Mini-Mac Server as an NAS

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Apple Osx disk utilities has functions built in to build disk arrays

From Mac disk utility help files

About concatenated disk sets

You can create a single, large disk from several smaller disks by creating a concatenated disk set, which is also called “Just a Bunch of Disks” (JBOD) or “spanning.” The concatenated disk set acts as one large disk with the combined capacity of all the smaller disks. You can increase the size of a concatenated disk set after it’s been created by dragging more disks to it using Disk Utility.

A concatenated disk set is helpful if you have a file, such as a database, that’s larger than any of your disks. It’s also useful if you need to create a mirrored or striped RAID set with one large disk and two smaller disks.

If all the disks in the RAID set are about the same size, consider using a striped RAID set. A striped RAID set lets you access your data quicker.

Be sure to back up your data frequently. If any one of the disks is damaged, you will lose the data that’s on all the disks.

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Wow. This is great. I will have to further investigate "concatenation" (to coin a phrase). It sounds like what I've been looking for.
Any suggested references? I wish there was a Dummies book for this (I've looked and there isn't).
Another newbie question: I understand that most NAS do not have any disc ripping abilities. My understanding is that one can use their pc to perform the rip. What I'm wondering is if the NAS software allows the pc to rip and store on the NAS without having to store it one the pc? I know that I can ultimately delete
the files from the pc, when I don't relish the thought of deleting thousands of CDs from my pc.

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You really don't need a reference, it is built into the Apple operating system.

Hook up the drives and open disk utilities. Select one of the drives and then select Raid. Name it, use the default format, and select concatenated. Drag all of the drives you want into the box and select create. When it is done you will have what appears to the computer as one disk drive that is the sum of all the drives you included.

You'll use a program running on the Mac to rip. In the preferences for whatever program you choose you can tell it to store the files directly on your array.

go poke around at these sites to learn more

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/

http://www.usbdacs.com/

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07-30-11: Richardfinegold
What I'm wondering is if the NAS software allows the pc to rip and store on the NAS without having to store it one the pc?

The ripping program should allow the target drive to be selected from among all drives that can be seen by the operating system, including a NAS drive.

07-30-11: Larry_s
And also be careful that there are new disks that are being sold now that use 4K physical sector sizes and use software in the drive to do 512 byte sector emulation for the O/S. Stay away from them. And I believe there are some type of "hybrid" drives out that have 4K sectors and somewhat large solid state caches to help overcome the performance degradation of 512 byte emulation when using physical 4K sectors. Stay away from them also.

These are what are often referred to as "Advanced Format" drives, which are becoming increasingly prevalent among large capacity drives. The issue is that if partitions aren't aligned with the 4K sector boundaries, speed may be compromised. However,

1)Mac os's from Tiger onward, as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7 under most circumstances (i.e., if a cloning utility is not used), will correctly align the partitions when the drive is formatted, without doing anything special.

2)Western Digital provides an alignment utility for use with Windows XP and other older os's (see the links below).

3)In a NAS or other external drive application, the speed compromise that would result from misalignment is likely to be nil, because read and write speeds will be limited by the network interface (unless it is a wired gigabit ethernet connection), as well as by the cd drive during ripping, and by the audio data rate during playback, not by the hard drives in the NAS.

See the following for additional information:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/WhitePapers/ENG/2579-771430.pdf

http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5655

I'll add that I recently installed an external (USB) Western Digital advanced format drive on a Windows XP system, without using the alignment utility, and its speed as measured with HD Tune was as good as I would expect from any USB-connected drive.

Regards,
-- Al

One more reference:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=546

Regards,
-- Al