Running out of HD space (again)

[Harrison]

Time to revive an old classic! Who remembers the original "Running out of HD space" thread I started on the old forum? Followed by the original revival and continuation of it on this forum a couple of years ago here (http://forum.classicamiga.com/showthread.php?t=204). That was only the 204'th topic on this board too! And it was the largest combined thread on the forum at the time by some margin. :)

So here we go again...

And yes, I've run out of HD space again!

My main system with 2.5TB is almost full, my two NAS' are full, my download server is full, by emulation system is nearly full, and the other PC's drives are nearly full too! Ahhh!

Time to buy some more and upgrade some of the existing HDs to larger ones.

Dilemma now is what to buy and what to upgrade. The Linkstation can't easily be upgraded, so that will either mean buying a bigger NAS (I would get a more modular one if I did buy another one so drives could be added/upgraded/replaced), or I could try to replace the existing drive in the Linkstation with a 1TB drive.

I think added an extra 1TB drive to the download server should fix the issue there, and a 1TB drive in the emulation system. So... all in all that might be 3 1TB drives. Or if 500GB drives still work out cheaper I might opt for those instead.

And as the description says. It's never worth building up a huge upload credit on private trackers if you keep running out of HD space and can't utilise it to download anything. :lol:

[Stephen Coates]

I will be honest.

I also am running out of space and soon will need new HDs.

[Demon Cleaner]

I'm quite fine with my spare space, but I only update my main sets, and as they don't grow a lot, but even get smaller sometimes (like the latest ScummVM set), I still have some space left, ok, not for another 50GB set, but so far I'm fine.

And the whole thing is mirrored 2 times (data on 3 disks = the same). So I also have some backups, because losing a disk with a lot of sets is VERY annoying.

Do you use your NAS for torrents too? And if so, how fast is it when copying thousands of files? Is the Linkstation 1x1TB or 2x500GB?

I'm still unsure about the whole NAS stuff, as my Terastation was a total failure, at least for small files, and also Zyriax sent his Drobo back because it was too slow, the speeds they mentioned were absolutely overstated.

I guess NAS & torrents = No Love :)

[Buleste]

At the moment I'm backing up some of my older stuff onto DVD and then deleting it to free up some space. Now rather than a full HDD I have a full bedroom of DVD's.

[svebbe]

Mmm.. Can relate to this issue to :), also I hate having to have files/media all over so If I need a specific file I need to start one PC or find a harddrive I put somewere.

On my "to do" list is a buying and building of my new Server VMware station, on it I want a secure Linux router system, a windows mce system and a FreeNAS system.
This to be able to get all my media on one computer but still beeing able to access everything from everywere in the world with all my clientstations such as my cellphone, xbox, xbox360 psp wii ds and so on..

Probably need a extra linux system in the computer to be able to get some VPN solution thingi.

And for the moment Im looking on a 2 quad core xeon processors, 8gig ram, and about 4TB in storage capacity. With this I could set up my complete network sulotion with VMware. Just need to find a bag of cash :)

[Harrison]

Hi svebbe and welcome to classicamiga :thumbs:

I've played around with FreeNAS a bit and it is great. And if I decided to build a new NAS then I will definitely be looking into using it instead of a prebuilt NAS solution. The system spec you have in mind sounds great, and using VMware you could easily use virtulisation to run a few different virtual servers on a system like that without really seeing much performance hit.

I've been thinking more at the other end of the scale, to build a server/NAS that is near silent by utilising one of the mini-itx Intex Atom 330 dual core based moterboards. These are near silent and have SATA so a group of SATA HDs can easily be run from it in standalone or RAID configuration. And being a server the built in graphics and audio is fine for that purpose, and the maximum of 2GB ram should be OK for the needs of the server. I also want to make it headless with remote access, so I can just log into it from any other machine on the network to reboot or manage it, and FreeNAS would be good for that.

[Harrison]

Is the Linkstation 1x1TB or 2x500GB?

My current Linkstation is a single drive 500GB one. I know that there are people who have hacked the firmware to give the Buffalo NAS drives more features, and allow for larger HDs so I'm going to investigate this as it would be cool to just be able to upgrade the existing system rather than buy an over priced additional one. I mainly use it for my music collection as it can just sit in the corner on all the time without making too much noise and stream music to any device or system I wish. And the collection is getting quite large, with the MP3 collection currently taking up about 420GB of the current HD. (I can't resist downloading complete discographies for all the groups I like :)).


Do you use your NAS for torrents too? And if so, how fast is it when copying thousands of files?... I'm still unsure about the whole NAS stuff, as my Terastation was a total failure, at least for small files, and also Zyriax sent his Drobo back because it was too slow, the speeds they mentioned were absolutely overstated.

I guess NAS & torrents = No Love :)

I did when I first got it as it seemed like quite a cool idea, but it was a bit slow to copy the downloaded files off from the NAS to free up room for the next torrents. A NAS isn't really ideal for storing files that need to be copies and moved around a lot. It's better to use for files you want to have available from any location on your network. such as music or videos. However rom collections on a NAS is a great idea for accessing them to play from any system. However I use my emulation system for this and just boot that up when needed, and have all my rom collections shared on there.

