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Bob
Bob
14:00
I can't find a source for that now
...this guy.. benchmarking lossless compression formats on heavily (lossily) compressed videos... then complaining that the compression ratios aren't worth the extra time... facepalm
ah, maybe I misremembered. Looks like LZMA beats bzip2 by the greatest margin with (somewhat random) binary data. more than (much more predictable) text, anyway
14:15
moo
How does RAID work? Is it implemented at BIOS level and the OS sees only a single HD, or is it implemented at OS level and you configure settings at the OS and use tools to manage it?
No updates on Surface Pro :(
@ruda.almeida Depends if it's hardware or software RAID
the former is more configured at BIOS/Controller level and the OS only sees a single device
the latter is configured OS level
there's crossovers of course
So it's not something easy as IDE or SATA where I just plug it and it just works? =/
@ruda.almeida Not usually no, check this link in SF for some ideas about RAID:
60
Q: What are the different widely used RAID levels and when should I consider them?

MDMarra This is a Canonical Question about RAID levels. What are: the RAID levels typically used (including the RAID-Z family)? deployments are they commonly found in? benefits and pitfalls of each?

2
@ruda.almeida: there's hardraid (a card that handles it) softraid (like linux mdm) and fakeraid (which is a mix of hardware and software, and is best avoided, since its tied to a specific piece of hardware)
14:19
@ruda.almeida Some SATA motherboards (even some IDE) have integrated RAID controllers so you could use the standard/normal connectors
It is a very useful and easy post which helps you decide if you want RAID, na dif you do, which RAID level
@Hennes Thanks.
If you use a motherboards RAID then make sure that it also works on another motherboard. Else if the board dies you loose your data (or rather, everything since your last backup).
Same is true for a HW RAID card, but those are easier to replace.
@Hennes F$#@%! I wasn't aware of that.
Hardware RAID gets tied into the controller you use...
14:22
Aye, or the family of controllers.
My RAID was created on a 3com 9650, which died, and is now on a a 3ware 9750 (without any reformatting needed)
if it's onboard obviously you're stuck with that board, you might get lucky with other boards using the same family of controllers
I love my hardware RAID, but if you ever consider RAID, take a good look at mdadm (Linux) or plain windows software RAID (via the disk management)
Those will work if you need to change systems
I am strongly considering building a fileserver for personal use
By the way, if it's not too bother, maybe you could help me here:
(Yes, I created a chatroom just for that purpose)
If anyone could help me I'd be much gladly thankful
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek funnily enough, I swear hardware raid is more tied to the hardware than fakeraid is :P
@Hennes unless it's RAID 1 (mirror), in which case you could probably mount the disk directly
@Bob: you can swap the card
you need a similar enough or identical motherboard for fakeraid
Bob
Bob
14:36
@Hennes that's only if they store the configuration data on the drive.. our PERC4 RAID mysteriously lost a drive
@ruda.almeida: might also want to consider filesystems that let you combine a jbod with various advantages
Bob
Bob
@Hennes unfortunately, doesn't really work if you run multiple OSes
@JourneymanGeek And what is this "jbod" thing?
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek and you don't need a similar enough or identical card?
like greyhole (which is 'simple' and sits over whatever you have), or ZFS (which can be a lot of work to get 'perfect', can require more resources depending on features) etc ect
@ruda.almeida: "Just a bunch of disks"
@Bob: you do. But its an addon card. Good luck finding an identical 10 year old motherboard? ;p
Bob
Bob
14:38
@JourneymanGeek ah, that really depends then. haven't had much luck finding replacement 10 year old cards either :P
but the Intel ICH10 RAIDs are all more or less compatible
@ruda.almeida: LVM does it in linux, ZFS (which has a few other neat features ) does it too.
and this is something you can run on any hardware, any disks
how many consecutives do i have to get to get a badge?
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic 90 or 100
can't remember
i always forget to login on the weekends
omg.. 100.. no way am i ever going to get that many consecs
Bob
Bob
14:40
@allquixotic cron + wget? :P
@Bob LOL
Bob
Bob
(though that's cheating)
that is totally cheating
but i still don't have any gold badges :/
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek a JBOD is literally just a bunch of disks
@JourneymanGeek I'm considering FreeNAS, I've been recommended it. It uses ZFS, so is it a software RAID that can be used (and swapped) on any hardware safely?
Bob
Bob
14:41
nothing special required
@Bob: he dosen't know what that was
Bob
Bob
unless you're referring to a spanned volume or something
@Bob: basically 'don't use raid on a storage box'
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek why not?
