# External RAID 1 or RAID 5 via ESATA?



## SomeRandomIdiot (Jan 7, 2009)

I have searched the threads, but the threads concerning this seem to be from 2006 and 2008 without any current relevant info.

Having just lost an EXTERNAL eSATA 1.5TB drive loaded with programming from the past 12 months, I am not exactly keen on doing that again.

Is there a (or multiple) reasonably priced external hardware solutions that one can connect to a HR-2x for any type of redundancy?

Thanks.

EDIT: Sorry mean RAID 0 or RAID 5.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

RAID technology is not changed since 2006.

RAID 0 doesn't provide any redundancy.
RAID 1 is a mirror - could work for you, but need double storage.
RAID 5 require 3+ equal drives, usable size will be one drive less.

Look for [expensive] HW based (OS/chipset independent) eSATA boxes.


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## SomeRandomIdiot (Jan 7, 2009)

P Smith said:


> RAID technology is not changed since 2006.
> 
> RAID 0 doesn't provide any redundancy.
> RAID 1 is a mirror - could work for you, but need double storage.
> ...


grrr....so I had it correct in the title. One of your posts from 2008 has it backwards and thats why I editted it, thinking I had it reversed


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Your title is correct.

[How I did confuse you, if I'm used the different RAIDs for 20+ years. ]


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## jgriffin104 (Sep 22, 2006)

I use 4 raid 1 cases with two TB Seagate drives in each one on 4 of my hr24 DVR's.

I was tired of loosing recording on main hard drives and ESATA drives.
The case's came from Ebay at $90 each and the Drives were on sale at Fry's for $156 each. Setup was pushing the new drives into the case and shutting the doors. Connecting the supplied Esata cabe to the DVR and setting the rotary swith to Raid 1 and pushing the reset button.Then rebooting the DVR.

I used Gparted to record all the main drives first. I only used one hr24 to do the graceful power down on all the new drives, after they formatted, then copied each pair right from their HR24 case with a 3 foot Sata and power cable. One thing nice was you can copy one drive right after another in Gparted for both drives in each Raid case.

Hope this answers your question. If not PM me and I'll give you my phone number.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

_The case's came from Ebay at $90 each_ - would be nice to have the model/maker or URL to the item at least.


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## jgriffin104 (Sep 22, 2006)

USB 2.0 to eSATA Raid 0 JBOD 2-Bay Hard Drive Enclosure by Sans Digital

Item number: 360204963136 
Item location: Los Angeles, CA, United States 
Ships to: United States 
Payments: PayPal See payment details 

I offer $90 and was accepted. I bought 4 more after the first one tested to work on the HR24.


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## jgriffin104 (Sep 22, 2006)

Thank you all for the PM's.

No , you don't have to do anything to the drives other than plug them into the HR24 ESATA plug to format them. I used Gparted to copy all the drives in 4 of my HR24's, I wanted the recordings already on then on the External drives. I have a Wife that watches Rachel Ray and The View, and a 90 year old Mother That watches Law and Order over and over falling asleep durning most of them.

If you only want to add the external raid case you only let the HR24 format the drives.
You don't need to open the HR24 case if you're not going to copy your internal drive.

I used one HR24 to format all 10 2tb drives one after another. I used an ESATA to SATA
cable and an old USB to IDE adapter power supply and the power cord adapter that came with each drive. I then pushed each drive into the case and shut the access door and that was it. Turned on the case and set the rotary switch to Raid 1, pushed the reset button watched the leds flash and pluged in the ESATA cable that came with the case to the HR24. Then pluged in the HR24 and watched it boot up. All have been running fine for the last 3 or 4 months.

I was in a hurry to get thing up and running and didn't try to format both drives in the raid case at the same time. I chose to format them individually in case any of the 2TB drives were defective out of the box. None were and all is well.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

jgriffin104 said:


> USB 2.0 to eSATA Raid 0 JBOD 2-Bay Hard Drive Enclosure by Sans Digital


Your earlier post said RAID-1. Raid 0 JBOD is *NOT* RAID-1.


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## Eskimo (Aug 2, 2010)

unixguru said:


> Your earlier post said RAID-1. Raid 0 JBOD is *NOT* RAID-1.


Most of the SANS digital boxes do RAID 0,1,and JBOD.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

jgriffin104 said:


> USB 2.0 to eSATA Raid 0 JBOD 2-Bay Hard Drive Enclosure by Sans Digital
> 
> Item number: 360204963136
> Item location: Los Angeles, CA, United States
> ...


Sorry to disappoint you, BUT you're running not RAID-1.

