So far no real surprises. What I conclude is that the QNAP in fact disconnects and not only sleeps HDD's when used with Zidoo? A start of a sleeping (parked) HDD takes several seconds only but to re(connect) a new found drive it may take a full minute or more (it does them more or less in sequence so more drives take longer indeed). The difference is seen easily using Media Center as sleeping drives remain in the overview but disconnected drives are simply not there. With my 5-slot IcyBox unit I see such (very) long ramp-up only during initial Zidoo power-up or when swapping HDD's (using Eject). RAID will indeed act as one unit and should never disconnect (but maybe sleep).
So far so good with the QNAP Direct Access Storage (DAS) TR-004. It goes in standby when Zidoo is off, as was suggested. Powers up in about a minute to where it starts populating movies, which isn't bad. Seems to stay awake while Zidoo is on (just tested for about 4 hours if not mistaken). But will keep check on this. Since I am running NAS drives, probably find to just leave Zidoo on and not worry about it. Not sure if Hardware Raid would be more impacted by daily startups or just leaving the sucker on. Probably best just to keep it on. The 1 minute startup is a little slower obviously than the internal drive I have in Z10 Pro. More testing with actually watching content, but it seems to be functioning as I hoped. I am currently running a 4 drive RAID5 setup. 10TB per drive for about 27TB of actual storage, Zidoo sees it fine as you guys suggested it would.
I have a QNAP NAS as a Raid 5 configuration. It’s on 24/7 as is my PC and Zidoo. In addition I have 2 internal drives.
@Onwrathz How loud does your setup get? Is it in any way disturbing or noticeable when watching a movie?
I have mine in a closet so I haven’t noticed it at all. I will pay more attention with door open. But honestly this is going to come down to the drives, some drives seem to be slightly louder than others. I am using seagate NAS drives and they are quiet…at least my four, and at least for my setup (behind closet door). More info to follow about beeps and blips.
I have 4 WD Red Plus of 14TB inside my Qnap, the DAS is outside of my TV stand and the noise level is really low. Most of the time I don’t hear it at all, especially while I am watching a movie. I have sticked 4 adhesive pads under the DAS to reduce the possible vibrations.
Hi Guys, do you know if there's a limit, talking about TB, for a DAS (Direct-attached Storage) by USB 3.0? Thank you, Paolo
8TB, you will fill up that pretty quickly, especially if you have some UHD movies in your collection and/or some remux.
I can't think of any size limitation for technical reasons using RAID via USB. This provided the RAID box itself hasn't any for using HDD's above 16 TByte each. Yes filling up HDD space is very easy these days with 4K ISO's around. Neah did not see any nice Black Friday offers for 16 TByte HDD's this year. If somebody sees one please share it.