@Bob: let me rephrase that
"You don't HAVE to use raid on a storage box"
Bob
Bob
14:42
in any case, hardware RAID 1 is usually transparent
for some reason the RAID-0 on my desktop with an Adaptec 6405E hardware RAID controller and 2 x 4TB 6Gb/s HDDs is really slow. Well -- I don't mean slow slow -- just, for having two disks working together, it's just about as fast as one disk. I think the write speed is better, but the read speed sure as hell isn't
Bob
Bob
so if you're mirroring, you can just stick individual drives on a normal AHCI controller and read them
@Bob: it is
Bob
Bob
(this applies to fakeraid too)
@allquixotic: if I wanted speed, I'd really rather throw SSDs at it
14:43
@JourneymanGeek I don't have enough money to buy SSDs in the data capacity I need
With "6Gb/s" HDDs, I rather doubt they can hit the interface's full speeds
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic well, it's striped
or enough space in my mini ATX tower
I spent few hours yesterday cleaning up the exact same shit
Bob
Bob
so if they're stuck seeking..
it's not like the drives can read independently of each other
14:44
why. the.hell.did.SO.Send.this.to.us?
even if I spent many thousands of dollars on 4 x 1TB SSD, I'd have less data capacity than now, and my wallet would be a lot lighter
and I really need the capacity :/
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic thousands? :S
>_>
wants a 4tb hdd for storage
@Bob edited :P
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek maybe the cache can?
14:45
but blah, budgeting for so many different things ;p
@JourneymanGeek that's another different story
@Bob: maybe
Bob
Bob
@Sathya oh wow
/me returns with coffee and lunch
@Bob Multiple OS's is precisely the reason I got a hardware card which presented a single disk to both windows and FreeBSD
@allquixotic I got the same problem, only go on here when at work so unless i make an effort to login on the weekends from home i'll never get close...
Bob
Bob
14:46
@Hennes fakeraid is funny
right now my problem with my HDDs isn't so much the boot up time, and I'm very satisfied with the write speed when recording video with FRAPS (I think it does like, 2 or 3GB/minute at full FPS and resolution) -- the problem is I want to improve loading times in large games.
@Bob Aye, which is where research comes in, (as well calling 3ware to confirm things)
Bob
Bob
on Windows, I can only see the RAID volume
though the Intel drivers let me see the individual drives
on Linux, I can see the individual drives and the volume, but the individual drives can't be mounted
@HaydnWVN phone!
just go on SU on your phone and go to a couple of questions
worked for me
even while on holidays overseas
then I forgot for a day D:
Maybe I should buy a smallish SSD (256 GB) and load the top 10 games I play into that, and occasionally shuffle out games I'm done with and shuffle in games I want to play
currently... I have a 40gb 5400rpm laptop drive (for linux) 250gb SSD (for boot) and 500gb for storage
Bob
Bob
14:48
@allquixotic maybe they're not IO bound?
256 GB SSDs are MUCH more affordable than 512GB or terabyte
(I want to swap the 500gb for something larger)
Bob
Bob
I still have not used any SSDs :P
@allquixotic: precisely
very few games are bigger than say 40gb
Bob
Bob
I can get a 256GB (Intel?) one for about $170, but too much trouble to transfer my OS to it and I don't mind waiting for games :P
14:49
@Bob no, I'm sure they're I/O bound -- I profiled it -- the CPU was at 9% usage, the network was only transferring a couple kilobytes per second, the GPU was at 10% activity (for reference, it's at 30% when rendering the game world), and the disks were churning out megabytes per second of textures and audio from disk
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek I've never seen a single game go over 20 GB :\
this was during the load screen for SW:TOR
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic defragment? :P
@Bob: which is why they wouldn't go over 40 ;p
Bob
Bob
14:50
lol
it takes around 2 minutes for a new world to load in SW:TOR.
Bob
Bob
o.O
This is a tough crowd
@Bob me either. :P I don't trust SSDs yet.
(also, apparently SSDs make NO difference in 'regular' boot times on windows 8)
14:51
@Bob good point... I forgot to reinstall my license of Raxco PerfectDisk
I'll defrag, but I doubt that's the issue, it's a fairly new install (I installed this Win8 Pro after completely wiping the HDD's partition table and installing it fresh on the day after Win8 general availability)
Bob
Bob
still, there could have been some fragmentation while installing the game data
though even with fragmentation i don't see 2 minutes
turn off antivirus?
update storage drivers?
