Build Your Own 8 Hard Drive Storage Array

If you work in a multimedia field or have very large collections of video files of some sort, large storage arrays become necessary. There are several ways to go about building a multimedia storage array. In this article, we explore one of the possible solutions. We are all waiting for the wonderful new Thunderbolt arrays but they will be expensive and likely will not be available until fall. In the mean time, this is a great eight drive array for a great price.

Connectivity

First off, we need to address connectivity. What type of interface should you be using and what can you use? The answer to this question depends on what system you are using to connect to your storage array. If you are using a Mac Pro or other system with PCIe slots, you have the best options. The fastest readily available way of connecting to an array is eSATA which allows for external SATA II 3Gb/s connections. In addition, some interface cards offer the option of eSATA Port Multiplier support which essentially allows up to five SATA drives in a Port Multiplier-aware enclosure to connect through one cable. This works great but does impose a bottleneck for the drives at somewhere around 300MB/s available for all the drives running through that port. For this article we are only focusing on an eSATA enclosure that support Port Multiplier technology.

For bulk storage a bottleneck of 300MB/s is not all that critical but for day-to-day video editing or other high performance needs it is not ideal. The advent of new SATA III interface cards which operate at 6Gb/s will start to solve this bottleneck and allow upwards of 600MB/s throughput but requires enclosures and drives to support 6Gb/s as well.

As a reference point, USB 2.0 operates at 480Mb/s which works out to be 40MB/s or so at its maximum. FireWire 800 can sustain about double that speed at 80MB/s or so. When talking about those connectivity methods 300MB/s eSATA sounds pretty good. Once again, for most uses it is more than adequate.

Enclosure and Drives

In a market where external drive enclosures tend to be expensive, one company has separated itself from the pack with great value and high quality products. Those are the products of Sans Digital. They have a substantial line of hard drive enclosures. We will focus on a few of their products that fit our needs the best.

Since we are building a storage array, we need space for a number of drives. In our case we want to be able to use eight SATA drives. This brings us to the Sans Digital TR8M eSATA Port Multiplier enclosure for eight SATA drives.

As you can see from the picture there are essentially eight drive sleds that slide into the enclosure. At the back of the enclosure are two eSATA ports that correspond to four drives each using SATA Port Multiplier technology. We are currently using this enclosure with eight Hitachi 1TB drives which are currently $60.48. At $0.06 per gigabyte they are a good deal for 7200RPM SATA drives but larger 2TB drives reach a better value.

The current best value for bulk storage is the Hitachi 2TB CoolSpin 5400RPM drive for $79.99 ($0.04/GB). This drive is slower than the Hitachi 2TB 7200RPM drive but those go for $116.34 right now ($0.058/GB). Another option would be the Hitachi 3TB CoolSpin 5400RPM drive drive at $149.99 ($0.05/GB) or the faster Hitachi 3TB 7200RPM drive at $174.99 ($0.058/GB).

Interface Card

In addition to the enclosure and eight hard drives, you will want a fast interface card that supports SATA Port Multiplier technology. By far the best interface card I have used is the Sonnet E4p 4-port eSATA Port Multiplier-aware PCIe x4 card .

This card works great in a Mac Pro and a PC as well. The Sonnet cards in particular seem to get excellent performance with their Marvell chipset. Because of its SATA Port Multiplier support this card actually supports 20 drives if you have the proper enclosures.

RAID

The final part of the setup once you have your enclosure, all eight drives, and your interface card is to create your RAID array. In Mac OS X, RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring) are supported in Disk Utility along with combinations of those such as RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) and RAID 0+1 (mirror of stripes). Windows also offers software RAID capabilities but we will not address those capabilities in this article. Essentially creating a RAID array allows you to combine the storage space of the drives in different ways to have larger volumes in which to storage your data.

It is important to remember that you do not have to buy all eight drives at once. You can add drives in groups. For example, if you know you need storage now but only need 2TB you could buy two 2TB drives and create a RAID 1 (mirroring) or buy two 1TB drives and create a RAID 0 (striping). In addition, you do not have to use a RAID array at all. It is perfectly possible to leave all eight drives as separate drives and copy data to them individually. You can also mix and match different RAID arrays out of a selection of the drives. We are going to focus on creating a single storage space.

