I want to build a FreeNas box which I would keep in a wiring closet. I networked my house with CAT 6, and I would like to find a means to connect a bank of HDDs (probably 4x 4TB) that would be in a different location (a gun safe, in this case).
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Does anybody have any experience with a setup like this? The server would be used as a Plex Media server for movies and as a general file server. My best guess so far, would be to use a USB 3 over Ethernet adapter on both ends with a 4 bay external HDD enclosure. Oguruma wrote: I want to build a FreeNas box which I would keep in a wiring closet.
I networked my house with CAT 6, and I would like to find a means to connect a bank of HDDs (probably 4x 4TB) that would be in a different location (a gun safe, in this case). Does anybody have any experience with a setup like this? The server would be used as a Plex Media server for movies and as a general file server. My best guess so far, would be to use a USB 3 over Ethernet adapter on both ends with a 4 bay external HDD enclosure.
I have no experience with FreeNAS but, since the title says connecting HDDs to server via ethernet, it sounds like solutions are readily available which may not be FreeNAS based. Setting up a Windows or Linux mini or regular computer would be one solution. Another would be a 4-bay NAS, diskless. Oguruma wrote: I want to build a FreeNas box which I would keep in a wiring closet. I networked my house with CAT 6, and I would like to find a means to connect a bank of HDDs (probably 4x 4TB) that would be in a different location (a gun safe, in this case).
Does anybody have any experience with a setup like this? The server would be used as a Plex Media server for movies and as a general file server. A gun safe doesn't sound like an ideal place for any sort of computer to me. Are you sure yours has enough ventilation? Even a small computer can get an enclosed space pretty warm when there's no place for the accumulated heat to go. My best guess so far, would be to use a USB 3 over Ethernet adapter on both ends with a 4 bay external HDD enclosure.
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I assume you mean USB 3-connected Ethernet adapter, correct? Two additional questions on this: If your building the FreeNAS box, why not just put a regular Ethernet card in it instead of a USB Ethernet adapter?
Are you planning on using a small form factor system that has no available PCI-E slots? Even so, I would think that almost any actual computer now days will already have at least one Ethernet port on it. SFF laptops being the exception.
You mentioned a USB adapter 'on both ends.' What's the 'other end' and why wouldn't it already have a regular Ethernet port on it? If at all possible, I would aim for standard Gigabit Ethernet ports in/on all devices and a Gigabit Ethernet switch with enough ports to accommodate everything. Your existing home 'router' may or may not already have this.
Oguruma wrote: I want to build a FreeNas box which I would keep in a wiring closet. I networked my house with CAT 6, and I would like to find a means to connect a bank of HDDs (probably 4x 4TB) that would be in a different location (a gun safe, in this case). Does anybody have any experience with a setup like this? The server would be used as a Plex Media server for movies and as a general file server.
My best guess so far, would be to use a USB 3 over Ethernet adapter on both ends with a 4 bay external HDD enclosure. Why not just stick the FreeNAS box in the gun safe? Is this a backup of the shared storage in the wiring closet, or just a wish to secure the same data? I think you could stick something like the HP Microserver in the gun safe with one cat 6 cable connection.
That gets you 4 drives for a R10 configuration. Though the cpus on most generations of the MS isn't adequate for Plex - I run that on a sparate NUC that just mounts the storage over nfs. The complexity of USB/Ethernet storage doesn't seem to offer much upside. This could be an interesting thread (for me). But I just don't see why USB has any role here.
USB drives usually have poor quality disks inside. The power bricks are crap. The USB interface firmware is frequently quirky. USB2 is slow. My primary desktop hosts my bulk data which can, of course, be shared over my LAN.
However, I quite like the idea of moving that data onto a microserver in the closet. But heck, I'd want to connect bare SATA disks to Gigabit Ethernet without any USB nonsense getting in the way. That will just slow things down, and create loads of potential problems.
