Just bought an N5200B NAS - need setup advice please! (and WD RAID question)

[Smurfin]

Hi all

Got my NAS yesterday, a Thecus N5200B 5-bay unit Smile My 5th HDD arrived this morning, and I'm finally ready to set up my RAID.

I have 5 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green drives (WD10EACS), and I plan to set them up in a RAID5 array. The main purpose is to store uncompressed BluRay rips, as well as the occasional DVD - so we're talking 20-25GB files.

My questions are:

What stripe size should I use? I have options going all the way up to 4096KB. Also, what are the implications of using a bigger stripe size in terms of performance and recovery?

I also have the option on the Thecus web interface of selecting a % of data to be used. The default is 95%, but I'm not sure what this means? I assume I'd just set it to 100% to maximise the capacity of the RAID?

If anyone could help on the above two questions it would really be appreciated - I want to get this right before I build the RAID as I know it's going to take hours and hours initiliasing 5TB!

My other question relates to the Western Digital drives. I understand from reading around that the program WDTLER.EXE can make them act more like a proper RAID edition drive. However, given that my drives are in a NAS, how can I implement this? (as surely when I setup the RAID on the NAS it will wipe everything on the discs?)

Forgive my ignorance on this one as I'm really not sure how this works! If it can work, do I need to remove the drives from the NAS, connect them individually to my PC then run the utility before putting the HDDs back in the NAS?Huh

Advice would be appreciated!

Thanks
Matt

[GoNz0]

256kb should be fine, set it to the standard 95% to start with, after that you can expand it to 99% leaving you 1% for the usb drive

if you want to use the wd tool u need to do it on a windows pc to extend the timout, although the latest firmware increases the raid timouts anyway so you may not need them

[Smurfin]

256kb should be fine, set it to the standard 95% to start with, after that you can expand it to 99% leaving you 1% for the usb drive

if you want to use the wd tool u need to do it on a windows pc to extend the timout, although the latest firmware increases the raid timouts anyway so you may not need them

Oops. Set it to 100%.....do I need to restart it?

[FatalSaviour]

Oops. Set it to 100%.....do I need to restart it?

Only if you potentially want to use the USB Drive functionality

[Smurfin]

Only if you potentially want to use the USB Drive functionality

I don't quite understand, are you saying that I can't use the usb drive to put files on the NAS with the RAID set to 100%?

It's configuring itself at 95% currently, but I've worked out that gives me 150GB less storage than on 100% (unfortunately there's no 99% option, it's either 95% or 100%).

[GoNz0]

u can add the extra 4% once its built

[Smurfin]

Thanks So I need to start it at 95% or I won't be able to put any files on the NAS via the USB?

[GoNz0]

yeh its just the way the firmwares setup m8

it doesnt take long to add the 4% either.

[Smurfin]

Damn. Was 30% through the raid building lol. Oh well, here goes another 20 hours waiting

[GoNz0]

u dont need to restart the building, you can increase/decrease the raid once its setup

this is just to backup usb sticks etc

[horse]

ooh nice i plan to do exactly this, 5200B wiith green WD drives, get 3, expand later and rebuild the array

how are you finding it?

[macaroni]

I'm also looking to do this with 5 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green drives, but was a little concerened by this from the Thecus HDD compatibility list:

"GreenPower series drive could be mis-judge by NAS Disk Status to Warning but in theory this doesn't affect RAID
status. In case there is any drive out from the RAID array, please check the drive status if it is normal through Data
Lifeguard Diagnostic."

Have you had any problems?

[horse]

eek was just hovering over the buy button, good job i waited

any issues?

[macaroni]

I went ahead with it anyway, it's working fine so far. The drives display correctly.

[Smurfin]

I'm also looking to do this with 5 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green drives, but was a little concerened by this from the Thecus HDD compatibility list:

"GreenPower series drive could be mis-judge by NAS Disk Status to Warning but in theory this doesn't affect RAID
status. In case there is any drive out from the RAID array, please check the drive status if it is normal through Data
Lifeguard Diagnostic."

Have you had any problems?

Interesting, I was about to post about this. I went into the web utility yesterday and found this:



The drive shows as a warning, yet the NAS performance seems ok - write speed seems a little slower, but it's fine for streaming 1080p uncompressed BluRay, and the lights are all green on the NAS itself when it's being accessed.

When I delve into the drive details a little more, I get this:



I have no idea what "Current Pending Sector 7" actually means - the other drives show this as zero. Anyone know if there's a problem?

Also, I'm wondering why my write speed is sooooo slow. Over my wired network, I'm getting max 9mbps?

I'm also a little confused about the Wake On Lan feature. As I understand it I need to use the WAN port (port 1), so WOL doesn't work? Am I missing something really obvious here?

Any help would be appreciated

Cheers
Matt

[macaroni]

Any update Smurfin?

Does "Current Pending Sector 7" mean the drive is failing? Is it reporting this correctly?