There are also a couple of new NAS systems that have both gigabit network and local USB2 posts, and you can directly connect them to a PC to upload or download files quickly. Could be a good solution for file copying.

[svebbe]

Hi svebbe and welcome to classicamiga :thumbs:

Thx and Hi :)

My server for this would be located in a closet or a seperet room with a neat 19" rack configuration.
First thing to break in a computer if it goes warm for a long period of time is the harddrives, so personaly I can have it make some noise as long as I know that the noise is to keep it cold. The silencer in my case is to put it far away from where I'll be hanging around :)

Whats my point again, well yea, if you want to make it silent, don't cheap out on the cooling system. Becouse as you are probably well aware of harddrives generate a great deal of heat, this have to be dealt with even if you have a mini-itx Intex Atom 330 as a system board.

And yea FreeNAS is awesome, and VMware to for that matter :) VMware have greatly reduced my electric bill.

[Harrison]

I would still mount the system in a case that has a 120mm fan at both the front and rear of the case, so the air flow though the case would be more than enough to cool it. And with just an Atom CPU the heat shouldn't be anything like even a standard PC these days. It should mean the 120mm fans can be slowed down too.

[svebbe]

Yea you are right. Good flow thro the computer helps alot, clever casing and two 120mm fans should do the trick.

[Submeg]

Not too bad on storage space, I have 1.1TB atm, and as I don't download stuff like you guys I don't fill them at all. Have a stack of space

[Harrison]

HD prices seem to have dropped again, which is great.

A Samsung 1TB drive is now £80! I would normally go for Seagate though, but they are £93 for 1TB.

You can also now get a 1.5TB drive for £113, which is a good price when you see that 500GB drives are still about £50.

[Demon Cleaner]

Don't you like Samsung disks? I know that Zyriax only buys Samsung disks, as they are the cheapest and very reliable too. And 1TB for 80£ is really cheap, even 93£ is cheap imo.

[Harrison]

I have nothing against Samsung drives, and I like Samsung products for everything else. It's just that until now I normally buy Seagate drives as they are very reliable and very quiet.

[svebbe]

Western Digital4Life :p

[Harrison]

I never touch WD drives. Noisier than Samsung or Seagate by a long way, and they run hotter. WD drives are resonably reliable, though in recent surveys not as reliable as Seagate.

I did used to always buy Maxtor drives, until I had some problems with a 300GB SATA1 Maxtor drive that was incompatible with an Asus motherboard. I then switched to Seagate drives at that point and they were noticeably quieter than the Maxtor drives had been, and faster access times too! Now I normally buy Seagate, although with Samsung drives now being cheaper, and reading lots of great things about them, I think I will be trying those out next.

But the drives everyone says to avoid are Hitachi. There are lots of reports of reliability issues based on many people posting bad experiences with them. However the same was said when the same drives used to be made by IBM, and I used to use IBM Deskstar drives and never had any problems with them. They were nicknamed Deathstar's due to the supposed unreliability.

And both of my old 60GB and 120GB IBM Deskstar drives are still in use today. The 60GB drive must now 8 or 9 years old! I originally bought it as an upgrade to my then main system (a P2 400MHz PC) back in maybe 2000/01. It ran using a bios patch to trick the motherboard to see more than 33GB, and the drive firmware needed updating before newer system could see the drive when I moved it from that system to a newer one. I was quite impressed with the continued support for such an aging HDD.

And the 120GB IBM drive is the system drive in my server! Running 24/7 for years now.

So it just goes to show that reports of reliability and certain makes are not always correct.

[Buleste]

I don't care who makes them as long as they work. However my poor old 12 year old c Drive is starting to show bad sectors and make horrible noises like heads diving into disk. Luckily my second drive is O.K. at the moment so as soon as I do a backup I'll transfer onto my second HDD.

[Harrison]

I was just trying to work out how old the oldest HDD is that I still own. For the PC it is a 12GB Quantum Bigfoot from 1998, but some of my Amiga HDD's must be from around 1994/5, making them at least 14 years old.

[Stephen Coates]

The oldest HD I have is the 50MB Quantum drive from my Amiga 500+.

My main boot disk is still my 12GB WD drive which came with the computer in 1999. I am thinking about replacing it though as it is noisy and has had a few issues lately, although it has been fine for the last couple of months.

My 120GB disk (my biggest disk) only has 2GB left on it now. It did a while back have quite a few GB left, but I think most of that must have been used up by me backing up my WD drive just in case.

I am quite tempted to get some SCSI HDs though now I have an ultra wide scsi card in my PC.

On the subject of old HDs, I believe we have one of those very old massive ones in college somewhere, as well as a bigfoot. I will have to ask tommorow and maybe get some photos.

[Harrison]

My bigfoot drive is a 5.25" drive and is huge and very heavy. Still works OK though.

I just thought, my oldest drive is actually from 1993, in an Archos external HD for the A1200/A600. I bought it while my A1200 was still under warranty so I wouldn't void it by opening the case to fit an internal HD.