Heck, I recently ripped the bare drives out of all my external drives to jettison all of the crap that comes with USB externals. I sure don't want to put it all back.
Malch wrote: This could be an interesting thread (for me). But I just don't see why USB has any role here. USB drives usually have poor quality disks inside. The power bricks are crap. The USB interface firmware is frequently quirky. USB2 is slow.
My primary desktop hosts my bulk data which can, of course, be shared over my LAN. However, I quite like the idea of moving that data onto a microserver in the closet. But heck, I'd want to connect bare SATA disks to Gigabit Ethernet without any USB nonsense getting in the way. That will just slow things down, and create loads of potential problems. Heck, I recently ripped the bare drives out of all my external drives to jettison all of the crap that comes with USB externals. I sure don't want to put it all back. Centralized storage with anytime, anywhere access.
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USB 3.0 port on the back panel Thank you Russell. TomN wrote: I would not suggest placing running computer equipment into a small unventilated box or cabinet. This does not sound like it can end in anything good. In a freestanding gun safe, it is routine to insert a 10-15W heating element to act as a dehumidifier.
A NAS box is hardly different. I certainly wouldn't use an AMD toaster cpu nor a stack of velociraptor drives, but small devices are stored inside routinely. What good is your video surveillance system if the intruder can steal the DVR? Stick in a $10 device that tells you max/min temp and humidity for the past 24 hours, monitor initially, and then go from there.
Billiam29 wrote: If you're going to investigate commercial NAS products then I would suggest looking at systems from QNAP and Synology. A fair amount of people might consider them out of budget or 'too expensive for what they are.' Regardless, they're a starting point for looking into NAS products that most people would consider to be decent quality on hardware, software, and software maintenance.
It depends on what kind of Internet connection you have, but I personally would rather pay Amazon US $12 a year for unlimited photo storage over spending more that US $120 for another machine at home. That's tens years of offsite storage at the current price. I have plenty of storage in my desktop machine, and room for more if needed, I run with a UPS and I use a to turn off the archive hard drive in the desktop when not needed. As far as having something in my house, I think it is as safe as adding a NAS or out of box drive, and it's going to be a lot less trouble to maintain for me in the long run.
Amazon Photo Cloud Drive is a bit lame compared to Google Drive or OneDrive in that you have to manually add files to transfer software. I came across a LR plugin that will sync raw files to Amazon Cloud Storage and I think this will resolve the issue for me though. Thank you Russell. Russell Evans wrote: It depends on what kind of Internet connection you have, but I personally would rather pay Amazon US $12 a year for unlimited photo storage over spending more that US $120 for another machine at home.
That's tens years of offsite storage at the current price. I have plenty of storage in my desktop machine, and room for more if needed, I run with a UPS and I use a to turn off the archive hard drive in the desktop when not needed. As far as having something in my house, I think it is as safe as adding a NAS or out of box drive, and it's going to be a lot less trouble to maintain for me in the long run.
Sounds great so I took a look: 'As part of the Unlimited Photos plan, you'll also get 5 GB of space free to store non-photo files (like videos).' So, pretty useless for video. 5GB is nothing. And what about RAW files? Do they count as 'photo' or 'non-photo'?
Well maybe depending on the type of RAW file. They give a non-definitive list: In the terms.
You give them the right 'to modify your files'. That's a big red flag right there. I've seen too many 'unlimited' services that actually provide something very different when you read the fine print.
In one case, they didn't handle certain specific file types (like RAW and video files). In another, they downrezed/compressed my files. Also unacceptable. I generally consider Amazon a fairly decent company and use them a lot. But it's really not clear what they can and can't handle. What about my sidecars, GPS track logs, intermediate TIFF files? Is there any guarantee my images won't be compressed and/or downsized?
