(2012-04-26, 05:29)tonka28 Wrote: Thanks for that info mate - I've googled the static IP for the Xbox and will attempt after the working day is done.
The list of files that can be played is pretty up to date - it just seems that after my NAS is up - I'll just have to set some queues to convert all my media to the appropriate formats (yay -.-).
Please, someone in direct terms, explain to me the advantage of setting up raid. I know 'round about what it is, but I'm at a loss as to figure out why I would do it.
There are two reasons to setup RAID:
1. Speed. RAID can "stripe" data across multiple drives so that multiple pieces of data can be read and written simultaneously.
2. Redundancy. Raid can also mirror data across multiple drives, so if one drive dies, the data can be recovered from the mirror location.
Caveats follow:
1. If more drives die than the RAID setup allows for, all the data is lost, not just the data stored on those drives (because some of the data was striped on the dead drives)
2. Hardware based RAID setups require a RAID controller (commonly built into mobo's now). If this controller dies, it can only be replaced with the same model. The effect of this is that if your array lasts a long time and they've stopped making that controller, you're playing the ebay game or losing all your data
3. All the drives in a RAID array need to be the same size, and usually the same connection type (it's not common for RAID controllers to support SATA and IDE for example)
4. At least half the capacity of the total of the drives in the array will be used for mirroring and therefore unavailable for storage. For example, if you have an array with 2x 500gb drives, you will only be able to store 500gb of data
All of these problems are addressed by the various software based RAID solutions, such as unRAID, flexRAID, and from what I gather from comments above Greyhole. I've had the most experience with unRAID and only read up on flexRAID since I haven't needed to build one since it came out. I have no experience with Greyhole.
unRAID is designed to be the OS on a server with multiple drives connected, and runs from a USB stick so all connected drives are used for storage. It is linux based so any service that can be ran on a linux server can be ran on an unRAID server. Here's how it addresses the above problems:
1. unRAID doesn't mirror data. The simplified explanation is it keeps track of what data is in the same physical location on each drive in the array. If a drive goes down, the data can be repaired because it can "fill in the blanks" and determine what "should" be in that spot on the disk
2. unRAID can use and combination of number, size, and type of drive. If any piece dies, just replace it
3. The only size restriction in unRAID is that the drive which stores the repair information MUST be the biggest drive in the array
4. All the capacity of the drives in your array are available for storage, the only exception being an optional cache drive (a super fast drive which receives all the incoming information, then moves it to the array in the background), and the "parity" drive which stores the repair information
flexRAID's advantage over unRAID is that it's a program, not an OS. It can be ran on Windows, OSX, or Linux