New Vortexbox - hardware sugestions

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simon
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#16

Post by simon »

Neal wrote:I asked about the ripping as TBH I find it a slight PIA to rip over my home network
I don't do anything fancy. I use EAC and rip to the PC HDD, then copy a batch over the network. I'm sure there are slicker ways, and I think the Zyxel will automatically file things, but I just like to do these things myself so I know where things are. It's probably why I don't get on with Apple stuff as the little exposure I've had annoyed me intensely as I don't conform. I must be the only person in the world that couldn't get on with an ipod, all I wanted to do was drag and drop music files but I had to do some meaningless sync that just wasn't intuitive to me. It just seemed excruciatingly complicated.

(Yes I appreciate it's me not the rest of the world!!!)
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#17 Re: A case in point?

Post by simon »

rowuk wrote:I have never had a server HDD fail, consumer drives fail me regularly in 3-5 years. I have had various server configurations running at home since 2002. Always at least RAID1. That and backups kept the losses when a drive died minimal.

I would spend the extra money. There are discussions about "slow drives" and sound quality if you don't have a system that plays entirely from RAM.
100% agree. My old QNAP single drive failed after a few years and three or four power supplies. Most was backed up, but never again. The cost of a decent RAID 1 NAS and backup is far outweighed by the time lost trying to recover and risk of file loss. It will become increasingly important as we all become more IT reliant in our homes.
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#18

Post by simon »

PeteC wrote:One question - is it possible to hook up a removable CD drive to the Zyxel NAS and rip straight to it ?
Not sure about this. There is a USB port so you can attach another HDD, but whether it would see a CD drive I don't know. And if it did, how would it know to rip and where to store?
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#19

Post by Neal »

simon wrote:
Neal wrote:
Neal wrote:Simon, there's no such distinction on HDDs! ;)
Actually I'll take that back, there is, but its more of a marketing / optional feature set rather than any hardware design differences on the core part of the disk.
Interesting. This is the advice I got from ebuyer's Business Solutions Manager, but I may have read too much in to it, i.e. most HDDs are okay!

"In terms of the disks themselves I'd stay away from anything without a 24/7 NAS rating as using these tends to lead to HDD failures. WD Reds are an ideal choice."
It wasn't that long ago that the greens where the recommended choice :wink: Still the extra years warranty is worth the £5 difference alone.
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#20

Post by Neal »

simon wrote:
PeteC wrote:One question - is it possible to hook up a removable CD drive to the Zyxel NAS and rip straight to it ?
Not sure about this. There is a USB port so you can attach another HDD, but whether it would see a CD drive I don't know. And if it did, how would it know to rip and where to store?
Yes, no way to direct attach and rip...
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#21

Post by Neal »

I've tries to install Vortexbox 2.3 on my HP 57xx thin client but keep hitting upon an issue where I can't access the web interface. The HP keeps responding with 'Access Forbidden'

I can SSH into it and I've tried reinstalling from the CLI but for some reason it won't download or connect to the servers. I think some packages are missing hence my issues but I'm stuck figuring out why. Maybe I'll just stick to the Zyxel!
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Dave the bass
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#22

Post by Dave the bass »

I'm still running 2.2 for just that reason Neal, I saw over on the VB forum a few occasions where install has gone wrong and that scared me off! I'm gonna have to man-up one day I know as the 2TB HD is 92% full, I'm just living in denial at the mo!

Have you posted a question over there? http://vortexbox.org/forum/vortexbox/help They're very helpful.

DTB
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#23

Post by PeteC »

Hi I found Vortexbox forum very helpful indeed.

In the end I have pressed an old Thinkpad T42 laptop into 24/7 service as the living room server ( sits atop the SKy box ). Installed VB2.3 - I had to re-install as it didnt work first time around.
Added a Seagate Ultra Portable 2TB USB hard drive - and created the /storage directory structure on it for flac, movies, pictures etc.

then copies across all my files from the Macbook using network transfer - 14,000 songs ! Took nearly 2 days !!!

Configured VB Player to use USB output from the old laptop and sent this into my USB DAC then into the 6EM7/EL34 amp and Fostex speakers.

All works a treat - can be controlled from various devices in the house - iphones, macbook, pc's, and the Duet Controller.

and now just acquired Boxeebox for streaming movies from the VB storage.

Nice low cost solution - the Seagate was the only cost and was £70.00
The Boxeebox was 45 nicker s/h.

Loving the VB solution with LMS so far.

Cheers
Pete
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Neal
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#24

Post by Neal »

Thanks guys, maybe I'll ask on the forum. I'd like to give it another go, maybe I could try v2.2

Anybody have a link to it? I can only find 2.3 on the Vortex site...
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#25

Post by IDM »

Hi
I am also looking at the Zyxel to use with rapsberry pi Volumio streamer, either as UPnP or possible directly via USB. I want a 2 bay version with Raid backup (I cannot bear the thought of having to copy over 800 CD's again!).

I see the NSA3205 2 bay 1Ghz processor version can be had for as little as £49.98 and the faster 2 bay NSA325 with a 1.6Ghz processor is £88.18.

For my primary purpose of streaming FLAC files and running backup do I need to spend the extra £40 for the 1.6Ghz version or should I save the money to buy bigger HDD's?

Cheers
Ian
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#26

Post by Neal »

Probably depends on how heavy a user you are. If the 325 can transcode on the fly then it might be worth considering. I use the 320S, I'm a light user, it's just used for two SB Classics, an SB radio and TimeMachine back up for the Mac mini plus a store for all our pictures. It's rare if it's being used for more than one function at a time.

BTW RAID is not a backup. Backup and Raid are different, RAID provides redundancy and is not a replacement for a backup IE a second or third copy of your data.
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The Stratmangler
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#27

Post by The Stratmangler »

Neal wrote:If the 325 can transcode on the fly then it might be worth considering
Unlikely, as I can't see Zyxel supporting multiple versions of LMS - they'll have customised it as a one size fits all solution.
Chris :happy3:
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#28

Post by IDM »

I cannot see me having a requirement for transcoding as all I want to do is save FLAC files to the server and serve the same files to the streamer.

Thanks for the info on RAID, I am not very familiar with this world, though I thought RAID1 simply mirrored the 2 drives and therefore the second drive is a backup of the first in the event that drive 1 fails?

Cheers
Ian
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#29

Post by Neal »

If a file gets deleted or is corrupted on disk 1 during a write operation the mirror file on the other drive will be deleted or corrupted a few milli seconds later ;)

However, if disk 1 fails, becomes inaccessible, or starts to get read errors due to a head crash the data is still available from disk 2. A mirror pair of disks adds system redundancy. You still need a 2nd copy of your data elsewhere as a backup that is not affected by any possible failure at the drive level or at the file level. Hopefully that makes sense!
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#30

Post by IDM »

Hi Yes, it certainly does, it had crossed my mind, but assumed that would not happen.

So I can see two failure scenarios:
1. If data was corrupted I would want to reinstall the data from a backup.
2. If a drive failed I would need to replace the drive and again reload the data from a backup.

I understand that RAID can speed up access time, however, this has never been an issue with just a single drive. So I am wondering if RAID is worth it.

Given this I wonder if I should simply buy a single drive version and just back it up to a separate external HDD whenever I add music files? I assume you can use the Zyxel USB port to connect the backup drive for this?

Cheers
Ian
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