NASLite Network Attached Storage

I am currently running NASlite+ in a old 333mhz PII, with 128mb ram.

The motherboard like most motherboards of the time only supports ata 33 not like the full 133 and beyond of today.

Well here is my question, is having a larger cache size on the hard drives effecting the computer at all. I am thinking with the ata 33 limitation, I would probably only need to run 5400 rpm drives with 2mb cache size to maximize my speeds.

Or will a drive that is 7200rpm with 16mb cache give me any benifits.

Also my main application for the server is a media storage area. Where I can have between 1-3 computers watching of listening to files that are on the server.


This is not a real important question, just wondering, and no need to buy more expensive drives if I will not get the performance out of them. Well thanks for your time.

Okay just tried to install a large hard drive in the server mentioned in post above.

It is a few years old and I am having an issue. IT seems part of the drive is bad. What I am wondering here is if I can partion it off and use the large majority that is in good shape.


Here is the error message I get, is there anyway around this, or is the drive dead?
___________________________________________________________

umount: /export/Disk-2: No such file or directory
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
OK

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc: 30515 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 secto
rs/track
Old situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 0+ 30514 30515- 245111737 8
3 Linux
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part2 0 - 0 0
0 Empty
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part3 0 - 0 0
0 Empty
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part4 0 - 0 0
0 Empty
New situation:
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 0+ 30514 30515- 245111737 8
3 Linux
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part2 0 - 0 0
0 Empty
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part3 0 - 0 0
0 Empty
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part4 0 - 0 0
0 Empty
Warning: no primary partition is marked bootable (active)
This does not matter for LILO, but the DOS MBR will not boot this disk.
Successfully wrote the new partition table

Re-reading the partition table ...

If you created or changed a DOS partition, /dev/foo7, say, then use dd(1)
to zero the first 512 bytes: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/foo7 bs=512 count=1
(See fdisk(8).)
mke2fs 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
Filesystem label=NAS_Disk-2
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
30654464 inodes, 61277934 blocks
0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
1871 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16384 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872

Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): done
Block 0 in primary superblock/group descriptor area bad.
Blocks 0 through 16 must be good in order to build a filesystem.
Aborting....
___________________________________________________________


As you can see the error at the end. I was trying to prepare this drive through telnet and above is the session recorded from the client side.


Any ideas anyone. I looked through the long log file the server makes and it appears only a small handful of the sectors are bad and hate to get rid of this disk. IT is a 250gig drive so you can imagine why I am reluctant to replace it right away.

Well thanks to anyone that can help me use this drive.

Well I solved my hard drive issue, well sort of. I visited maxtor site and made a boot disk with their hard drive tools. I figured if it was something like being able to partion or just a simple adjustment that the software might take care of it. Well I totally formatted the drive, it all went well, but then when I did some other tests something failed. well it gave me a error code. Then I go on line and find I have about 6 month warrentess left on the drive, so my solution, I get to ship it back. It will be replaced with a refurbished drive, but much better than a 250gig paper weight.

On a similiar happy note I found out my other 250 gig drive just had a bad jumper setting, I thought that drive was totally shot, but did a full system test and it works beautifully. Not sure anyone cares but It can just make your day when things turn out nice like that

Okay back to my first question, anyone know of any real advantage to running a hard drive with large cache. Particularily considering it is a network device that really only deals with files normally 150mb and over. One day might be a music server, but still at 3-6mb a song I can not see the cache being that important.

Any one out there know anything?