@Bob the only antivir I have running is the Windows Defender that comes with Windows 8 Pro, in its default configuration
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic ah, that thing. not sure whether i love it or hate it
I updated the firmware in my RAID controller; I consider that fairly up to date :P I have the latest everything including firmwares as of about Jan 20th (checked it very recently)
Bob
Bob
it bugs me to update it
but doesn't delete my files without warning me and letting me choose to keep them
14:54
darn
my read speed, my new network setup, and my radeon clocking down into idle/2D clock rate while gaming and watching a video alt-tabbed are my three main gripes right now
apparently TVS makes a REALLY cheap mechanical keyboard
if i could formulate them into an answerable question other than "why the F does AMD/Netgear/Motorola/Adaptec suck so bad" I would ask it on SU
@Sathya and @hacktohell knows they make... motorbikes.
@allquixotic: lol
bikes, tyres..
14:55
AMD? That might answer part of it
hides
@Sathya: 1700 rupee mechanical keyboard ;p
maybe my Radeon problem is actually a valid, answerable SU question
I'll ask it
site I'm looking at wouldn't ship outside india, and I don't need another keyboard, do I? ;p
@JourneymanGeek lol, I actually quite like it.. despite it's rather loud clatter
@Sathya: thats part of the charm
and it looks oldskool
in a way, yeah :-)
14:56
@Bob maybe you would be interested in my new network setup
then again
If I get that job, I'm probably ordering a model M/unicomp 101 key
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic hmm?
Netgear WNDR4500 router with dual band wifi, 4 ethernet ports and DD-WRT installed on it. It has a fairly powerful CPU for a router (it's about twice as fast as the typical router's CPU from 2010-2011) running on the MIPS architecture. Broadcom chipset.
to this WNDR4500 I've connected my phone over USB, but that's not the end of it
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek can I buy? :P
I have a startup script saved in NVRAM on the router that launches Klink and sets up routing, and it copies the Klink binaries from a plugged-in flash drive
Bob
Bob
14:58
@allquixotic adaptec.. D:
@Bob: the site wouldn't ship outside india :/
so I tether my phone to my router :D
I suppose I COULD have it sent to a cousin
but too many questions ;p
the guy who wrote Klink provided me a MIPS build of it, and I rebuilt Android's adb from source for MIPS/uClibc
Bob
Bob
we can't figure out how to transfer our RAID 1 across to a new hard drive (to replace an old one that may be failing)
14:59
it works reasonably well most of the time but the 2.4 GHz wifi drops out randomly and won't come back until rebooting the router. the ethernet is good
@Bob good question -- I'm not sure... but I know that Adaptec's on-disk RAID format is stable since a long time ago
if you transfer it literally at the block layer, it should work
basically dd
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic I considered that, but dd-wrt lists it as a WIP
should've gotten it, if it works D:
atheros can't do individual port VLAN tagging with dd-wrt, apparently
@Bob oh. I found a build of the WNDR4500's DD-WRT from some guy on some wiki (I googled around), the build was released December 10, 2012 and it works very well
Bob
Bob
@JourneymanGeek so, uh, anyone here in India willing to forward a package to me (I'll pay for postage, of course)? :P
@Bob Uhm. Pull the broken/suspected drive. Wait 30 seconds, plug in new drive. Wait. Done ?
15:01
tested and working, for me: router firmware, USB 2.0 storage (and in my case Android Debug Bridge over USB, lol); WiFi 2.4 GHz with WPA2-Personal/AES (though it drops out with my tablet)
not me. I'm not in india ;p
Bob
Bob
@Hennes production server
At least that is the normal solution for HW RAID
Bob
Bob
I'd rather not 'pull a drive'
a production server should be able to tolerate having a drive yanked while it's running if the other drive is OK
15:02
How is the RAID set up ? And which drives (SATA, SAS?)
people do that all the time with mirrored RAID -- that's kind of the point
hotplug the new drive and the array should rebuild
Aye, should
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic heh. this thing's 2.4GHz 40MHz channel mode is broken, and one of our computers randomly disconnects too
@allquixotic but that won't help the controller recognise the new drive
With HW RAID and SAS I would just check that I got the right drive and pull it. With SATA I would wait until after office hours before I do that
Bob
Bob
apparently, someone tried before
15:02
@Bob I hate all the different draft N standards going around; so many devices don't support 802.11n on 2.4GHz properly
Bob
Bob
assigned a new drive as hot spare
pulled the old one
and my Nexus 7 doesn't even have a 5 GHz radio
Bob
Bob
it didn't rebuild onto the new one
@allquixotic: one reason I held off getting N router
@allquixotic: lots of 'N' devices don't
Bob
Bob
@Hennes SATA RAID 1, 2 drives + 1 hot spare. it's the data drive
15:03
especially on the lower end
@JourneymanGeek I have no choice! I have client devices that support whatever they support, and it's either throw out my devices (Roku, Nexus 7, Cotton Candy) or get a router that supports them
@allquixotic: I'm still using WRT54GL
No support for 3 drives on the card? Or a general hot space available for all arrays ?
fortunately, my ThinkPad T530's wifi chipset supports 5 GHz, so maybe that will be more stable, but it'll usually be in a fixed configuration (on my desk) so I should be able to plug it into ethernet.
