OP
Steve7777777
New Member
Fantastic. Thanks Martin.
Internal HDD Problem
- Thread starter Steve7777777
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prpr
Well-Known Member
Yes.
OP
Steve7777777
New Member
If I have 2TB I'll end up with more stuff than I am ever likely to have time to watch. 1TB helps keep me disciplined forcing me to regularly purge stuff that I don't really need, like if I haven't watched a programme in 6 months then it should probably be deleted.
For stuff that I want to keep long term I have a NAS which I keep backed up. I have never found a way to conveniently back up the PVR, it takes hours and hours to copy thing over to a USB drive, so I treat it as temporary storage. (And just as well...!
)
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
Perfec'!
Trev
The Dumb One
Did you miss the 't' key BH?
As 'it's only TV', I don't backup any of the stuff on my PVR. If the HDD failed terminally, I won't be able to get stuff back. Oh dear. Do I care? Not particularly.
But, would it not be 'better' to copy the required files from the Hummy to the NAS over the network and just let it get on with it?
Jolly good philosophy. It makes me smile at the ads for SkyQ where you can record six and watch a seventh. Really. Time to watch it all comes from where?
EEPhil
Number 28
I suspect he's been watching "The Darling Buds of May". Something I avoid at all costs.
OP
Steve7777777
New Member
NAS is creaking at the seams. I need to buy a newer and bigger one, but unfortunately I don't have the cash atm.
Hey a Prisoner avatar, cool, I was a big fan back in the day.
Trev
The Dumb One
Trev
The Dumb One
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
OP
Steve7777777
New Member
A USB drive plugged into the pvr. Its a long story but in short my whole set up is way too messy. The cause mainly was that the (cheap) NAS that I chose (WD MyCloud) has never streamed properly to my telly in spite of spending days and days and days mucking about with it. MyCloud is not fit for purpose from a video streaming point of view, the included software (twonky) don't work. So I then ended up buying a USB drive and copied some of my NAS content to the usb drive and plugged it into the humax! As a character in The Prisoner once said: "in an emergency, we walk".
What are you copying to then?
My long term aim is to buy a better quality NAS, such as a QNAP, but they aint cheap - the bare unit without any discs is about 300 iirc.
prpr
Well-Known Member
The thing that worries me about these proprietary boxes is what happens to your data if the box itself dies, rather than a disk. Can you put the disks into some other box without the risk of losing the lot? Who knows?
I decided to do it myself with a Linux box and mdraid, then I know I can get the data back whatever, and using virtually any PC known to man which has a couple of SATA ports. And it's a damned sight cheaper and you learn lots in the process.
OP
Steve7777777
New Member
I wouldn't be averse to the basic linux box approach, I just havent looked into it. As far as I know the QNAP is just a NAS and the files you store are on its discs are just mp4, avi, mkv, mp3 or whatever, so they're not proprietary. I dont see any hazard there wrt losing your content if the server dies. Just pull out the discs and attach them to a PC or another NAS I would have thought.
Trev
The Dumb One
What about the format of the NAS discs? Is that compatible with your PC? What about raid striping (if you set it up that way) where the single data file is split between two physical drives?
prpr
Well-Known Member
It's not the files. It's the lower levels. What is the filesystem? How does the RAID work? And can you "just pull out the discs and attach them to a PC or another NAS" and expect it to work?
All these are unknown (to me). I don't know how a QNAP works and I didn't want to take the (expensive) risk of finding out and it possibly not working. Information on this never seems to be readily available. The manufacturers only want you to read the glossy blurb.
Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
As long as the RAID is implemented by simple mirroring rather than fancy striping etc etc, the data is safe and recoverable (a mirrored disk is just two normal disks with mirrored data stored in a normal format). Any other (hardware-implemented) arrangement risks you being stuffed if the controller breaks and is irreplaceable.
Software-based RAID can always be reconstructed as long as there is hardware capable of running the software.
Software-based RAID can always be reconstructed as long as there is hardware capable of running the software.
Trev
The Dumb One
Agreed, but you lose half your storage capacity. And then can you restore it to a replacement disc if one fails. I had an iOmega NAS, one of the discs failed (mirrored so data OK) and I tried several new discs all to no avail. It ended up in the bin. I now have a Netgear and a WD NAS. The Netgear is dog slow compared with the WD. I use the WD as my main storage, which mirrors two drives on my computer. The Netgear is kept off line powered down most of the time and switched on about once a week to mirror the WD.
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Black Hole
May contain traces of nut
You always lose about half your storage capacity with a RAID optimised for data security, regardless of which scheme you use. OK, so it is possible to create a three-disk array with one disk redundant, and that only loses a third, but...