easiest way to get a HDD on a network

greenhorn

greenhorn

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Continued from http://www.techenclave.com/storage-solutions/home-media-storage-145964/
Current setup: Beetel ADSL Modem+ wi fi router, 2x laptops, 2x androids
Need to have 1 or 2 hard disks visible on the network to store and play music and occasionally video from .
Needs to run 24x7, but have to deal with a 2 hour power cut and any unexpected ones, so would rather not use anything with a UPS,
What's the cheap/pain free solution?
Can invest some time in getting hold of the stuff , but getting from abroad might be a bit tight, as well as setting it up, but then it should preferably run by itself.
Got curious about this option after i read about the pogoplug device. What do you guys suppose is the best way to do this?
 
had this crazy idea about setting up hdds on a raspberry pi and exporting the volumes using glusterfs. :)

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another idea was to setup raspberry pi with iscsi_scst driver and export the luns. but glusterfs seems to be better since it exports nfs file system rather than raw volumes.
 
greenhorn said:
Got curious about this option after i read about the pogoplug device. What do you guys suppose is the best way to do this?
Click to expand...
thats why the interest in pogoplug.

Its the simplest way to attach ethernet to a usb HDD.

pogoplug + USB HDD = NAS on the cheap
 
The default pogo software wont share connected hdd's until you are connected to the net. If you have always connected internet you could use this simple method. If you want more, then, the best way to get usb hard disks shared on a pogo would be to hack it and make it run either Debian or Archlinux from a connected usb flash drive first. Then install samba, and then share which ever usb hdd you want. The 38 page thread has everything you want to know on this.

Get the P21 device. Has 4 usb ports & gigabit ethernet and can give data rates of upto 25-30Mbps while copying from connected hdd if you have a gigabit router. The only con (or not) with using linux on pogo is you will have to do everything from a terminal window.

Edit: I forgot to add this: You dont need to format any of your ntfs disks if you have debian or archlinux running. you just need to install ntfs-3g software in your os. this will give you native read/write capability for ntfs drives. you can also install webmin (another versatile software) to auto mount usb hdd's after the os is loaded or use a simple cron job for that.
 
6pack said:
The default pogo software wont share connected hdd's until you are connected to the net. If you have always connected internet you could use this simple method. If you want more, then, the best way to get usb hard disks shared on a pogo would be to hack it and make it run either Debian or Archlinux from a connected usb flash drive first. Then install samba, and then share which ever usb hdd you want. The 38 page thread has everything you want to know on this.
Click to expand...
Very good, so unless you hack the pogo then there is no way to expect a ethernet connection from a USB HDD without hooking up pogo to the net.

6pack said:
Get the P21 device. Has 4 usb ports & gigabit ethernet and can give data rates of upto 25-30Mbps while copying from connected hdd if you have a gigabit router. The only con (or not) with using linux on pogo is you will have to do everything from a terminal window.

Edit: I forgot to add this: You dont need to format any of your ntfs disks if you have debian or archlinux running. you just need to install ntfs-3g software in your os. this will give you native read/write capability for ntfs drives. you can also install webmin (another versatile software) to auto mount usb hdd's after the os is loaded or use a simple cron job for that.
Click to expand...
That underlined bit surprised me, the big issue i've seen with attaching ntfs to linux anything is the woeful write speeds. Read speeds good, write speeds terrible as the driver just isn't up to it.
 
If you just need it as a network storage device, stick with the stock firmware and install Samba using Optware, no need for Debian or ArchLinux -- Installing Samba on the Pogoplug | Aaron Randall
With this method you get to retain the stock Pogoplug features as well. So unless you need more features I'd recommend the modified stock firmware.

The added advantage here is that you get read/write access to NTFS by default and I think it uses the commercial version of the NTFS driver so offers much better read/write speeds.
 
thanks guys. I think varkey's post was what I was looking for.
Just one more question - how do hard disks mounted to devices like the pogoplug handle power cuts - will the disk get damaged after getting turned off suddenly every day, or is there another way ?
 
booo said:
had this crazy idea about setting up hdds on a raspberry pi and exporting the volumes using glusterfs. :)

- - - Updated - - -

another idea was to setup raspberry pi with iscsi_scst driver and export the luns. but glusterfs seems to be better since it exports nfs file system rather than raw volumes.
Click to expand...

The Pogoplug P21 would be a better candidate than the Raspberry Pi for this.