See the Sans Digital Mobile Strorage Enclosure (MS2UTN+B) description: "*Note: For eSATA connection, port multiplier support required for 2 RAID volume, eSATA without port multiplier support will only detect the first volume*".
NO one DVR has port multiplier inside.

Reading SANS DIGITAL site, I found the MOBILERAID line support OS independent RAID configurations : http://www.sansdigital.com/mobileraid/index.php


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## jgriffin104 (Sep 22, 2006)

P Smith said:


> Sorry to disappoint you, BUT you're running not RAID-1.
> 
> See the Sans Digital Mobile Strorage Enclosure (MS2UTN+B) description: "*Note: For eSATA connection, port multiplier support required for 2 RAID volume, eSATA without port multiplier support will only detect the first volume*".
> NO one DVR has port multiplier inside.
> ...


I hate to dissapoint you. I'm an engineer and not that stupid to not check with the factory. If you try to use two Esata cases you will need the port multiplier. One case with 2 drives works fine it is seen a one drive and mirrored. And the drives are hot swapable and if one fails you slap in another and it is reproduced. And yes I tested it out completely before buying the other 3 cases.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Interesting, why the description is misleading ...

Could you please describe what exactly tests you did with the enclosure ? [As an engineer to an engineer. ] How you found it does mirroring ?


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## jgriffin104 (Sep 22, 2006)

P Smith said:


> Interesting, why the description is misleading ...
> 
> Could you please describe what exactly tests you did with the enclosure ? [As an engineer to an engineer. ] How you found it does mirroring ?


The quote in their description is misleading. I called the manufacturer and discused to issue. They pointed out that there is only one ESATA connection on the case and it is considered a complete volume with two drives. If you were to need two volumes you would need a port multiplier to connect the second case.

I tested the first case with a pair of 1 TB drives. After a week of recording, I pulled both drives and connected each one to the HR24 and booted to the drives seperately and watched several recording from each drive and then the same recordings from both drives. I then recorded a movie from HBO and the View from local TV. I than did the same thing with the second drive, a Stars Western Channel movie and Two And A Half Men and Big Bang Theory.

I then placed both drives back into the case and booted the case and then
the HR24. I left them overnight with both LEDS flashing activity.

The next day I watched both movies and the 3 tv shows. Then removed both drives again, and connected each one seperately again and booted the HR24.
Both movies and all three tv shows were on the first drive and I watched one whole movie and part of the other. I then swaped the drives and booted the Hr24 and watched the second movie and part of the first and the 3 tv shows. The case had mirrored both drives.

I then replaced both drives in the case and let the first movie run all the way through. I then pulled the bottom drive and replaced it with a formated empty drive without turning off anything to see if it was really hot swapable.

I left it run after clearing the alarm LED and the mute alarm button. The next day it was still flashing the LEDS.

I pulled the botton drive and connected it to the HR24 and about 45 recording
had been mirrored on the new drive.

I concluded they weren't lying about their case and ordered 3 more for the HR24's and 1 four bay for my main computer.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Thank you for sharing your experiments/tests with the device - I'm convinced now.


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## PennyPincherP (Aug 18, 2010)

jgriffin104 said:


> I concluded they weren't lying about their case and ordered 3 more for the HR24's and 1 four bay for my main computer.


I noticed you got a 4 bay unit for your PC. I just got a 5 bay but how can you partition the storage to keep 2TB volumes that older Windows can recognize?


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

PennyPincherP said:


> I noticed you got a 4 bay unit for your PC. I just got a 5 bay but how can you partition the storage to keep 2TB volumes that older Windows can recognize?


By Disk Manager - when creating partitions make a limit to 2 GB for each.


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

Just a quick reminder, raid drives will not protect you if your DVR itself goes bad due to the way DirecTV handles externals. 

If you really can't stand to lose the content, get a Hauppauge HD PVR and record them to your computer and burn as a BluRay disc.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Damn it!


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## PennyPincherP (Aug 18, 2010)

TBoneit said:


> Just a quick reminder, raid drives will not protect you if your DVR itself goes bad due to the way DirecTV handles externals.
> 
> If you really can't stand to lose the content, get a Hauppauge HD PVR and record them to your computer and burn as a BluRay disc.


It's too tedious and time consuming. Barely have time to watch content, let alone RIP and manage it.


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

TBoneit said:


> Just a quick reminder, raid drives will not protect you if your DVR itself goes bad due to the way DirecTV handles externals.
> 
> If you really can't stand to lose the content, get a Hauppauge HD PVR and record them to your computer and burn as a BluRay disc.