With local storage I can complete control over all of this. There's no guessing. Nobody can change the terms of service without notice. No fine print. The analyses I've seen show no inherent long term cost advantage for cloud storage versus local storage. Companies do a great job of dressing up their offerings to make them sound good but when you're done with the fine print, the short term teaser deals and the rest of the games, it's unlikely they'll provide real savings over the long haul. Malch wrote: In the terms.
You give them the right 'to modify your files'. That's a big red flag right there. I've seen too many 'unlimited' services that actually provide something very different when you read the fine print. In one case, they didn't handle certain specific file types (like RAW and video files). In another, they downrezed/compressed my files. Also unacceptable. I'm not sure if 'modify' refers to actually destroying / changing your uploaded files – or if it refers simply to making derivative copies.
From one of Amazon's 'agreement' pages: These permissions include, for example, the rights to copy Your Files for backup purposes, modify Your Files to enable access in different formats, use information about Your Files to organize them on your behalf, and access Your Files to provide technical support. If I uploaded a.DNG (assuming they support that format), and Amazon auto-generated a.JPG and stored it alongside the.DNG with the same permissions, I don't think I'd be too upset. If I uploaded a.DNG and they deleted it in favor of the auto-generated.JPG, it would be a different matter. Billiam29 wrote: If you're going to investigate commercial NAS products then I would suggest looking at systems from QNAP and Synology. A fair amount of people might consider them out of budget or 'too expensive for what they are.' Regardless, they're a starting point for looking into NAS products that most people would consider to be decent quality on hardware, software, and software maintenance. If you keep an eye on Newegg and Amazon you'll occasionally come across much better deals on new and refurbs (returns, I imagine) for the 4 drive units that retail in the 500-600, but can be gotten in the 300s.
The value in these are in the apps - plex and itunes servers, backups of your desktops (not practical for typical broadband upload speeds), and so forth. If you just want storage and you know enough to run freenas or linux, you can do it cheaper (though probably not as small) by using an older machine. If you're having it transcode video, you probably need to add memory beyond the base 1gb provided. So factor that into the costs. Malch wrote: Russell Evans wrote: It depends on what kind of Internet connection you have, but I personally would rather pay Amazon US $12 a year for unlimited photo storage over spending more that US $120 for another machine at home. That's tens years of offsite storage at the current price.
I have plenty of storage in my desktop machine, and room for more if needed, I run with a UPS and I use a to turn off the archive hard drive in the desktop when not needed. As far as having something in my house, I think it is as safe as adding a NAS or out of box drive, and it's going to be a lot less trouble to maintain for me in the long run. Sounds great so I took a look: 'As part of the Unlimited Photos plan, you'll also get 5 GB of space free to store non-photo files (like videos).' So, pretty useless for video. 5GB is nothing. And what about RAW files?
Do they count as 'photo' or 'non-photo'? Well maybe depending on the type of RAW file. They give a non-definitive list: In the terms. You give them the right 'to modify your files'. That's a big red flag right there.
I've seen too many 'unlimited' services that actually provide something very different when you read the fine print. In one case, they didn't handle certain specific file types (like RAW and video files). In another, they downrezed/compressed my files.
Also unacceptable. Amazon provides apps for IOS and Android for the Cloud Drive, and these app will show you previews of your raw files as well as the developed file types you store. Since there probably isn't a way to display RAW files on the different phones and tablets, Amazon pulls the embedded jpegs out of the raw files it knows how to deal with. I imagine the raw file support talked about in the link is about this and not really about storage.
My Pentax PEF files aren't listed in the link, but the few hundred gigabytes of PEF files I've uploaded have not counted against my 5Gb of other storage. The very limited video files I have, I've put up on youtube. This did require converting the format, but the 1080P resolution stayed the same. I generally consider Amazon a fairly decent company and use them a lot. But it's really not clear what they can and can't handle.
What about my sidecars, GPS track logs, intermediate TIFF files? Is there any guarantee my images won't be compressed and/or downsized? Track logs I store on Google, since I'm mostly using My Tracks on my phone to generate them. Google provides 15GB of free storage. I don't really have a need for the track logs after importing the location data into the raw files, so I'm not keeping the files.
