Call for backup! It's a RAID!
24 Jun 2006 {View Comments}
In a previous article about backup I mentioned that i’d bought a RAID array from Nitro AV. I’ve finally got it up and running so here’s what I think about it.
NitroAV Vanguard V, RAID 5 Array
Specifications
- Five hot-swapable bays
- LCD Configuration
- Firewire 800
- USB 2.0
- SATA
The Vanguard V is an awesome machine with a really good spec, it’s perfectly designed and has a really nice finish. It’s not too noisy, the fan is powerful but there are no whiney noises which is great. With some music on it isn’t really noticable.
A comparision
I previously had a Buffalo TeraStation, while it was pretty good it didn’t play that well with macs, it needed a pc for setup via a complicated procedure. The tool path of the machine was really badly designed however. Granted that it was not intended as a hot swapable machine… but having to remove 15+ screws, remove connecting wires and fiddle around with awkward (sharp) internal cases just to change or add another drive was pretty annoying.
Importance of a good manual
The Vanguard V, brilliant in design that it is. Does not benefit from an equally well designed manual. Reading through all of the manual information online. It had me convinced that I needed an RS232 cable to setup the device. Okay I thought, and set about getting one… after I got it and connected up to the Vanguard I realised I wasn’t too sure what to do next so phoned tech support. The guy on the phone was able to walk me through a couple of simple steps to get the Vanguard to start initializing the array.
As Kathy Sierra hints at in her article, “Which user’s life have you changed today?” there’s no point in having a brilliant product or service, if you can’t tell your users how it works. The instructions I was told over the phone should definitely have been in the manual. Especially mentioning the default password for the device would have been a good idea too!
Quick Start guide
- Press enter on the LCD display
- Enter 0000 as the password and press enter until the caret reaches the end of the screen
- You should enter a menu system and be presented with options
- Select Setup Raid Array
- It should prompt you with the defaults. If you’ve got more than 3 drives you can setup raid 5
- Press enter
- It will ask for a number of configuration options which are best left at default unless you know better
- Press enter to continue through the screens
- It should start Initializing the RAID set now. It took about 3 hours for three drives to work all it’s magic setting up.
- Once the RAID set is initialized, we can plug it into the host computer. I’m using firewire at the minute (It’s a pity the new MacBooks don’t have Firewire 800)
- Open disk utility and format the RAID set. I chose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”
- After that’s finished, we’re all set!
Raid 5?
I think that it’s possibly the best combination of data redundancy whilst minimizing cost per Gb. If a drive fails, we can simply replace it and the array will rebuild itself. Sweet.
Conclusion
Awesome product, and performs really well. So far it’s been seamless, copying files to and streaming the lossless music I put on it… and it didn’t skip a beat.
Great buy, and a long term investment. I went for the case only option myself as I already had two external firewire drives that I coould use. I reckon if I were to give this product a rating it would be (5) ***** stars (out of five)
Call For Backup
I was going to write about how i’m backing up my computers onto this, but I think that’s one for another post :)