When the HR20-700 first came out, I waited about 5 months to see if they did any nonsense like bursting into flames, then went through the single small drive, then ramped up to/through several Raid array's. But after a couple years of drives loosing stuff (the HR20-700 is STILL working great through it all!), I currently have a bit shy of some 17TB+ of material saved off with the Hauppague, on a RAID6 system, feeding a network of PCH (Popcorn Hour) boxes for playback.

Since I went that route (I was one of the first to buy the HD-PVR, having had a long association with Hauppauge as a contract engineer) some 4+ years ago, I've lost ZERO recordings.


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## CopyCat (Jan 21, 2008)

I purchased a Sans Digital Mobilestor MS2UTN+(B) and will be moving my external SATA drive to it with another formated identical drive and I want to run it as RAID 1. The question I have is how does one know the rotary switch is set for 3 vs 7 as I see no indicator on the rotary switch and it turns 360 degrees. Tech support is a recording and call back so I'm waiting to see if anyone has figured this one out or is it just a 50/50 guess.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

CopyCat said:


> I purchased a Sans Digital Mobilestor MS2UTN+(B) and will be moving my external SATA drive to it with another formated identical drive and I want to run it as RAID 1. The question I have is how does one know the rotary switch is set for 3 vs 7 as I see no indicator on the rotary switch and it turns 360 degrees. Tech support is a recording and call back so I'm waiting to see if anyone has figured this one out or is it just a 50/50 guess.


If you in doubt - check it on PC first and eliminate such guessing.


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## CopyCat (Jan 21, 2008)

P Smith said:


> If you in doubt - check it on PC first and eliminate such guessing.


Did that and found it was not in RAID 1 mode, turned the switch 180 and it is rebuilding the data on the new formated drive. I also painted the end of the switch red so I know it's position should I want to change from RAID 1 to something else.


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## jmkinny (Dec 22, 2010)

I have been using the Sans Digital MS2UTN+B with two Seagate ST32000542AS drives in RAID1 configuration on (3) HR24 units since late October with great success. Until yesterday. Monday night, D* downloaded new software (0x542) and the HR24s will not boot up when the box is set to RAID1. If I take out one of the drives and switch to JBOD, the HR24 will boot up with all saved programs. 

Has anyone had any success with this or other RAID units with 0x452.


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## styrum (Nov 11, 2007)

jmkinny said:


> I have been using the Sans Digital MS2UTN+B with two Seagate ST32000542AS drives in RAID1 configuration on (3) HR24 units since late October with great success. Until yesterday. Monday night, D* downloaded new software (0x542) and the HR24s will not boot up when the box is set to RAID1. If I take out one of the drives and switch to JBOD, the HR24 will boot up with all saved programs.
> 
> Has anyone had any success with this or other RAID units with 0x452.


RAIDON GR3630-2S-SB2+ box didn't work for me either with HR24/500 and 0x452. WD15EVDS drive that works fine when placed into a single drive Vantec enclosure doesn't work in the RAIDON box set to RAID1 neither alone nor with a WD15EURS drive. Te box has duplicated the EVDS to EURS successfully though, such that when after the syncing with the EVDS drive I placed the EURS drive into the Vantec enclosure, it worked right away!


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## randycat (May 21, 2007)

so.. if i take my wd20eurs(in use) out of the mx-1, and put it into
an ms2utn set to raid-1, can i just put in a blank wd20eurs
and let it go to town?


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

randycat said:


> so.. if i take my wd20eurs(in use) out of the mx-1, and put it into
> an ms2utn set to raid-1, can i just put in a blank wd20eurs
> and let it go to town?


It's VERY UNLIKELY that you can do that without losing all your programs. A RAID-1 controller needs to keep information on the drives. The space used for that is hidden from the host connected to the controller. And probably uses areas that contained the file system you were using.

So what is likely to happen is that the RAID controller will initialize each drive and the host (the DVR) will think it's a new drive and will initialize a fresh file system.

Here is process likely (I've never done it with these models) to retain data:

1 - put new drive into ms2utn and set it to RAID-1 mode
2 - copy mx1 to ms2utn
3 - put mx1 drive into ms2utn (this will be silvered [made into mirror] automatically)

I say unlikely above because it depends to some extent which specific RAID controller, which file system, and what the actual file system content/layout is at the time this is done. Personally I'd put no faith in having all the data if I just moved the drive and it _appeared_ to be working.


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## walpoledan (Jan 27, 2010)

Not sure if this is the best thread to continue with this question or not but here goes.