My largest sidecar file is 12KB. Average is probably 8KB, so 5GB will hold about 625,000 sidecar files, say 300,000 since my editing might not be all that sophisticated. I'm only at about 75,000 raw plus jpeg files after eight years of digital shooting, so there is still a way to go for me to hit 300,000. Amazon supports files sizes up to 2GB, as long as your file meets that criteria, I don't think you'll have an issue with your files being compressed or downsized. All my files are the same size when listed in the Cloud Drive as compared to the files on local storage, so it appears there is no compression or downsizing being done.
The raw files still open in my raw converters after pulling them down, so I take that at face value. With local storage I can complete control over all of this. There's no guessing. Nobody can change the terms of service without notice. No fine print.
Sure, but I also have local copies in my machine, so I have this, plus cheap offsite storage. The analyses I've seen show no inherent long term cost advantage for cloud storage versus local storage. You linked to a server that cost US $299 with no disks in it, that a little under 25 years of Amazon's Cloud Drive for Photos at the current subscription. Think that server, and whatever disk you put in it, will last 25 years? Companies do a great job of dressing up their offerings to make them sound good but when you're done with the fine print, the short term teaser deals and the rest of the games, it's unlikely they'll provide real savings over the long haul. If that happens, I'll move on. I'm not stuck with a solution like people that have invested in hardware.
Thank you Russell. TomN wrote: Note that one of the Amazon Help pages says: 'Prime Photos is for your personal, non-commercial use only.
You may not use it in connection with a professional photography business or other commercial service.' So there is 'unlimited' storage, but not for some of the users (professional/commercial users) who would be likely to take the greatest advantage of it. There are three subscriptions levels, Unlimited Photos, Unlimited Everything, and Prime Photos as part of an Amazon Prime membership. Since the quote is specifically about Prime Photos, I don't think you should assume that this is the same for the Unlimited Photos, or the Unlimited Everything subscriptions.
Thank you Russell. TomN wrote: malch wrote: In the terms. You give them the right 'to modify your files'. That's a big red flag right there. I've seen too many 'unlimited' services that actually provide something very different when you read the fine print. In one case, they didn't handle certain specific file types (like RAW and video files).
In another, they downrezed/compressed my files. Also unacceptable.
I'm not sure if 'modify' refers to actually destroying / changing your uploaded files – or if it refers simply to making derivative copies. From one of Amazon's 'agreement' pages: These permissions include, for example, the rights to copy Your Files for backup purposes, modify Your Files to enable access in different formats, use information about Your Files to organize them on your behalf, and access Your Files to provide technical support. If I uploaded a.DNG (assuming they support that format), and Amazon auto-generated a.JPG and stored it alongside the.DNG with the same permissions, I don't think I'd be too upset. They just pull the embedded jpeg out of the DNG. I know this as my Adobe generated DNG files have a mix of small thumbnail jpegs embedded and medium sized jpegs, and these are what are showing up. If it was one or the other, then there might be a doubt, but seeing both sizes, I think confirms Amazon is just pulling the embedded jpegs out.
Thank you Russell. Russell Evans wrote: There are three subscriptions levels, Unlimited Photos, Unlimited Everything, and Prime Photos as part of an Amazon Prime membership.
Since the quote is specifically about Prime Photos, I don't think you should assume that this is the same for the Unlimited Photos, or the Unlimited Everything subscriptions. The 'Amazon Cloud Drive Terms Of Use' page says: 1.2 Using Your Files with the Service. You may use the Service only to store, retrieve, manage, and access Your Files for personal, non-commercial purposes using the features and functionality we make available. You may not use the Service to store, transfer or distribute content of or on behalf of third parties, to operate your own file storage application or service, to operate a photography business or other commercial service, or to resell any part of the Service. That's not Prime-Photos-specific.