Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 06:26:39AM -0500 schrieb Dale:
>
>> I looked into the Raspberry and the newest version, about $150 now,
>> doesn't even have SATA ports.  I can add a thing called a "hat" I think
>> that adds a couple but thing is, that costs more and still isn't
>> enough.
> I run a raspi with some basic services, most importantly a pihole DNS filter
> and a PIM server. But I find it hacky-patchy with its flimsy USB power cable
> poking out of the side. I’d prefer a more sturdy construction, which is why
> I bought a NAS-style PC (zotac zbox nano with a passive 6 W Celeron). But
> that thing is so fast for every-day computing that I actually put a KDE
> system on it and now I don’t want to “downgrade” it to a mere server.
>


I googled that little guy and that is a pretty neat little machine. 
Basically it is a tiny puter but really tiny, just not tiny on
features.  The Zotac systems, even some older ones, are pretty nifty.  I
think I read they have a ITX mobo which is really compact.  It sort of
reminds me of a cell phone.  Small but fast CPUs, some even have decent
amounts of ram so they can handle quite a lot.  Never heard of this
thing before.  I wouldn't mind having one of those to work as my OpenVPN
server thingy.  I'd just need to find one that has 2 ethernet ports and
designed for that sort of task. 


>> I have a old computer that I might could use.  It is 4 core something
>> and I think it has 4GBs of memory, maxed out.  I think it will perform
>> well enough but wish it had a little more horses in it.
> An Intel Celeron from the Haswell generation (i.e. 8+ years old) did not
> have AES-NI yet, and it reached around 160 MB/s encryption speed. I tried
> it, because I had dealings with those processors in the past before I built
> my own NAS. Your old tech may still be usable, but please also consider
> power cost and its impact on the environment if it runs 24/7.

I'm not real sure what that old machine has.  I have Linux, can't recall
the distro tho, on it.  Is there a way to find out if it supports the
needed things?  Since I'd mostly be using it as a backup system, it
won't run all the time.  I usually do backups on weekends when I update
the OS.  Recently tho, since the internet is so fast, I have done it
twice a week.  Just keep in mind, all this is encrypted. 


>> I looked at something called ITX but they have only one PCIe slot
>> usually.  That's not enough.  I'd like to have two 6 or 8 port SATA
>> cards.  Then balance the drives on each.  I think some of the through
>> put is shared so the more drives on it, the slower it can be.  I'd like
>> to have two such cards. 12 or 16 drives should be enough to last a
>> while.
>>
>> Part of me wants to do RAID but not sure about that.
> Dealing with so many drives, I think there’s no getting around RAID. All
> drives fail. The more drives you have, the earlier the first failure. With
> that many drives, I wouldn’t want to handle syncs between them by hand in
> order to get redundancy or backups of backups.
>

It's a step I need to take but I have to accumulate the needed drives
first.  I'm getting there tho, slowly. 


>> While I don't think I need a super powerful machine, I do want enough
>> that it will perform well.
> The question is: what do you need it to perform? If it’s just storing and
> serving files, save the bucks and use any low-end x86 processor with AES
> instructions. My NAS first ran on the above mentioned Celeron, but later I
> did upgrade to a low-power i3 (because the case¹ is very cramped, I don’t
> want too much heat in there). It is a dual-core with SMT and AES at 35 W.
> IIRC, it can encrypt around 800-something MB/s. And that is an old i3-4170.
> Modern chips are most probably much faster still.
>
>> I may use actual NAS software too.
> What is “actual NAS software”? Do you mean a NAS distribution? From my
> understanding, those distros install the usual services (samba, ftp, etc.)
> and develop a nice web frontend for it. But since those are web
> applications, there isn’t much to be gained from march=native.
>
> I still run Gentoo on my NAS, just for the old habit and because it comes
> with ZFS right out of the box. But the services I still configure the
> classical way – ssh, vim and config files.

I've seen TrueNAS, OpenNas I think and others.  Plus some just use
Ubuntu or something.  Honestly, almost any linux distro with no or a
minimal GUI would work. 


>>   I'm sure Gentoo would work to with proper tweaking but then I need to
>> deal with compiling things.  Of course, no libreoffice or anything big so
>> it may not be to bad.  Thing is, the NAS software will likely be more
>> efficient since it is designed for the purpose. 
> More efficient than what?
>
> My NAS is powered up every few weeks or often months. And then the first
> thing I do is—of cours—a world update. And as you mentioned, the install
> base is rather small. No graphical stuff whatsoever (server board, small
> ASMedia VGA chip on-board, no Intel graphics). The biggest pkgs are gcc
> (around 2 hours build time) and llvm. The rest is user land stuff that helps
> me in dealing with the media files the NAS serves. Mkvtoolnix is a compile
> hog at around half an hour.

I figure something like OpenNAS or TrueNAS would work better as it is
built to be user friendly and has tools by default to manage things. 
I'm pretty sure they support RAID and such by default.  It is likely set
up to make setting it up easier too. 


>> I just know I need a proper machine for the task.  I'm getting lots of
>> data fast now.  I hit the 80% mark overnight.  At 90%, I consider it
>> critical.  Something must be done soon. 
> How about watching the spoils for a change instead of only ever downloading
> it? ;-)
>
>
> ¹ https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/ipc/storage-cases/sc-4100


I've likely watched everything I download at least twice.  I admit, I
like things from back in the 70s, 80s and such quite a lot.  Most shows
today are just trash, I'm trying to be polite.  ;-) 

Thanks for the info.  Especially the little tiny Zotack thing.  One neat
little machine. 

Dale

:-)  :-)