Re: Seeking recommendation for external storage

Andrew Gideon wrote:
For home use (lots of videos, stills, etc.), I'm looking for storage.
I'm thinking at least 500G to start, but with the ability to grow (and
with 750G SATA drives, that shouldn't be a problem). I'm leaning towards
external storage to make it easier to upgrade/swap the computer. And the
computer - or one networked to it - will eventually be running
something along the lines of the Myth media server. So speed is
significant.

I've had bad luck with USB connected drives, but all my experience has
been with Lacie products.

I've had decent luck using older SCSI boards I've had sitting around and
connecting them to SCSI attached arrays that use SATA1 drives at work. Is
this a reasonable home solution? I'm thinking it a little pricey, but
I've not shopped these products in a while.

External 4-bay SCSI RAID subsystems will be around $1100+ USD.


Are there external SATA connectors/arrays? Looking at SATA connectors,
this certain appears like something that could be used externally. But I
don't know how long a cable is permitted.

Yes... these are good solutions. Should be able to run a cable long
enough. This is probably the economical choice with the most
flexibility. You could run JBOD and do RAID in software if
desired.


Network attached might be okay if it were quick enough to handle
recording/playing videos. I've plenty of experience with both NFS and
iSCSI, and I can keep this storage on a private GigE subnet without much
difficulty (even if it's just using a crossover for now).

This is just ok... depends on how fast your gigE goes. If you can
push the max... then it's ok... but certainly not as fast as
an external SATA or SCSI set of drives. Some RAID subsystems
are extremely fast (200M/sec+), but probably out of your price range.
Look to get about 30-50M/sec max if you go the NAS route on just
gigE (from my own experience).




What else is recommended?

Thanks...

Andrew


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