6 ms·

How does the enclosure kill reliability?

by jasonjayr 2y ago

bombcar 2y ago
External drives are often designed for a shorter duty cycle and don't dissipate heat as well as they could.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  I'm mostly concerned about the power cord getting unplugged if, say, somebody is vacuuming around the area. On top of the usual "whole machine gets turned off" failure mode that happens maybe 10-20x a year in my neighborhood because of power loss there is a "machine is turned on but HDD is powered off" case.
  - monkpit 2y ago
    Wouldn’t a NAS have the same problem, and wouldn’t a battery backup solve it? Genuinely curious
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      Personally I don't trust a NAS as far as I can throw it, or rather I'd use one the way I use Amazon S3. My home server has a ZFS array, the media server and some other programs access it directly. If I want to move files to or from it I use SFTP. If I want to back files up to it I use rsync. I have Lightroom running pretty good on an external HDD, no way I'd take my chances running it on a NAS.
      - loeg 2y ago
        > Personally I don't trust a NAS... > My home server has a ZFS array, the media server and some other programs access it directly. This sure sounds like a NAS.
        sangnoir 2y ago
        An appliance with the primary role of storage, and the ability to share files over the network are the distinguishing features for a NAS. Network support for iSCSI, SMB, NFS makes a NAS; sharing data exclusively over the media protocols (http, rtsp, etc) makes it a media server
        bombcar 2y ago
        By "NAS" most people mean "box they bought from someone to share files on a network" - think Qnap or Synology. They'll call a "NAS" that is home-built a server, even if they do basically the same thing. To make it more fun, you'll have people refer to "I don't have a NAS, I run FreeNAS on my server."
        PaulHoule 2y ago
        There is no SMB or NFS, no 'network filesystem', though I could configure one if I want. I don't believe network filesystems are faat and reliable... ... Now that I think about i did have samba set up so I could watch 3d movies on my Meta Quest 3. But who cares if that is reliable?
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  People have been battle testing those cheap as possible external drives on top of hot xboxs in enclosed cabinets for years and years now. Backup, and I would think failure rates would be too small to consider.

How does the enclosure kill reliability?

bombcar 2y ago

External drives are often designed for a shorter duty cycle and don't dissipate heat as well as they could.

PaulHoule 2y ago
I'm mostly concerned about the power cord getting unplugged if, say, somebody is vacuuming around the area. On top of the usual "whole machine gets turned off" failure mode that happens maybe 10-20x a year in my neighborhood because of power loss there is a "machine is turned on but HDD is powered off" case.
- monkpit 2y ago
  Wouldn’t a NAS have the same problem, and wouldn’t a battery backup solve it? Genuinely curious
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Personally I don't trust a NAS as far as I can throw it, or rather I'd use one the way I use Amazon S3. My home server has a ZFS array, the media server and some other programs access it directly. If I want to move files to or from it I use SFTP. If I want to back files up to it I use rsync. I have Lightroom running pretty good on an external HDD, no way I'd take my chances running it on a NAS.
    - loeg 2y ago
      > Personally I don't trust a NAS... > My home server has a ZFS array, the media server and some other programs access it directly. This sure sounds like a NAS.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        An appliance with the primary role of storage, and the ability to share files over the network are the distinguishing features for a NAS. Network support for iSCSI, SMB, NFS makes a NAS; sharing data exclusively over the media protocols (http, rtsp, etc) makes it a media server
      - bombcar 2y ago
        By "NAS" most people mean "box they bought from someone to share files on a network" - think Qnap or Synology. They'll call a "NAS" that is home-built a server, even if they do basically the same thing. To make it more fun, you'll have people refer to "I don't have a NAS, I run FreeNAS on my server."
      - PaulHoule 2y ago
        There is no SMB or NFS, no 'network filesystem', though I could configure one if I want. I don't believe network filesystems are faat and reliable... ... Now that I think about i did have samba set up so I could watch 3d movies on my Meta Quest 3. But who cares if that is reliable?
kjkjadksj 2y ago
People have been battle testing those cheap as possible external drives on top of hot xboxs in enclosed cabinets for years and years now. Backup, and I would think failure rates would be too small to consider.