Main Storage Portable between two systems

[Stan Prevost]

I live part time in one state and part time in another. In Alabama, I have a 7-yr old desktop system, and I use a laptop on travels and at the other house in Michigan. Over the years, I have tried various ways to have access to all my files at each place, each method having advantages and drawbacks. The machines are used for general purposes, but my driving application is Photoshop, now CS5, for lots of panoramas, HDRs, and HDR panoramas.

The latest scheme is to duplicate programs etc. on the laptop and desktop, and to have My Documents and a few other things on a NAS RAID which I carry back and forth. This has worked well and has basically solved all my problems except speed. It is dreadfully slow. Now that it has come time to replace my aging desktop, I want to build up a fast powerful system, replicate it at each house, and replace the NAS RAID with a faster portable RAID.

Without getting off-topic in this forum about the computer itself, I will just say I am looking at an i970 quad-core system with 12GB of fast triple-channel RAM and a 80GB SSD for programs, Windows page files, and PS temp files. My topic in this forum posting is the external portable storage system.

It needs to be big (or expandable), initially at least 2GB of usable space, expandable to 10GB or so. Since it will be used as main storage, it needs to be fast. I'm looking at a Direct Attach Storage system using USB 3.0 or eSATA 3 (6G). It should be configured as a RAID for protection from loss of data (still will need a backup system).

About the only one I have found is the Sans Digital TR5UTP

http://store.sansdigital-shop.com/totr5bayusb31.html . I would stuff it with Seagate Constellation 2TB 7200RPM enterprise drives, which have 3GB SATA interfaces which match the Sans Digital internal interfaces.

This thing is a little bigger than I would like to tote around, bigger than my current NAS, but I think it will be manageable. If that is the only problem I have left, it will be worth it.

I am hoping someone on this forum knows something about the Sans Digital device, or their predecessor devices, and what kind of actual transfer rates would be realizable with the proposed equipment. Marketing info so often just talks about the potential data rates of the external linterface, like the gigabkt Ethernet interface of my current NAS, which is not necessarily very indicative of the actual performance.

Or alternative devices or approaches.

Thanks,

Stan

 

[Stan Prevost]

I talked with Sans Digital. They say that if I use a PCIe 2.0 interface in my computer, I can realize 150-160MB throughput for reads or writes.

The device does not have the capability to spin down the drives after a period of inactivity. Probably not such a problem with enterprise drives with 5-yr warranty, but does take more energy if left on continuously.

Biggest problem for me is that the system is not expandable. I had hoped to start with three 2TB drives in the 5-bay cabinet for an initial RAID-5 usable capacity of 4TB, then add drives as the need grows for up to 8GB of usable storage. But this system will not rebuild the RAID to encompass an added drive. Again, takes more power than needed and more $$. The drives are $300 each, would cost me $600 more initially.

Need options.