NASLite Network Attached Storage

I have a qustion regarding media sharing. And a few other questions.

What types of media (formats and such) are supported?
How do I configure the media serving options (uPNP, etc)
Is there a way to organize between media types like audio/video? So when I use a uPNP capable or other streaming service/device to discern between the media types so, say, if I click on videos in my player it only shows content from my videos collection and not mix say, MP3's into the list?


When are we getting stickied tutorials and the like posted up?

Why does my network utilization always read 50% up and down when it's not uploading or downloading anything? And I know I've maxed the speed out during a long and large file transfer but it still only shows %50. I'm using gigabit and have several SSD's and all systems are capable o maxing out the gigabit speeds which are at 125MByte/sec without any compression..


Please, intelligent responses and facts only, not guesses. I would greately appreciate it.
Thanks in advance for your guys' help.

You have so many questions there that it is hard to pick a place to start.

As far as organization of files into groups and hot having them mixed up I am no help there. I simply organize my files in individual folders and access them that way. I use no fancy apps or devices for playback so...

As to your maxing out your network. You have no info about hardware to work from so it is hard (read that as impossible) to provide you with "intelligent responses and facts only, not guesses." I can say that to reach the speeds that you think you can get, 125MB/sec, it simply will not happen. The reason is the TCP packet has other info in it beyond the data payload which takes up a fair amount of space. I would figure that if I was getting up around 100MB/sec that I was doing rather well. Likely, if you are using commodity consumer hardware you will not even get there. I have built machines that were servers with PCI-X hardware RAID cards and PCI-X interfaced NICs that hit 80+MB/sec from 4 lowly 500GB Maxtor 7200RPM drives. The key point here is that to reach the high speeds you think you should be getting it will require some good hardware. This includes that switch that your network runs on.

Mike

Well system specs are follows:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R
Memory is DDR2-800Mhz 6GB (two 2-GB sticks and two 1GB sticks)
CPU is Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz with the G0 stepping overclocked to 3.01Ghz
Hard drives:

Two Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB drives
Western Digital 360GB (Yes, three hundred and sixty gigabyte)
and a 320GB Boot/Storage Seagate drive.


Almost forgot, I two Corsair Force GT 120GB drives which are capable of 550MB/sec write and 525 read, though since this is SATA2, the max is 300, in windows benchmarks I get a solid 248/sec on those.

VGA is GeForce 8500GT for GP tasks when needed beyond NAS.


Also, 125MB/sec is max signaling rate without protocols, in windows, I was able to get read speeds in excess of 100MB/sec.

Not so with NasLITE-X64-M2.

Getting around 65/sec.

Also, the "compression" I was mentioning was software or hardware compression in the data stream which technically makes it go faster. For instance, I've actually got over 12KB/sec sustained on an old 28.8kmps dialup modem. 56K's couldnt even touch that. I had a very good combination of hardware/software compression going on. Otherwise a modem like that is lucky if it can hit 5K/sec on the net.


Anyways, start anywhere, one thing at a time.

Well the processor is a major waste on the NAS.

I have a couple of old drives in my NAS as in 200GB and a 300GB ATA100 interfaced. They spin year round and have not had a single hickup. Storage is storage.

compression works great if you have a compressible data stream. NAS lite might be a bit to slow for you if you are looking to get gigabyte transfers in a few seconds. It is simply not written with that in mind. It supports a large array of hardware but isn't really tuned to give the utmost in performance. For that you will need to roll your own and spend weeks tuning each part of it.

As far as Windows outperforming your NASLite implementation, it is not unexpected. Remember that SAMBA has to work blind against the windows machine and Microsoft isn't going to make it easy for them. You may have an IRQ issue that is slowing you down. Reset the BIOS to default and disable all the devices not needed then reboot.

You may also want to look at the benchmarking software you are using. Some are a little more accurate than others. There is a set of parameters for a speed test that we use and it does a fair job of properly testing the true performance of the NAS from a windows client. Do a search for diskwriggler in the forums.

You might look at a solution like an external hardware RAID array controller that is interfaced via one of the faster versions of FC-AL or 10G Ethernet. Both should be able to feed your users needs. Be ready though, it is a very expensive path to go down.

As to the SSD performance, the numbers they use to sell you on them are BS. They are based on some very narrow test settings and seldom will you see numbers close to them.

Mike