I wouldn't use one for a frequently used data store though.

Interesting, any particular reason why not?

Far too slow ever on gigabit network. An 8GB folder could take 12 hours to copy to a temp folder for burning to CD.

That's terrible.

Far too slow ever on gigabit network. An 8GB folder could take 12 hours to copy to a temp folder for burning to CD.

1gb/s = 8 secs for 1GB = 8*8 = 64seconds, or one minute four seconds. Okay, that's an ideal scenario and the HDDs are probably only pumping out 60MB/s or 480Mb/s but that must be a heck of a lot of tiny files for it to take twelve hours to move.

I was thinking about moving our office across to a NAS box for synchronised file storage, but the costs of a four disk solution with RAID 1+0 and dual 1Gb/s network seemed quite high; before you even consider the 1TB SAS drives (enterprise storage so that we get 1.3m hrs MTBF.)

If the networking would be an issue too then that would be pretty bad.

TBH I don't see that kind of consistent throughout off our SAN with 15k FC disks, so I'd be quite surprised if a small SATA unit can sustain that kind of throughput.



Do they make 1TB SAS disks yet?

Can't say I've ever seen 1TB SAS drives. I've had midline 1TB sata's in hotswap bays but never a SAS drive bigger than 300GB

We're both wrong I've just spotted that HP do some 7.2k 1TB SAS disks @ £450 a pop.

Well we now have a NetGear NAS device - has 3Tb storage space on Raid5 array and we are using that to backup our main servers every night as part of our disaster recovery plan.

First time it took 54hrs to backup 1.2Tb information but it is an incrimental system and last nights backup took just over 4hrs to backup the changes - some 80Gb - and then it also replicates itself onto an external hard drive which is taken off-site.

Been running this system for a week now and very impressed - easy to replace a file/folder if a user deletes it by mistake as its a simple drag n drop affair.