I need a couple of *huge* disks for my work, and with Drobo getting less reliable, and Drobo support getting worse, I moved to more conventional RAID
5 enclosures. Specifically, Icy Box. I bought one in June, stuck four 4TB drives in it, and it seemed to hum along nicely, and still does.

So I bought another. After a month it crashed horribly, and I couldn't read
my data. I bought a set of brand new SATA drives (the ones in there were
pretty old) put them in, and restored from backup. After a couple of weeks, another crash - not so bad, and this time Disk Utility sorted it out. But now
I monitor the state of the drive regularly, and regularly see hundreds of bit flip errors and under-allocation errors. Different cable, different USB port
on the computer - no difference.

I figure it must be the Icy Box hardware, and Amazon agree. Send it back, get
a new one. Set it up with new power brick, new everything. No bit flip
errors, and only the occasional under-allocation error. But as of today it's running incredibly slowly, giving read and write of about 15MB/s, which just ain't good enough for video editing.

Where to go from here? Reformat as MacOS Extended instead of AFPS? Sell up
and buy one stand-alone 16TB hard drive? The original Icy Box is still
humming along nicely with no problems.

Thoughts?

Martin S Taylor

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Martin S Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

I need a couple of *huge* disks for my work, and with Drobo getting less reliable, and Drobo support getting worse, I moved to more conventional RAID 5 enclosures. Specifically, Icy Box. I bought one in June, stuck four 4TB drives in it, and it seemed to hum along nicely, and still does.

So I bought another. After a month it crashed horribly, and I couldn't read my data. I bought a set of brand new SATA drives (the ones in there were pretty old) put them in, and restored from backup. After a couple of weeks, another crash - not so bad, and this time Disk Utility sorted it out. But now I monitor the state of the drive regularly, and regularly see hundreds of bit flip errors and under-allocation errors. Different cable, different USB port on the computer - no difference.

I figure it must be the Icy Box hardware, and Amazon agree. Send it back, get a new one. Set it up with new power brick, new everything. No bit flip errors, and only the occasional under-allocation error. But as of today it's running incredibly slowly, giving read and write of about 15MB/s, which just ain't good enough for video editing.

Where to go from here? Reformat as MacOS Extended instead of AFPS? Sell up and buy one stand-alone 16TB hard drive? The original Icy Box is still humming along nicely with no problems.

Thoughts?

Well if you’re thinking of getting new drives, my email account is being bombarded with (allegedly) discounted Black Friday offers from WD!

--
Cheers, Alan

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Martin S Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

Where to go from here? Reformat as MacOS Extended instead of AFPS? Sell up and buy one stand-alone 16TB hard drive? The original Icy Box is still humming along nicely with no problems.

No experience with an Icy Box RAID, but generally a bit wary of 'consumer'
RAID solutions. (I think I have an Icy Box drive cage which poorly
ventilated drives and various parts snapped, so not thrilled by their build quality)

How much bandwidth do you need for your video editing? Bearing in mind a typical consumer HDD only does about 100MB/s in sequential read/write performance.

Wondering whether a moderately beefy NAS is suitable, or if you're going to want more than gigabit performance (which can be done, at a cost)?

What Mac are you using with it? Some of the Minis and Studios have a 10Gbps port which makes a NAS a lot more useful for video.

Otherwise I'd guess you're stuck with whatever you can find as a USB RAID.
Or maybe a Thunderbolt RAID?

Unfortunately 'proper' PCIe RAID cards aren't really a thing for Macs,
beyond expensive niche Mac-specific solutions. I'd prefer them over USB
any day - although Thunderbolt gets closest.

Theo

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On 25 Nov 2022, Theo wrote
(in article <TkA*[email protected]>):

No experience with an Icy Box RAID, but generally a bit wary of 'consumer' RAID solutions. (I think I have an Icy Box drive cage which poorly
ventilated drives and various parts snapped, so not thrilled by their build quality)

No, it is a bit cheap-and-cheerful but respected people on this newsgroup suggested it, and the first one I bought continues to work very well.

How much bandwidth do you need for your video editing? Bearing in mind a typical consumer HDD only does about 100MB/s in sequential read/write performance.

100MB/s would be fine. That's what the original Icy Box is giving. The new
one, with new drives, newly reformatted, is giving about 35MB/s

Wondering whether a moderately beefy NAS is suitable, or if you're going to want more than gigabit performance (which can be done, at a cost)?

The problem with NAS is that Backblaze charge ten times as much to back up a NAS as they charge to back up a DAS. That's why I specifically chose a box which can't be used as a NAS (which I don't need).

What Mac are you using with it? Some of the Minis and Studios have a 10Gbps port which makes a NAS a lot more useful for video.

iMac Pro.

