NASLite Network Attached Storage

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Task-specific simplicity with low hardware requirements.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:29 am 
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I have just got my Nas Lite server up and running but I must admit I am disappointed with the performance of it. My Nas server is not a rocket (only a celron 300 128mb ram, 20 gb HDD) but the network performance seems odd.

If I copy a file from my pc to another windows xp pc I get constant 50 - 60% network utilization... but if I copy a file /files (same files) from the same pc to the nas server I get very inconsistent network throuput, as shown in the task manager screen shot. Is this standard performance for Nas Lite SMB? Is there any way to get consistent (read FASTER) performance from it?


Image

This screen shot is a copy from my PC to the nas of a dvd shrink set of dvd files. Nothing else happening on the pc


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 8:46 am 
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The performance issue is not networking but disk access. NASLite-SMB uses generic IDE drivers so no DMA support.


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 7:34 pm 
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So If this is the case is there a version of NAS Lite that I am able to download and test the performance with.???

I am looking to store all my media (dvd/AVI/mp3) on a NAS server and currently this version (nas lite SMB) does not have the performance required to be able to serve the video fast enough (with the performace drops) to my media machine. I am a little hesitant to shell out $$ for a product that the version that I am able to test does not meet the requirements. (Yes I have read the web site and seen that performance is 6 (YES I said six!!) times faster with the other versions) but I would still like to see it for myself on my hardware.


ta

Jonathan Hall


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 11:08 pm 
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The Gbit floppy versions include DMA support.


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 4:35 pm 
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Johall,

Quote:
I am looking to store all my media (dvd/AVI/mp3) on a NAS server and currently this version (nas lite SMB) does not have the performance required to be able to serve the video fast enough (with the performace drops) to my media machine. I am a little hesitant to shell out $$ for a product that the version that I am able to test does not meet the requirements. (Yes I have read the web site and seen that performance is 6 (YES I said six!!) times faster with the other versions) but I would still like to see it for myself on my hardware.

If you want to use this application to store video be warned that it currently does not support file sizes over 4GB with SMB.


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 5:59 pm 
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so does this mean that the access methods (cifs, ftp etc) are able to support file sizes over 4gb or is this a limitation of the nas lite OS?


I am still looking for a way to confirm performance before having to shell out $$. At the moment I am up for either a nas lite license ot a gigibit nic.... neither of which I really want to shell out for until I can confirm that the performance will be up to spec....


But now I am curious... after trawling through the forums (Tony and sanmaster having deep discussions about why nas lite and the entire internet cannot fit in a 720k 5 ¼” floppy, :wink: Thanks guys) I now see that there is talk of a new version potentially on the way, I don’t really want to join the crowd of “are we there yet” (I get enough of that from my kids) but….. “ARE WE THERE YET??” or in the immortal words of the smurfs “How much further Papa Smurf??”


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 8:08 pm 
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Quote:
so does this mean that the access methods (cifs, ftp etc) are able to support file sizes over 4gb or is this a limitation of the nas lite OS?

First of all, SMB and CIFS are the same. It's just a difference between MS terminology and the rest of the world. As far as ftp and nfs are concerned, I haven't had much luck with file sizes over 4GB there either but I must admit that I haven't looked into it too much.
Quote:
But now I am curious... after trawling through the forums (Tony and sanmaster having deep discussions about why nas lite and the entire internet cannot fit in a 720k 5 ¼” floppy, Thanks guys) I now see that there is talk of a new version potentially on the way, I don’t really want to join the crowd of “are we there yet” (I get enough of that from my kids) but….. “ARE WE THERE YET??” or in the immortal words of the smurfs “How much further Papa Smurf??”

That's what I'm waiting for. I've asked the question several times but never got a date. Tony and I even had a philisophical discussion about the fact that NASLite was originally developed for older hardware. I agree that this seems to be the case but then the USB version of NASLite flies in the face of that philosophy. How many older 486 machines do you know of that can boot from a USB device? My position was simply this, if you're going to make a product that does that why not add to it to fix known problems and offer new functionality? Could have called that product release 2.x and been done with it.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 3:37 pm 
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sanmaster,

Please make sure that you have your facts in order. In all released versions of NASLite, FTP and NFS are fully capable of large file support (read that as above 4GB).

This has been covered in previous posts on this forum.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 4:37 pm 
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Tony,

I wish you had read my post a little more carefully:
Quote:
As far as ftp and nfs are concerned, I haven't had much luck with file sizes over 4GB there either but I must admit that I haven't looked into it too much.