In brief, a two drive RAID 1 creates an identical mirror of your data on two physical drives. RAID 1 is designed to protect you against the failure of a drive. On the other hand, a two drive RAID 0 stripes chunks of your data over both drives. RAID 0 spreads your data out across both drives so accessing it becomes faster but at the cost of protection. If one drive fails everything is gone since most files are spread between both disks.

The combination or nested RAID levels as they are called provide additional protection and performance. RAID 10 or 1+0 is created by taking sets of RAID 1 mirrored drives and striping those together. Let’s say you have four drives. The first two drives would be in a RAID 1 and the second two drives would also be in a RAID 1. Then you would create a RAID 0 with two “drives” that happen to be the two individual RAID 1 sets. This provides the protection of RAID 1 since one drive out of each RAID 1 set can fail but provides the increased performance of RAID 0 by striping the two RAID 1 sets together.

RAID 0+1 is similar to RAID 10 but uses the opposite combination of RAID levels. In this case with four drives you would create two separate RAID 0 arrays and then create a RAID 1 array out of the RAID 0 arrays. The disadvantage in RAID 0+1 is that a single drive cannot fail in both RAID 0 arrays or all data is lost. RAID 10 has the advantage here.

Conclusion

We are currently using a TR8M enclosure with eight 1TB drives in a RAID 10 array which provides 4TB of usable space. We are using this array for backups right now which is why it is setup with a RAID 10 rather than a RAID 0 which would provide 8TB of space. We have been extremely happy with this array and the next step is upgrading it to 2TB or 3TB drives for even more storage. Whether you choose to use RAID 1, RAID 0, RAID 10, or some combination of individual drives and RAID levels, this setup is a very solid one that works great and provides excellent performance and value.

The 4G LTE Race is on with VoLTE Coming: Verizon, AT&T, and Clearwire

LTE is firmly set as the next major mobile data technology across the industry. Verizon is on track to meet its goal of LTE in 175 markets by year's end and LTE coverage in its entire current 3G footprint by the end of 2013. An AT&T executive has stated that AT&T plans to launch LTE this summer in five markets: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Clearwire has also stated that it will transition to LTE. Also, Apple could be poised to shake up the industry. Read more for the details.

LTE Data

Verizon's next LTE launch will be on June 16th and will add 21 new markets in Idaho, Connecticut, Utah, Wisconsin, and a major boost to coverage in Northern California in Marin and Solano counties. Verizon has aggressively been turning up new LTE markets since its LTE launch in December 2010. Verizon has been deploying its LTE service in the 700MHz spectrum which provides even better coverage than existing spectrum used for 3G in the 850MHz and higher spectrums.

AT&T is apparently feeling the pressure because an AT&T executive stated that AT&T plans to launch its LTE service in five markets this summer. The markets are Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. AT&T has been aggressively attempting to purchase 700MHz licenses from many sources including its deal with Qualcomm for $1.925 billion. Most recently these proposed purchased have been in Kansas and Massachusetts and now in Minnesota and Wisconsin. All spectrum purchases of this type require FCC approval which AT&T is awaiting.

AT&T is also campaigning for FCC approval for its purchase of T-Mobile for $39 billion. Part of this purchase would include a substantial amount of spectrum that T-Mobile owns in the 1700MHz and 2100MHz bands. AT&T intends to move T-Mobile's customers over to its own 1900MHz spectrum in order to deploy LTE on 1700MHz in addition to 700MHz. This would be especially advantageous in urban areas where data networks can easily be overloaded.

AT&T clearly sees the writing on the wall as far as the use of mobile data goes. As reported by FierceWireless, "AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson recently said he expects mobile data traffic on the company's network to grow 8 to 10 times by 2015, and that by 2015 AT&T will be handling as much data in a month and a half as it handled in all of 2010."

The proposed purchases of 700MHz spectrum by AT&T along with the acquisition of T-Mobile has garnered a great deal of opposition, primarily from Sprint and other regional carriers such as Leap Wireless but also from many other sources. Since the acquisition of T-Mobile would make AT&T the largest mobile wireless carrier in the United States, many sources are concerned that AT&T and Verizon would be a duopoly and exert too much power in the industry leaving the other carriers, especially Sprint, with less than twenty percent of the market.

Clearwire, on the other hand, has not deployed any LTE yet but sees that LTE will have much greater industry adoption that WiMAX ever will. As reported by 4Ginfo.com, the COO of Clearwire, Erik Prusch, recently commented on LTE and WiMAX and made statements to the effect that Clearwire will eventually deploy LTE but is waiting for the "LTE network to mature" before it commits to LTE. He also stated that "We don't believe that customers buy a technology. They buy fast and reliable access to a data network."

