751 CDN. If you need a NAS box for home use and want to get the same level of data security while being able to serve up media to your devices and so much more, this is a very good option. Check it out at your local computer retailer.

 

 

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Western Digital To Buy SanDisk

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 21, 2015 by itnerd

Reuters reports that Western Digital will buy SanDisk in a deal worth roughly $19 billion. In a press release, WD said, “The combination is the next step in the transformation of Western Digital into a storage solutions company with global scale, extensive product and technology assets, and deep expertise in non-volatile memory (NVM).” SanDisk has been in business since 1988, and primarily “manufactures flash memory chips and other digital storage for personal computers, data centers and consumer electronics, including smartphones and tablets.” They have over 8,000 employees, compared to WD’s 76,000. This follows another major transaction in the storage market which was Dell buying EMC last week.

My thoughts? Western Digital is a huge maker of mechanical hard drives. That business is almost dead and is never coming back. So if it wishes to stay alive, getting into non-volatile memory which is also known as flash or solid state disks has to be the plan. Let’s see if the marketplace agrees.

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My Trip To India And Australia: Part 3 – The New Hard Drive

Posted in Products, Tips with tags , on February 25, 2015 by itnerd

One thing that travelers don’t think of is backing up their data when they travel with their laptop. Sooner or later, you’ll have a hard drive failure, or worse your laptop will get stolen. Thus you should always have a backup. In my case I was going to buy the parts to build my own external hard drive as my current one was too small. But after visiting my local computer store, I figured out that it would cost me about $30 more to build my own versus just buying a pre-built one. After looking around, I settled on the Western Digital 1TB Elements external hard drive. Here’s what you get in the box:

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There’s not a whole lot here. If you plan on using this as a portable drive, you’ll need a case. It doesn’t come with one, but I have one so I am covered. You might want to invest in one, or pick a Western Digital model that comes with a case.

Now the Western Digital 1TB Elements drive has a lot going for it including:

  • It is a USB 3.0 drive that can fall back to USB 2.0
  • It comes with a trial version of WD SmartWare Pro backup software. It allows you to back up your files to your WD Elements drive or to the cloud using your DropBox account. It’s Windows only though.
  • It’s small and easy to tote around. Though I would not do so without a case. It’s also light as well which is important if you’re traveling.

Now if you have a PC, it’s plug and play. However if you have a Mac, you’ll need to reformat the drive using Disk Utility before using it. Now, experienced Mac users won’t find this a big deal. However, novice users won’t have any direction other than the instruction sheet pointing users to a Western Digital support knowledgebase article. The reference to this knowledgebase article is in tiny print so it is easy to miss. It would be a good idea for Western Digital to do more for Mac users.

In terms of performance, when it was pretty quick as long as you connect it via USB 3.0. Thus backups should be quick. Now I will copy my most recent backup to the drive so that I have a backup if I need it on my way to India. Not to mention that backing up my data will be much quicker as Carbon Copy Cloner will have something to work with. The other thing I will do is pack it separately from my laptop. That way if I lose the backup, I will still have my laptop, or vice versa.

The best thing about this drive is that it has a great price. I paid $79 for the 1TB version which is an excellent price. What was not so excellent is the fact that Western Digital only offers a one year warranty when a lot of their other products have two, three or even five year warranties. Yes it’s their entry level drive. But they can and should do better on that front. Having said that, it wouldn’t stop me from recommending it as an option to back up your data while you’re on a trip.

On Friday, I will detail my trip to the airport and my departure from Toronto to Dubai which is the first leg of my trip to New Delhi India.

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Hey IT Nerd! How’s The Hard Drive For Your MacBook Pro Working For You?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 2, 2015 by itnerd

I just got a question in my inbox related to my my recent run of bad luck with hard drives in my MacBook Pro:

Happy new year! I was wondering if you could provide an update on your MacBook Pro and the Western Digital hard drive that you put in. Is it working well for you? 

Thank you. 

Thanks for the question. I was going to wait until 90 days had passed before posting an update, but I’ll do one now and follow up when the hard drive hits 90 days. In short, the Western Digital Black hard drive (the review that I wrote is located here) that I installed after the third drive failure is working just fine. I have had zero issues with it. After I replaced the drive. I put forward four theories in this article as to why three hard drives would fail in a short amount of time. Let me list them with some commentary:

  • Apple has a systemic problem with the hard drives they use: This is highly plausible. All I did change the brand of drive and the problem has so far disappeared. This implies that the drives that Apple uses are prone to failure. Plus available evidence in this article seems to support this theory.
  • I am either abusing the drive by running my MacBook Pro 24/7 or by moving it about while it is on, or in some other fashion that I can’t imagine: This is unlikely as my behavior in terms of how I use my MacBook Pro has not changed. Logic would dictate that I should therefore have similar problems with this new hard drive. But I do not.
  • I have an undiagnosed issue that is causing the drives to fail. This is somewhat unlikely as these are media failures. But it’s on the list because it’s possible no matter how unlikely it might be: This is unlikely. Logic would dictate that the hard drive that I installed should meet the same fate as the other drives if this were true. Thus far it has not which implies that this theory is false.
  • I am extremely unlucky: This is unlikely as the available evidence that I detailed in this article points to a quality problem with Apple and the drives that they use.

As stated above, I will report back when the hard drive is 90 days old which will be in early February. So far things are positive and I hope they remain that way. Also, if someone files a class action lawsuit against Apple regarding the quality of the hard drives they use, please let me know. I’d like to join such a class action lawsuit as this is something that Apple should have dealt with in a way that solves the problem and doesn’t make me have negative thoughts about Apple as a company.