@Steve. If you are after some old SCSI HDDs then someone on Amibay is offering some for free (price of postage) in the recycle bin area. If you don't currently have access to that section of the site let me know and I will update your account.

[Stephen Coates]

I was actually thinking about getting SCSI HDs to put in my PC (bigger ones), but I did think I while ago about getting a bigger HD for my A500+. I'll probably see about getting something around 1GB as I can't imagine needing much more than that on a 500+.

Not used my A500+ much as it is currently sitting in a box :(. Must really get on with building a big desk to put all my computery stuff on.

[Harrison]

Make sure you check what the maximum supported HD size is for the SCSI controller as I doubt the A500 controllers were designed for 1GB+ HDDs.

[Demon Cleaner]

I had an IBM deskstar dying, and it ruined a lot of files, at that time I didn't have backups yet, so I never bought IBM disks again.

[Harrison]

That's the thing. I don't think it matter what the make of HD is. If you have a bad experience with one you will always be less inclined to buy another from the same company.

I think IBM sold so many of the Deskstar models that it was going to look like they were failing more compared to other makes that didn't have the same market share. Same is true of games consoles. Look at how they tried to say the PS2 had a bad failure rate early on, and then when you actually looked at the sales figures compared to the console failures, it was less than 2%.

[Demon Cleaner]

That's the thing. I don't think it matter what the make of HD is. If you have a bad experience with one you will always be less inclined to buy another from the same company.And that's with averything the same, cars, TVs, washing machine, photo camera... whatever.

And as I already told you, I will always buy Panasonic plasma TVs, because I am so happy with mine, but if it dies tomorrow, I will perhaps say just the opposite and never buy Panasonic Tvs again. People are sometimes stupid :lol:

[Harrison]

Time to revive this old chestnut again. So how is everyone's HDD space holding up?

I have to say I'm getting close to running out again. My current HDD space is just over 8TB now but is near to full again! :lol:

My current HDD space is as follows:

Main PC = 120GB boot drive + 2x 500GB + 2x 1TB + 500GB external HDD = 3620GB

Emulation PC = 120GB boot drive + 3x 1TB = 3120GB

Download/Test server = 120GB boot drive + 200GB + 160GB = 480GB

NAS MP3 server = 500GB

Test PC = 60GB boot drive + 200GB = 260GB

Linux box = 200GB

Total storage space = 8180GB (about 8TB).

[Tiago]

:o
I have a 60GB Hd in my laptop, and also:

- 3,5 GB on Amiga 1200 Tower
- 2Gb in A1200
and other several HDs of 350Mb ; 1 GB etc...

total space +/- 70 Gb on more then 10 Hds... :p
and i still have in my laptop 10 GB available....

I dont store in harddrives Mp3 or Mpg/avi ... so i don't need to much space.

[Harrison]

There is no way I could survive with just 70GB of total HDD space. I would use that up in less than a day! :lol: In fact, just installing Vista and the Adobe CS4 Master Collection would use about half of that space up alone! ;)

I didn't even mention my Amiga space. A4000 = 60GB, A1200 = 40GB, A600 = 6GB. Total = 106GB. So there is some more to add to the total.

The thing that eats HDD space up more than anything else is rom collecting. Especially when you start to collect ISO CD sets as well. The complete Amiga collection if you include ADFs and ISOs is now around 400GB alone!

[Tiago]

ISOs i have some in CD or DVD, but just the basic stuff.

[xpect]

The complete Amiga collection if you include ADFs and ISOs is now around 400GB alone!

And i always wondered how much a 880kb floppy could handle 20 years ago. Now Amiga stuff is GB's!!! :o

But i never run out of disc space because i backup everything on DVD. Now i'm running out of shelf space!!! :lol:

[Harrison]

:lol: The problem with backing everything up to DVD is that it isn't readily available. If it is all on a HDD then you can access it quickly (as long as your house keeping and file structure is tidy).

Also I hope you are using good DVDs to make your backups? These days I only use Verbatim discs with AZO+ metal dye. All other makes use organic based dyes with degrade and corrupt the data over time. Most are only suggested to last up to 10 years, whereas Verbatim state at least 30 years, with over 100 years being the real estimate. Also Verbatim discs can be read in a lot more drives than other makes. Definitely worth paying the slight extra for them.

[xpect]

These days I only use Verbatim discs with AZO+ metal dye.

Exactly! Matt Silver 50 or 100 spindle. Those are the best i can find in local stores.

[Harrison]

It looks like the 1.5TB drives are starting to drop in price again.

Savastore.com has a Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5TB drive for £73.55 now.

This also means that 1TB drives are dropping in price too. A 1TB Samsung is no just over £50. Making them the same price that 500GB drives were just a year ago!

[Submeg]

It looks like the 1.5TB drives are starting to drop in price again.

Savastore.com has a Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5TB drive for £73.55 now.

This also means that 1TB drives are dropping in price too. A 1TB Samsung is no just over £50. Making them the same price that 500GB drives were just a year ago!

Which is annoying cause I only recently bought a 500 GB drive :dry: