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

[Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de>]

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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 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 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.

> 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'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 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
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