MST

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In article
<[email protected]>,
Martin S Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

The problem with NAS is that Backblaze charge ten times as much to back up a NAS as they charge to back up a DAS. That's why I specifically chose a box which can't be used as a NAS (which I don't need).

there are ways around that

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On 25 Nov 2022, nospam wrote
(in article<251120221522335119%[email protected]d>):

The problem with NAS is that Backblaze charge ten times as much to back up a
NAS as they charge to back up a DAS. That's why I specifically chose a box which can't be used as a NAS (which I don't need).

there are ways around that

What are they?

MST

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article
<[email protected]>,
Martin S Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

The problem with NAS is that Backblaze charge ten times as much to back up a
NAS as they charge to back up a DAS. That's why I specifically chose a box
which can't be used as a NAS (which I don't need).

there are ways around that

What are they?

one way is iscsi, which makes the nas look like a directly attached
scsi device. unfortunately, mac os does not include an iscsi initiator,
which means third party options are required. the other problem is
because iscsi uses software on the computer and a network connection,
it won't be as reliable as a simple physical scsi cable (although that
did have issues too). on the other hand, it's faster than traditional
scsi.

another way is use a disk image stored on the nas, then mount it when
needed as a local volume. one problem with this method is that the disk
image can't be mounted by more than one computer at the same time. a
bigger problem is it's possible that backblaze checks for remotely
mounted disk images (i don't know if they do or not).

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On 26 Nov 2022, nospam wrote
(in article<261120221802039741%[email protected]d>):

The problem with NAS is that Backblaze charge ten times as much to back up a
NAS as they charge to back up a DAS. That's why I specifically chose a box
which can't be used as a NAS (which I don't need).

there are ways around that

What are they?

one way is iscsi, which makes the nas look like a directly attached
scsi device. unfortunately, mac os does not include an iscsi initiator,
which means third party options are required. the other problem is
because iscsi uses software on the computer and a network connection,
it won't be as reliable as a simple physical scsi cable (although that
did have issues too). on the other hand, it's faster than traditional
scsi.

"...won't be as reliable as a simple physical scsi cable..." sounds to me
like "...won't be as reliable as a 1965 Ford Cortina fitted with spares
sourced from China on eBay"

another way is use a disk image stored on the nas, then mount it when
needed as a local volume. one problem with this method is that the disk
image can't be mounted by more than one computer at the same time. a
bigger problem is it's possible that backblaze checks for remotely
mounted disk images (i don't know if they do or not).

That's possible. Backblaze appears not to check, and as I say, I don't need a NAS so there's no need to use the drive on more than one computer at once.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

MST

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On 22 Nov 2022, Martin S Taylor wrote
(in article<[email protected]>):

But as of today it's
running incredibly slowly, giving read and write of about 15MB/s, which just ain't good enough for video editing.

I wrote to Icy Box and got a prompt reply that I need to update the firmware. They sent me a link to the sofware to do this.

It is only available for Windows. They do not offer any way for Macintosh
users to update the firmware.

Astonishing.

MST

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On 28 Nov 2022, Alan B wrote
(in article<tm2446$1v319$[email protected]>):

I wrote to Icy Box and got a prompt reply that I need to update the firmware.
They sent me a link to the sofware to do this.

It is only available for Windows. They do not offer any way for Macintosh users to update the firmware.

Astonishing.

Indeed :( It might be possible to use a Windows virtual machine to perform the upgrade but that seems a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut
technique.

I had a look using Fusion, but it won't work: the prehistoric versions of Windows which I own need special drivers for the Icy Box, and they appear not to be readily available.

It's possible that I have friends who use Windows, I suppose. Maybe I should ask them.

MST

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Martin S Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

On 22 Nov 2022, Martin S Taylor wrote
(in article<[email protected]>):

But as of today it's
running incredibly slowly, giving read and write of about 15MB/s, which just >> ain't good enough for video editing.

I wrote to Icy Box and got a prompt reply that I need to update the firmware. They sent me a link to the sofware to do this.

It is only available for Windows. They do not offer any way for Macintosh users to update the firmware.

Astonishing.

Indeed :( It might be possible to use a Windows virtual machine to perform
the upgrade but that seems a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut
technique.

--
Cheers, Alan

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Martin S Taylor wrote:
[snip]

It's possible that I have friends who use Windows, I suppose. Maybe I should ask them.

If you're anywhere near Thetford in Norfolk I could help ...


--
Graham J

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article
<[email protected]>,
Martin S Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

I wrote to Icy Box and got a prompt reply that I need to update the firmware. They sent me a link to the sofware to do this.

It is only available for Windows. They do not offer any way for Macintosh users to update the firmware.

Astonishing.

that's not unusual, especially for smaller companies.

it should work in a virtual machine.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 28 Nov 2022, Graham J wrote
(in article <tm28i7$1vdgs$[email protected]>):

It's possible that I have friends who use Windows, I suppose. Maybe I should
ask them.

If you're anywhere near Thetford in Norfolk I could help ...

That's kind. However, I found a PC with about an 8" screen in a box at the
back of the garage. I think it dates from the mid-nineteenth century. Anyway, it cheerfully did what was required of it, and both Icy Boxes are now up to date with the latest firmware.

More anon...

MST

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