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic I'm goign to buy a couple of cheap SATA HDDs off ebay, a couple of external SATA to USB cases, a hub and make a NAS with my router :P
15:04
works perfectly outside the 'dead zone'
WRT54GL (or version 4 -L's rocked)
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic what's what we tried
our other (Dell PERC4/SC) RAID had an option ot mark a drive as 'offline'
in the software
and to tell it to start rebuilding
the adaptec one.. is weird.
@Bob uhh... just FYI, SATA -> USB -> router is a bad idea. Router SoCs don't have a very large bus throughput, and you're losing a ton of performance by going from SATA to USB 2.0... at least get a router with USB 3.0 and a decent ARM SoC.
Bob
Bob
@Hennes got a hot spare set up. but it's not rebuilding onto it
and with "a couple" SATA HDDs, you can definitely saturate USB 2.0, or if not, you'll still probably saturate that tiny/slow MIPS SoC in the router
15:06
is currently debating setting up, very quietly a combined nas/download/gateway box
Bob
Bob
might give it another shot the coming weekend
I have all the hardware I need
Where 'a couple' is one or less ?
technically? 2
if I were looking to build a small NAS, I'd buy some kind of dual core ARM box (basically phone/tablet hardware), make sure it supports USB 3.0 or native SATA, and put some Linux distro on it
15:07
Just assuming USB 2 thoughput to be 35MB/sec or less. And a single old laptop drive can fill that
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic bit late now :\
even 2012 smartphone-grade ARM SoCs run circles around a MIPS router's throughput, by many times
If I build a NAS and had enough money: Soekris5501
Bob
Bob
it's, uh
a Atheros AR9344@560
They have much newer models with Atoms on it, 2GB RAM etc, but the odl VIA based board is quite low power
15:09
@Hennes: was thinking my old atom, or a newer low voltage intrl processor
looked at some vias, not really cost effective other than if you take a massive long term look
Old atoms are nice on power too. Just make sure the chipset is also low power.
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic problem is, USB3 gets rather pricey
@Bob Oh, okay. That's actually not that terrible. Your Atheros is based on the same MIPS reference design (74k) as my Broadcom MIPS chipset. The performance difference will be as small as between two competing ARM Cortex A15s, for example. The OEM can do minor tweaks, but they're taking the core from MIPS
I got an unused Asus Surf EEE701 (celeron 800Mhz, 5.5 Watt, factory underclock to 2/3rd of its speed.... and a chipset which used as much power.
I was worried you were still using a 24k
Bob
Bob
15:10
for a quick slow backup drive or a little storage on the network, it'll do in a pinch
MIPS 74k is still much, much slower than most modern ARM SoCs designed for smartphones/tablets, but it can push a goodly bit of data over the bus... just, I wouldn't use USB 2.0. If it had some kind of eSATA connector I'd say yes.
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic unfortunately, no
just the standard gigabit, standard wifi, not-so-common USB2
and, USB3 is pricey :(
too bad you can't connect up your drives over ethernet, but to do that you'd need another "computer" to host the SATA disks and your problem starts over again
because that gigabit ethernet is considerably faster than your USB 2.0 as far as bus speed
Bob
Bob
@allquixotic if the Pi had USB3 support, that would be perfect - I was looking for something to do with this
15:15
@Bob yeah... you might want to look into Intel's Next Unit of Computing whenever it comes out
Bob
Bob
the only desktops I have spare are noisy, power hungry (P4!) and lack gigabet ethernet
actually, I'm not sure they even support SATA2, though that probably does not matter
I am not sure you need gigabit Ethernet. Not unless your NAS is fast enough to fill more then a 100mbit line
actually NUC is released O_O
Bob
Bob
@Hennes 100mbit is slower than USB 2.0
USB 2.0 is 480mbit
I had a NAS with Gigabit interface, two 160GB drives.... and 6MB/sec speed
Bob
Bob
15:16
if I were going with 100mbit, there's no point in USB3
@Hennes ...I can get 100MB/s with a USB3 portable hard drive
I imagine old SATA drives off ebay might make 50MB/s
which is still four times faster than 100mbit ethernet
Oh, drives where fast enough if I plugged them into another computer
Bob
Bob
heck, I can hit 80-90MB/s over gigabit ethernet and SMB/CIFS
I just had those spare after I upgraded my Dell R300 poweredge. (could not order without drives, so I ordered the smallest drives, tossed them out and bough some 15K RPM SAS drives)
Bob
Bob
and I think that's a limitation of my RAID1 array
@allquixotic likely costs more than I'd be willing to pay for this
I wonder if I could set up an Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC) box as a router instead of fumbling around with MIPS
Bob
Bob
15:19
come on, I'm getting drives for literally under $5 (delivery costs more...)
