How many drives in the TR4M? Just one so far?

Yup, just one drive, will look to add more if I see any of the WD 1TB get down to $99.

I have my TR4M and it is filled with 1.5 TB drives and added to the Storage pool, if I didn't have all 4 of the same drives this post wouldn't matter.

I was doing the math regarding the Duplication on the WHS and thought, why not implement the Raid 5 on the TR4M and not allow WHS to duplicate..

No Duplication JBOD
6TB

Duplication JBOD
3TB

No Duplication RAID5
4.5TB

But the problem is the SATA Raid utility cannot be run on the EX470 WHS to enable the Raid 5 as we are using the internal ESATA card on the WHS and not the one that comes with the TR4M.

Unless someone has successfully enabled Raid5 on the TR4M with the EX470, I would have to speculate that it is not possible as we are not using the accompanied Sil card with the Sans Digital device...

Am I looking at this correctly?

Yes, the RAID-ing is done on the SATA chipset, not the TR4M itself, so since the MSS doesn't support RAID, neither will the TR4M.

--kurt

I don't believe you can implement raid within the MSS, and furthermore why would you want to? WHS's file duplication and data management are an alternative to raid. With the disks in the TR4M as part of the WHS storage pool; since the drives are formated ntfs, the data will be available on any pc if the MSS dies. Raid has its own inherent risks. I once lost all of my backed-up data when the motherboard on a Snap Server NAS set-up with Raid 1 went bad. The data couldn't be recovered. I feel more secure with my data stored on the MSS.

If I understand what Agfadoc wants to do and which I would also be interested in is the ability to RAID the drives on the TR4M which would make it one large RAIDed drive to WHS. Then add to the storage pool and enable duplication of the data. This should still protect your data with duplication enabled but use less physical disk space on the TR4M as a result of the RAID 5 hardware based configuration.

But it seems like it's a moot point anyway since I"m now reading that the RAID is enabled in the SATA chipset which is not supported in the MSS hardware but only in the SATA card included with the TR4M.

Stanley -- does Sans Digital have any plans to fix this issue? And do you know what is causing the problem?

--kurt

It's not Sans Digital, it's the Marvell chip (or HPs implementation of it) on the MSS. All external enclosures have this issue.

Thanks for clarifying, Alex. Disappointing, but at least now I know what the root cause is.

If RAID is all that important to you I actually did a DIY implementation of WHS using a couple RAID arrays during the beta program. To be honest, the drawback of not being able to recover a disk on a different machine should the WHS system fail is one of the reasons I settled in on the MSS WHS in the first place -- over a year ago.

But it is possible in DIY, just not in MSS.

I finally got my TR4M-B today (Canada Post is awful for package deliveries!), and I also had to reboot the MSS to get the enclosure to work. At that point I only had a single 1TB drive hooked up to the TR4M.

One thing that disappointed me a little, the unit is supposed to be hot-plug compatible, but when I added a second 1TB drive to the TR4M, I had to reboot the MSS again for it to show up in the drive list (this does not happen with the internal bays of the MSS, no reboot necessary with those). So in practice the hotplugging doesn't work for me

Does it do the same for you?

On the flip side, I was pleasantly surprised that the SMART monitoring works fine for all drives, all the temps show up for the TR4M drives through the usual Disk Management add-in. The TR4M is also (thankfully!) incredibly quiet.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some I guess...

Where'd you buy your TR4M-B that they shipped Canada Post? Other than Newegg.ca, I couldn't find the unit anywhere in Canada and they ship using UPS.

I experienced the same behaviour when adding a second drive where I had to reboot the MSS. No biggie. I can schedule the reboot at my convenience.

I'm pretty happy with the unit. Overall, no complaints.

Has anyone installed the new marvel drivers, I think it made my CFI drives hot pluggable. Might take care of the 5th drive.

Bought it from NCIX.com (they are in Vancouver), I had found newegg.ca but did not trust the site; as far as I knew newegg did not sell to Canada. Since you seem to confirm it's a real site I'll add them to my list of possible shopping places...

NCIX ships via UPS "by default" for their Express Shipping option (you get your order the next morning, quite awesome) but I explicitly selected Canada Post for this delivery since no one is home during the day (those new toys aren't gonna pay themselves!), and the UPS warehouse is not somewhere I can go easily.

Anyway. It took a while, but I got my unit, and I already love it. Much better option than upgrading to an EX485.

(damn, now I want a TR4M-B icon )

I'll try to remember to upgrade the driver when I have a chance, and I'll keep an eye for that at the next drive install. Gotta fill up those extra 2TBs first...