NASLite Network Attached Storage

I'm currently moving to new hardware... Currently my boot/config drive is a 20gb IDE drive... My new ATOM board only has (2) sata which will be occupied by data drives a PCI slot and some internal USB headers.

I'm obviously having to make a change here but wanted some input on whats the best route...

I could either go with a cable to convert the usb header to a female port and use a flash drive internally, or, get a compact flash adapter, CF card and a PCI riser

Whats the performance / reliability going USB vs CF?

I guess in terms of going CF I could get one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

and two smaller CF's and RAID-1 them for the "reliability"... I'd have to check the docs to see if that raid adapter would be supported

Ideally something like this would be great for rear accessability:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

...but that requires an IDE connector!

On the USB end of things this seems pretty simple:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

i use your second type of cf adaptor - good as you say to get at the cf card from the rear - go to ebay if you want one - they are much cheaper than that - but does require an ide connector - if you are going the route of putting an ide card in then if you have the bays just stay with your 20gig drive - assuming you can boot from it - which is also true of a cf card as an ide drive

Nothing wrong with the reliability of a USB boot/config drive. There's not much lost even if it goes bad (you can easily build a new one from scratch in minutes). The CF solution is less elegant in my opinion, given the fact that it needs an IDE port (which you don't have) or eat a PCI slot. That PCI slot could come in handy later (more HDDs for data !)

And you don't see a significant performance impact since it's for (infrequent) booting only.

I'm in agreement with george on this one... Not having an IDE header at my disposal adds to the complexity and cost... I already have a suitable flash drive for the job so its just a matter of getting the cable...

Time to shop!

=)

Bear in mind that you only need 32 Mb for the boot device don't go overboard on it i.e. don't waste a perfectly usable larger pen drive if you dont have to!

Doug

no worries there... I have a 256mb one from the days of old that should do the trick...

I think what I may do is get the whole thing setup with my old data discs and what not and then DD an iso of the USB pen to a CD for safe keeping... worst case then I can just re-image a new flash drive and be back on my feet...

that is so long as NL doesn't get cranky over the vendor differences of the usb sticks

Or you can buy 2 or 3 identical USB sticks of that size really cheap and set them all up initially. Then -- if your config ever changes -- do a "Save Configuration" to each of them while the system is running, and put the extra one(s) into a safe place.

Personally I prefer the CF solution. The ATA port is next to useless now and so no big loss. I use one of these, http://cgi.ebay.com/Compact-Flash-CF-IDE-Bootable-Adapter-40-Pin-Female-/110523608216?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19bbb86c98 which I bought 5 of in an auction. They work great and I found that machines that are picky about booting from a USB drive always boot from these.

Mike

Unfortunately Mike his Atom board doesn't have an ATA port so makes it more difficult to go that route.

Doug

Is it possible setup disk mirroring for the boot/config drive? That would pretty slick to have it backup to a spare key although your way works too =)

Just as a matter of interest which Atom board do you have?

As for mirroring the boot device I dont think you can and anyway is there any point as you can backup the config if I remember correctly and it only takes a few minutes to install from the CD.

Doug

In this case I would simply put the boot on the first drive and use the rest as data. The boot partition is only like 32MB or so I think, there is more wasted space in the FS! It doesn't effect the drive access at all. Screw the USB and CF.

Mike

well ive already got 4tb of data on NL partitioned drives... no sense in all the nonsense involved to move /boot there... ive got 6 matched 256 usb sticks (hello convention SWAG) that I can dedicate to the box for /boot...

If stability becomes a real issue I can always look to a "higher end" usb stick/drive or go PCI riser + sata card + tiny laptop drive etc

I mainly use the NAS as a torrent DVR so the I/O is pretty low

At any rate, as stated, having the /boot not on the data drives means quick rebuild with the install CD if something goes plop =)

Now it just comes down to free time