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Review: Western Digital Black 2.5″ Laptop Hard Drive

Posted in Products with tags on November 12, 2014 by itnerd

Because of my recent run of bad luck with hard drives in my MacBook Pro, I decided to replace the most recent one that failed with a third party drive rather than use an Apple supplied drive. After some research, I decided on the Western Digital Black hard drive. The Black line of hard drives from Western Digital are their highest performing models as they run at 7200 RPM and they feature a 16 MB cache to speed things along. Now 16MB doesn’t sound like a lot, but it works. My MacBook Pro boots in under 45 seconds versus 1:30 for the 5400 RPM hard drive that was in there previously. Applications also start noticeably faster which is good as well. One thing that I did notice is that in a very quiet room, you can hear the drive if you’re right next to the notebook. Now that doesn’t bother me and I am pretty sure that you will not find it objectionable. But I thought I would mention it. Another thing to note is that all this extra power doesn’t seem to affect battery life. I did a couple of rundown tests and I noted a 11 minute difference in battery life versus what I noted with the drive that my MacBook Pro came with. In either case, I got at least 6 hours of battery life which is good as it would really suck if increasing your performance meant sacrificing battery life.

The drive itself is thin. It’s only 9.5 mm high which means it should fit into most laptops including ultra-portable ones. You can tell that Western Digital thought out the design of the drive because when you flip the drive over, everything is tucked away on the other side of the main circuit board. This will keep the surface mount components safe. In terms of mounting, you can use the four mounting points on the bottom of the drive, or the four mounting points on the sides of the drive. I needed to use the latter, but it’s great that you have that level of flexibility at your disposal. Another thoughtful touch comes from inside the drive. According to Western Digital, the recording head never touches the disk media. That means that your data is better protected and the drive is more robust from the rigors of transport. Seeing that I travel a fair amount, I’ll be able to put that to the test. Having said that, if your drive does go bad, Western Digital offers up a 5 year warranty which is unusual as three years is the general standard for warranty periods. Having said that, Western Digital does have an excellent reliability reputation and their drives have been the ones that I have recommended to my customers for some time now. Thus I’m fairly confident that I will not have to take advantage of their warranty.

Now the model I got was the WD5000BPKX which uses a SATA 6 Gb/s interface to transfer data to and from the drive. You can also get it in a SATA 3 Gb/s variant. The choice depends on what your laptop will support. It also comes in capacities from 160GB all the way up to 750GB. I chose 500GB as that’s all the storage I needed. In my case, the drive was under $60 before taxes which is a great price for a drive these days. But if I did want to go up to 750GB, it was only $10 more. That’s still a great price. From my perspective, if you want to upgrade the hard drive in your notebook, the Western Digital Black hard drive should be your first choice. It’s fast without affecting your battery life too much, and comes with a great warranty. Plus Western Digital has a great reputation when it comes to reliability. All of this means that you cannot lose if you choose this drive to be in your notebook.

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Western Digital Ships 1TB Mobile Drive… That’s Right, 1TB In Your Laptop! [UPDATED]

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 27, 2009 by itnerd

If you’re on the go and you need lots of room for porn and MP3s data on your laptop, you were limited to 500GB of storage. Until today that is. Western Digital has announced the Scorpio Blue one terabyte drive. Here’s the kicker: It’s $250 USD:

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor1 and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport™ Essential™ SE Portable USB Drives. Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.

“The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices,” said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD. “Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives.”

Apparently the drives are available now. So if you have lots of porn and MP3s data that you need to tote around with, head to your local computer store now.

UPDATE: Apparently, Mac users need not apply. According to TUAW, this drive doesn’t fit into MacBooks. FAIL!

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Seagate & Western Digital Announce New Drives…. 2TB For All!

Posted in Commentary with tags , on February 4, 2009 by itnerd

Fresh off of dealing with their hard drives that had a tendency to turn into bricks, Seagate has announced a new series of drives including a 2TB drive:

The 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drive will be available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and with an enterprise-class SAS interface as well as a SATA version, and provides best-in-class capacity and performance. As the world’s only 7200-rpm 3.5-inch hard drive providing up to 2TB of storage, the record-setting capacity of Constellation ES hard drives are ideal for 3.5-inch based external storage architectures. With Constellation ES hard drives, customers don’t have to sacrifice performance in order to gain the highest capacities. The Constellation ES hard drive will ship in calendar Q3.

These drives will give users all the room required for porn and MP3s their data storage needs.

Of course, not to be outdone, Western Digital has released a 2TB drive of their own. Oh yeah unlike the Seagate drive, it’s actually shipping:

WD Caviar Green is one of the most successful product lines in the company’s recent history with its third-generation GreenPower™ technology, now providing 2 TB of proven reliable storage for today’s high-resolution files and graphics. WD Caviar Green drives are designed for use in USB/FireWire®/eSATA external hard drives, desktop computers, workstations, and desktop RAID environments.

“Saving power without sacrificing storage capacity is what consumers want, and what many businesses are requiring today. With the launch of the new WD Caviar Green 2 TB hard drive, customers receive the additional capacities needed to operate today’s highly advanced programs and high-resolution digital files while using less power than typical drives with similar performance and capacities,” said Jim Morris, WD senior vice president and general manager of client systems.

So it’s green and has 2TB of storage for porn and MP3s you data storage needs and you can get it today. Cool! You can bet these will be flying off the shelves and going to people who have extensive porn and MP3s data storage needs.

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