Storage

[Dave Skolnick]

Thanks to Rob, Sandy, and Louie for their feedback so far.

I like the drive toaster. Very cool. Doesn't accept 5.25" drives like
my Samsung.

As Sandy suggested I'm spelunking through Newegg and Tigerdirect. I
found a Sabrent EC-ST5B at Tigerdirect that looks okay (power supply
output voltage isn't clear) that I can get with Amazon Prime at a good
price (cheaper than Newegg or Tigerdirect with shipping).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002MALMRG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A29Y8OP2GPR7PE

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 3:39 PM, Rob Seastrom <rs at seastrom.com> wrote:
>> Longer term I'd like to move those functions to a USB or Ethernet RAID
>> drive (probably RAID-5) somewhere between 2 and 5 TB. Again, 12VDC
>> operation is preferred but 117VAC is okay.
>
> How important is plug-and-chug vs. building it yourself to you?  How
> good are you with Unix?  I am super happy with a SmartOS (illumos
> under the hood, which is son-of-OpenSolaris) based NAS that I put
> together myself last fall in an HP N40L chassis.  Best of all it has
> ZFS which is a nice guard against silent data corruption.

I'm happy to build something. Unix/Linux is no problem.

More context for those who can tolerate a longer story.

I live on and work from my boat. I have three sources of 117VAC (shore
power when at the dock, a 6kW diesel generator, and 2kW DC-AC
inverter). I try to keep a 12VDC boat. All the systems aboard except
aircon, water heating, and TV run off 12VDC. Away from the dock I run
the inverter to watch TV. I run the generator to charge batteries, run
aircon, and heat water.

My laptop (Windows for mission critical functions including e-mail
over HF radio and navigation) is set up to run off 12VDC through a
DC-DC converter.

The SATA drive in an external enclosure is/was both my back-up volume
and iTunes library.

Losing the external drive (fortunately the adapter and not the drive
itself) has really scared the bejeepers out of me.

I'm trying to get back on line, thus the interest in the new
enclosure/SATA adapter.

I'm trying to get something more robust, thus the interest in a RAID drive.

I do have a Linux server I run when plugged into shore power (it's a
power hog) and another Linux server in my shoreside lab (accessible
with a VPN and no-ip.org).

I'm happy to talk about "why Windows?" for my nav station but that's
OT for my current needs. I'm focused now on 1. getting my
backup/iTunes online and 2. replacing that SATA drive with a RAID
drive for increased robustness.

Aside from rotating the movies on my iPhone (*grin*) my seven year old
T60p is getting wonky and I'd like to get the backup/iTunes situation
in hand before I replace the T60p. That's going to be really painful
as I have a lot of weird stuff installed. *sigh*

For the landbound, installations on an offshore cruising boat have
number of issues:

Power consumption is a big deal. Less is more.

Vibration is an issue. Main propulsion engine vibration is transmitted
throughout the boat. The low frequency vibration isn't bad but the
high frequency seems to propagate.

Shock is an issue. Several times a year I sail offshore to New
England, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. Falling off a wave
every minute or so creates quite a shock. I can power down the
external drive (and do) but even so the hardware takes a beating.

Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I'm doing my own research on RAID drives but what y'all may have to
offer does help.

73 es sail fast de dave KO4MI
S/V Auspicious