Since the OS upgrade late last year are there any known good external RAID systems? Besides the wonky Sans Digital mentioned above somebody else has reported that a RAIDON GR3630-2S-SB2+ went AWOL after the upgrade.

Are any still functional? And perhaps more importantly are any even recommended?

Another, only somewhat related question: Has anyone had any success with other RAID levels, in particularly I'm thinking RAID5 or RAID10? I have a small-ish pile of 500GB WD RE2 drives that I retired from several servers that might be appropriate for an array but it would likely want more than one disk worth of capacity (and if I do this I want redundancy so RAID0 is out...). Might also be more trouble than it's worth so I'm not jumping up and down about it but running a three disk RAID5 with a hot spare and two cold disks sitting on top is about the level of redundancy that I like to shoot for 

It seems that the conventional wisdom on the forum is to have redundant DVRs rather than a redundant drive array on a single DVR. I can see the wisdom of that so I probably won't buck the trend too long. If that's the way folks go is there a slick way to sync the recording list between the DVRs or is that a manual process?

Thanks,

Dan


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

Its just tv dude....I think the multiple dvr scenario is best as well. What I did was get a 2nd and even a 3rd dvr, but put externals on each one of them. If I suspect a drive having issues, I quickly pick up another drive, and copy the entire contents over to a new drive, you never lose any programs that way, and its seems way more reliable in this case to trying to figure out a way to get a RAID enclosure working...I havent lost any shows in a few years now..


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

walpoledan said:


> Since the OS upgrade late last year are there any known good external RAID systems? Besides the wonky Sans Digital mentioned above somebody else has reported that a RAIDON GR3630-2S-SB2+ went AWOL after the upgrade.
> 
> Are any still functional? And perhaps more importantly are any even recommended?


My CalDigit VR is still working fine (original post) with 0x458 on HR20-700.

Only problem is what I've had over many releases and a couple of external RAIDs... after a new software reboot it doesn't see the drive until both the drive and DVR are power cycled. Which I believe to be a DVR software issue.


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## walpoledan (Jan 27, 2010)

CCarncross said:


> Its just tv dude....


Yeah... I agree but here I go defending it anyway...

It's more a matter of trying to avoid the strife when several months worth of the family's favorite shows go away than worrying about the TV itself... At heart I'm a peacemaker (or perhaps a coward  ).

I had two or three failures in my series 1 and series 2 DTiVos over the years. Finally I was able to stuff a DupliDisk3 into the series 2 and that has been a good thing as far as I've been concerned.



CCarncross said:


> If I suspect a drive having issues...


Do the HRXX series do any kind of SMART monitoring or other failure detection or are you just sort of keeping your eye/ear on it for failure signs? I'm assuming the latter but I'm pretty ignorant of what the HRs can do.



unixguru said:


> My CalDigit VR is still working fine with 0x458 on HR20-700.


Thanks unixguru, it's great to know that there are options.

Have you ever had to deal with a drive failure in that box? Can you slip a replacement of your own in there or do you need to get a drive from CalDigit?


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## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

They are diagnostics built-in and there is a long and short SMART test available in the diags menu...I've truthfully never had a catastrophic drive failure without some forewarning...if they start whining or making chirping sounds, they get replaced. If you suspect a drive is falcking out like skip/freezing, run diags, if it fails any part of the diag, copy it and replace it...you keep all your shows that way, avoid the hassles of trying to find compatible RAID gear, and more importantly keep everyone happy.


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## bobcamp1 (Nov 8, 2007)

CCarncross said:


> They are diagnostics built-in and there is a long and short SMART test available in the diags menu...I've truthfully never had a catastrophic drive failure without some forewarning...if they start whining or making chirping sounds, they get replaced. If you suspect a drive is falcking out like skip/freezing, run diags, if it fails any part of the diag, copy it and replace it...you keep all your shows that way, avoid the hassles of trying to find compatible RAID gear, and more importantly keep everyone happy.


SMART status and testing are pretty useless. Once in a blue moon they'll get lucky and catch something before it's too late. But the classic signs are what you stated. When a drive starts doing this, just assume it's bad.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

walpoledan said:


> Have you ever had to deal with a drive failure in that box? Can you slip a replacement of your own in there or do you need to get a drive from CalDigit?


Have not had a drive failure.

If I recall correctly, it should be easy to put a different drive in their module. Mine is buried in a rack so it isn't easy to pull it out for a look.

Have no idea if their controller firmware demands their drives. I haven't seen a controller that did that but never say never I guess.

Unlike some of the others, the power supply is external so the drives run cool.


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