Clearwire is right that customers want fast and reliable mobile data access. Although the industry is moving away from unlimited data on landline as well as wireless connections, I am glad that Clearwire still offers a form of unlimited data on its 4G WiMAX network.

Voice, LTE, and Text Messages

The voice market will also be changing dramatically starting in the next few years. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) will become the next generation of voice technology which will essentially allow voice calls to travel on the same LTE data network rather than on a separate voice channel using 1xRTT or GSM. This will work much like Voice over IP (VoIP) does now.

Services such as Google Voice and VoxOx are attempting to offer one number that can reach you wherever and however you might be available by either voice or text message. Sprint sees the value in this as a competitive advantage and has partnered with Google Voice to provide very tight integration with Google Voice on Sprint phones.

I have been a long-time Google Voice user myself and I see the clear advantage in being able to be reached in any number of ways. I have especially enjoyed the ability to text from a web or application interface on my computer rather than using a cell phone. Short texts work either way but long conversations through text messages, which are becoming more common, can become quite tedious on any phone.

When it comes to communications, both voice and text messages are clearly here to stay. Cell phones have supplanted land lines for many people and this trend continues to grow.

Apple's Industry Shakeup

Apple, as well as some other strong players like Samsung, could be in a position to shake up the mobile industry in a big way. If Verizon, AT&T, and others all have LTE deployed in 700MHz or other common bands, what stops Apple from designing a phone that can easily work on LTE from multiple carriers. Currently LTE uses SIM cards since it descends from GSM ancestry but Apple seems to be interested in moving to e-SIM's which would do away with physical SIM cards altogether. Response to the e-SIM idea has not been positive from at least one major European carrier but that could change down the road.

Nearly five years back I was part of a small county's board of supervisors meeting regarding cell phone coverage in a very mountainous California county not too far from Yosemite. The goal of the county was to have almost the entire county covered with cell phone service in order for everyone to be able to make emergency calls if necessary. Two carriers provided service in the county: a national carrier and a small local carrier partially owned by a national carrier.

The supervisors were told by the different carriers that coverage was being expanded and nearly the entire county could be covered if some new towers were built. The problem was that if you had a phone from one carrier, it would not work on the other carrier's network and no emergency call could be placed. The coverage areas of the two carriers were substantially different and "covering the whole county" meant nothing unless you had a phone from each carrier.

This type of issue is still prevalent today, especially in more rural areas, but could be solved to some extent by LTE. As LTE is deployed across the country and has penetration similar to current 3G service as we pass 2013, an industry heavyweight like Apple could design phones that would not be locked to any carrier and could easily move from one network to another based on whichever one has the best coverage.

In addition, WiFi could be used as another way to offload the data traffic from the LTE network allow your phone to work anywhere WiFi coverage exists, even if LTE does not exist at that location. A unified communications experience might actually be a reality where your number rings and you receive text message on whatever network, LTE or WiFi, you happen to be connected to. The problem becomes billing and the fact that carriers will oppose any way in which you can easily switch carriers.

The future could be radically different for unified communications but it will take the mobile carriers losing some control and manufacturers of mobile phones stepping up to put pressure on the carriers to accomplish this. In any case, the next two years and beyond will show radical changes in mobile technology and this will bring big changes to the industry.

Twitter Acquires TweetDeck for $40 Million (Updated)

As reported by CNNMoney, sources have stated that Twitter has acquired TweetDeck for $40 million made up of cash and stock. The deal has not been officially announced by either Twitter or TweetDeck. As has been discussed in tech news since February, Twitter had to either buy TweetDeck or put up with a major competitor that could substantially cut into Twitter's ad revenue if UberMedia were to snap up TweetDeck instead.

Reportedly the talks regarding UberMedia purchasing TweetDeck ground to a halt sometime earlier this year and Twitter took the opportunity to step up and purchase TweetDeck instead. UberMedia's Twitter clients, UberSocial, Twidroyd, and EchoFon are direct competitors to both Twitter's own clients and TweetDeck.

Twitter's purchase of TweetDeck was definitely a wise move on Twitter's part and means that Twitter now controls one of the largest clients of its service. TweetDeck runs on many mobile and desktop platforms and is frequently used by Twitter "power users."