To be honest I tried using FTP with a 5GB file and it didn't work. As I stated, I didn't look into it to see if it was my problem or not but I just wanted to let johall know to test FTP/NFS independently.

I would never state there was a bug in a product unless I was totally sure myself. My comments were only in answer to his question and related to my experience.


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 10:01 pm 
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I routinely play back DVDs form my NASLite+ to other PCs and they work fine. I have also backedup large files >4gb without problems.


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 10:15 am 
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Quote:
I routinely play back DVDs form my NASLite+ to other PCs and they work fine. I have also backedup large files >4gb without problems.

jmiliz,

Question:
What method do you use to back up >4GB files? SMB, FTP, NFS?

Observation:
No one ever said playing back DVDs or retrieving any other data on a NASLite box was ever a problem (unless you are referring to johall's original network performance issue).


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PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 12:39 pm 
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jmiliz wrote:
I routinely play back DVDs form my NASLite+ to other PCs and they work fine. I have also backedup large files >4gb without problems.


how did you save those dvd files of your's? as an ISO image or .vob files?


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 3:06 am 
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trinybwoy wrote:
jmiliz wrote:
I routinely play back DVDs form my NASLite+ to other PCs and they work fine. I have also backedup large files >4gb without problems.


how did you save those dvd files of your's? as an ISO image or .vob files?


If I want to back up a dvd to my NAS box I rip the dvd straight into a folder on the NAS as VOB files. This way you don't have to transfer a huge folder your just moving the individual files to the server. :)

I have some High def stuff on an external HDD at the moment but haven't tried copying that across yet may have some problems because of the 4gb limit :? We'll see I'm going to have a play with it over the weekend


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 10:56 am 
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sanmaster wrote:
Johall,

Quote:
I am looking to store all my media (dvd/AVI/mp3) on a NAS server and currently this version (nas lite SMB) does not have the performance required to be able to serve the video fast enough (with the performace drops) to my media machine. I am a little hesitant to shell out $$ for a product that the version that I am able to test does not meet the requirements. (Yes I have read the web site and seen that performance is 6 (YES I said six!!) times faster with the other versions) but I would still like to see it for myself on my hardware.

If you want to use this application to store video be warned that it currently does not support file sizes over 4GB with SMB.



The key is you can move stuff over that is more than 4g as long as one file is not bigger than that.

If you rip movies as VOBs this creates seperate folders so you can move those over but if you safe it as an IFO file which means it is only 1 file than you can't unless you use the ways Tony mentioned FTP/?.


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PostPosted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 5:54 am 
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Ahhhh... I went and splashed out for the NasLite+ verstion and look at the graph now

Image
This is FTPing a file to the nas

As more of a guide to the speed increase I have been using robocopy to upload backup files to the nas as well

Here are the Nas Lite FREE version results


Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras
Dirs : 26 0 26 0 0 0
Files : 108 96 12 0 0 0
Bytes : 7.748 g 7.692 g 57.59 m 0 0 0
Times : 0:55:22 0:55:18 0:00:00 0:00:04

Speed : 2489316 Bytes/sec.
Speed : 142.439 MegaBytes/min.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras
Dirs : 182 0 182 0 0 0
Files : 5238 415 4823 0 0 0
Bytes : 3.893 g 392.11 m 3.510 g 0 0 0
Times : 0:03:16 0:03:00 0:00:00 0:00:16

Speed : 2276528 Bytes/sec.
Speed : 130.264 MegaBytes/min.



And with the NasLite + (registered CD Version)


Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras
Dirs : 26 26 0 0 0 0
Files : 108 108 0 0 0 0
Bytes : 7.748 g 7.748 g 0 0 0 0
Times : 0:16:44 0:16:31 0:00:00 0:00:12

Speed : 8394966 Bytes/sec.
Speed : 480.363 MegaBytes/min.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras
Dirs : 182 181 1 0 0 0
Files : 5238 5238 0 0 0 0
Bytes : 3.893 g 3.893 g 0 0 0 0
Times : 0:12:28 0:11:15 0:00:00 0:01:13

Speed : 6193050 Bytes/sec.
Speed : 354.369 MegaBytes/min.



So not quite the 6 fold increase in performance but still for what I am after a GREAT result. As a bit more of a subjective test I played 2 different videos to 2 different pc's and as far as I could see there was no noticable drops or audio hiccups for either pc.....

In the 2 hrs that I have had the full version running.... worth every cent!

Now I just need to check the file size limitation.... Anyone else done any testing with SMB vs FTP?


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