I would need a good wireless chipset capable of running in infrastructure mode though
@ariane: though the example link is for windows 7, is is still good background reading
Bob
Bob
huh
apparently, it's possible to move a fakeraid array from an ICH9 MB to an ICH10 MB
actually, from earlier versions too
@allquixotic I'm wondering if USB would be a bottleneck
Bob
Bob
so, basically, as long as you have an Intel motherboard that supports fakeraid, you can migrate to it :P
15:32
@JourneymanGeek you mean for tethering?
I am not sure I get the point behind fakeRAID though.
naw, for wifi in general
It uses software in the OS/driver to do the work. So you can just as well use software RAID.
on LTE I get between 12 and 25 Mbps on average. I have never received more than 26970 kilobits per second on LTE in any direction, and that was a burst test. it's more than enough to pipe that through USB 2.0.
disk storage needs actual throughput, but I can easily sneak LTE through a low powered MIPS core on USB 2.0 and get all the throughput
802.11g would be fine as far as throughput also
I understand that Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool may appear inactive at times, but there has been no progress for more than an hour. Apparently stuck at pass 1 of 2, 26% complete (13% complete overall). Is it normal to find a wait of more than an hour with no progress?
Bob
Bob
15:37
@JourneymanGeek depends? :P
USB 2.0 has a theoretical max of 480Mbps
@GrahamPerrin That doesn't sound normal to me...
Bob
Bob
With a combination of 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz wide channel n, it should be possible to at least reach 750Mbps
@GrahamPerrin I have found that that tool is rather slow, and does not detect errors that memtest86+ did :\
How much RAM do you have?
And, yea, probably not normal
anyway, I'm off
@Bob I didn't look – it's a colleague's Eee PC. I'd normally run memtest86+ from a CD but there's no drive
thanks
Bob
Bob
@Hennes but it works cross-OS
Dang, I got a hold of four 27" screens yesterday and set them all vertical... today I have to ship them out, so I'm back to my one 27" and two 19"s, I feel so cramped
15:41
Fake RAID? No, not always
Bob
Bob
I think it uses software for any management/advanced functionality (e.g. rebuild), but the hardware side can handle basic stripe read/write
I dunno :P
All the OS's would need to right drivers do to the (fake) RAID in software.
Bob
Bob
it does expose a single volume even to the BIOS (UEFI)
lol
@Tanner: spoilt! ;p
Bob
Bob
though that may be because the BIOS/UEFI specifically includes somethign to deal with fakeraid
15:43
I have a 20"
@JourneymanGeek I know >_< It's so bad. I used one 19" screen until I started working here... now I want all the screens.
It is alike software RAID with a friendly config tool build into the BIOS
Bob
Bob
@Hennes keep in mind that there's the pre-boot stuff
I have no where to put technet >_> Do I close chat, Evernote, or email?
Bob
Bob
and I've had Hirens' MiniXP running fine with it :\
not sure what drivers that includes
guess it would depend on the specific implementation of 'fakeraid'
that term is rather ambiguous anyway, all implementations likely do something quite different
hm.. anyone know of a live-bootable OS that has AHCI support but no RAID support?
(I would also like to note that Windows 7/8 works out-of-the-box with the Intel fakeraid, as do all Linux distros I have tried, 2.6 to 3.x kernels)
15:47
I assume all modern live-bootable CD have AHCI support. No idea about RAID
Bob
Bob
also, the Windows bootloader works - pre-OS-selection.
I doubt that thing loads any third party drivers :\
don't know if anyone is into traditional pop (sort of a crossover of classical / vocal music with a blend of pop style), but Andrea Bocelli's new album "Passione" is available on Amazon MP3 and Spotify as of this morning
it's lovely <3
tumbleweed
;)
Amazon mp3 Amazon, that is the one which always claims "this song is not available in your country?"
@HackToHell Oh yeah. That stuff madness.
People are buying racks of computers for mining !
Makes my computer look like a quark :(

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