It will be interesting to see if Twitter continues TweetDeck's development in the current vein or if it integrates some features into its own Twitter app which was acquired by buying out Tweetie, another third party Twitter client.

Update: TweetDeck announced the sale to Twitter on their blog this morning and now Twitter has done the same.

Seagate Chasing iPad Users with GoFlex Satellite

Today, Seagate announced the new GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage device. This device is specifically designed for iPad users who want more space to store media. It is quite an innovative product and quick intriguing. What is it and why it is so innovative?

The GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage System is a 500GB hard drive that also creates an 802.11n Wi-Fi network and has a rechargeable battery that is said to last up to 5 hours. A user loads media by means of USB 3.0/2.0 from your Mac or PC similar to a regular hard drive. After the media is synced to the GoFlex Satellite, you can access it from your iPad or iPhone with Seagate's GoFlex Media app.

Although the video Seagate released only shows the iPad and other marketing materials also emphasize the iPad, the system requirements state that it is compatible with "iPad, smartphone, tablet or computer with a web browser and Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11 b/g/n)" for viewing the media stored on the device.

The specs say that you can stream media over Wi-Fi to three iPads at once. This might be a good solution for families needing more storage.

Forking over money for a 64GB iPad can seem daunting particularly when more than one is purchased for a family. I have owned a 64GB iPad and it really does not hold as much HD video content as you would think. The GoFlex Satellite might just solve this problem. Being able to carry 500GB of video content sure would be nice for long trips or being able to have a nice selection of options to watch.

The GoFlex Satellite 500GB will be available in July for $199.99 and is currently available for pre-order from Amazon.com. The full press release is available from Seagate's web site. Seagate also has a product page up as well.

WARNING: Inability to Upgrade Hard Drive on 2011 iMacs

Other World Computing's OWC Blog has revealed that Apple has severely limited the ability to upgrade the 2011 iMac's hard drive in the main drive bay. There have been various issues from 2009 on due to the way Apple utilizes an internal temperature sensors in hard drives. The problem is much worse in the 2011 iMac.

From the OWC Blog post,

With the release of the Late 2009 iMac, Apple changed the way the iMac communicates with the drive for that heat-sensing information. Each brand of hard drive Apple used had its own specific thermal sensor cable which connected to certain drives that featured internal temperature sensing. We found that you could still change the drive, albeit with a limited selection. Seagate drives could be swapped with larger capacity Seagate drives; Western Digital could be swapped with other Western Digital Drives; and so forth. There were also reports of other workarounds which included replacing the internal sensor with an external sensor (like the one from the optical drive bay), controlling the fans with software, or purchasing a replacement cable that matched your brand of new hard drive. In any event, there were perhaps a few convoluted ways to upgrade your iMac’s main drive outside of Apple’s offerings for greater speed, more capacity or to quickly restore a machine from a drive failure yourself.

In the new 2011 models, things are even worse.

For the main 3.5″ SATA hard drive bay in the new 2011 machines, Apple has altered the SATA power connector itself from a standard 4-pin power configuration to a 7-pin configuration. Hard drive temperature control is regulated by a combination of this cable and Apple proprietary firmware on the hard drive itself. From our testing, we’ve found that removing this drive from the system, or even from that bay itself, causes the machine’s hard drive fans to spin at maximum speed and replacing the drive with any non-Apple original drive will result in the iMac failing the Apple Hardware Test (AHT).

As usual, OWC went through everything very carefully to see if there are any workarounds.

In examining the 2011 27″ iMac’s viability for our Turnkey Upgrade Service, every workaround we’ve tried thus far to allow us to upgrade the main bay factory hard drive still resulted in spinning fans and an Apple Hardware Test failure. We swapped the main drive out (in this case a Western Digital Black WD1001FALS) with the exact same model drive from our inventory which resulted in a failure. We’ve installed our Mercury Pro 6G SSD in that bay, it too results in ludicrous speed engaged fans and an AHT failure. In short, the Apple-branded main hard drive cannot be moved, removed or replaced.

Reading the whole OWC blog post is well worth your time. This is the time to provide feedback to Apple and complain about this major limitation. Hopefully it can be solved with a software update but Apple needs to know what you think. We have been on the verge of recommending the new iMac models in place of Mac Pro systems for many tasks but this can be a major show-stopper. We were all very excited about Thunderbolt on the desktop but this is a big problem if you have any desire to replace the stock drive with a larger one such as the Hitachi 3TB hard drive which is a size not available at all from Apple.