1. Its about 50% cheaper than the Raspberry Pi after adding the power supply, etc
2. You get 4 USB Ports, comes with power supply and case.
3. Gigabite ethernet (RPI has just a fast ethernet port) -- This is the major limiting factor for the RPi atleast for me.
 
yes. the default pogo software is made to share folders (connected to the device) via internet through pogo account or their plug software.

i use ntfs drive with my pogoplug for downloading. the only problem i see is it get fragmented too much. my net speed is 2Mbps so i doubt it would give much trouble to the hdd while writing. At the most it would be writing in 4-8MB increments every few minutes. Anyway I'm a noob in linux and I have no idea of how to measure write speeds in a terminal window. the woeful speeds might be a thing of the past now since many of these ntfs drivers have been rewritten or updated.
 
greenhorn said:
thanks guys. I think varkey's post was what I was looking for.
Just one more question - how do hard disks mounted to devices like the pogoplug handle power cuts - will the disk get damaged after getting turned off suddenly every day, or is there another way ?
Click to expand...

If you go with the stock setup with Samba, the firmware will be on the internal NAND and its mounted read only, so no need to worry about the OS at all. It is a slight problem when going for Debian/ArchLinux on a USB flash drive which doesn't handle power failures that well and you may need to run a file system check. But with a hard disk the occurrence of this issue is more or less limited.

As far as other connected data storage disks go, I guess your primary usage will be as a data hub so its more read access when compared to write. In almost 2-3 years that I've been using Pogoplug for various tasks I've never faced an issue due to power failures. I guess even if there are any errors it corrects them on mounting.

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6pack said:
yes. the default pogo software is made to share folders (connected to the device) via internet through pogo account or their plug software.

i use ntfs drive with my pogoplug for downloading. the only problem i see is it get fragmented too much. my net speed is 2Mbps so i doubt it would give much trouble to the hdd while writing. At the most it would be writing in 4-8MB increments every few minutes. Anyway I'm a noob in linux and I have no idea of how to measure write speeds in a terminal window. the woeful speeds might be a thing of the past now since many of these ntfs drivers have been rewritten or updated.
Click to expand...

Install Samba using the guide that I've linked and you can share files in your LAN as well and access the files using Windows Explorer, no need for their software.

Make sure you enable full preallocation in Transmission to prevent fragmentation issues if you are using it for downloads. This will allocate the full size of the torrent when it is added which greatly reduces fragmentation.
 
6pack said:
Anyway I'm a noob in linux and I have no idea of how to measure write speeds in a terminal window.
Click to expand...
Iozone

Used this tool years ago to rebut the assertion that larger cluster sizes ie 64K mean faster serve speeds. Found no evidence to support it whatsoever and stuck with the NTFS default 4K cluster size.

6pack said:
the woeful speeds might be a thing of the past now since many of these ntfs drivers have been rewritten or updated.
Click to expand...
This was with hooking up a USB NTFS formatted HDD to my router. It reads without issue.

Writing is another matter, with it hooked up to the router which runs samba etc.

Thing is if used for downloading there is no prob, its when you want to move tens of gigs at a go it becomes problematic. Have to reconnect back to the windows laptop to get proper speeds which works @ 1 GB/minute

Will have to install a 3rd party fw to get better write speeds with this router.
 
blr_p

1 Gb/min = Around 17 MB/s

I think this is achievable with the stock Pogoplug firmware due to the better NTFS drivers. I guess they use this -- Tuxera NTFS Embedded | Tuxera
Secondly the router is limited in RAM/processing power too. I'm sure Pogoplug will give a much better performance.
 
varkey said:
blr_p

1 Gb/min = Around 17 MB/s

I think this is achievable with the stock Pogoplug firmware due to the better NTFS drivers. I guess they use this -- Tuxera NTFS Embedded | Tuxera
Click to expand...
Right, as pogo is using commerical NTFS drivers.

That you can also get the same performance with alternative f/w is a bonus.

varkey said:
Secondly the router is limited in RAM/processing power too. I'm sure Pogoplug will give a much better performance.
Click to expand...
680MHZ CPU + 128MB RAM = 452.19 BogoMIPS on the wndr 3800

Pogo has a couple of models at comparable MIPS (classic,Pro) and double that (v2 & series 4). The v2 which is EOL is the most powerful of all. Maybe firmware was not as optimised in this early pogo model.

With the router my guess is its the open source NTFS driver in the netgear f/w at fault.
 
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