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2 disks laptop recommendation for Xpenology?


czaras

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Have anyone used 2 disks laptop for Xpenology? I'm interested in setting up RAID1 on it. I plan to buy some C2Duo or i3 laptop.

The laptop choice is motivated by low power consumption and low noise work.

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Yes, I have. All of them have been Dell Latitudes and I am currently running it on a D6420. Some of these have an eSATA port but they are not port multiplier compatible. If you connect the Dell laptop to an eSATA enclosure that supports multiple disks, it will only see one drive. You're only option is to use an external enclosure that has RAID0/RAID1 built in and only shows the host computer one LUN. USB drives cannot be part of any Synology RAID.

 

All the laptops I used had a CD-ROM drive in a media bay. There are SATA HD adapter trays that plug into the bay and shows as a second SATA hard drive. This limits the size of the hard drives available. My laptop Xpenology system is used only for downloading so the 2.5 HDs don't have to be large capacity. I have a second Xpenology system in a standard mini-tower with six 3.5 HDs.

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FYI:

 

Seagate has a nice 2.5" 7mm 2 Terabyte HDD that is great for laptops, and I use them for XPEnology as well.

 

Look for model ST2000LM007 http://www.seagate.com/ca/en/products/l ... obile-hdd/

 

my local price was aprox $120

 

AS for the conversion htpcdude was talking about, check out http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=213

ToughArmor MB411SPO-B 2.5” SATA/SAS HDD/SSD Mobile Rack for Slim ODD or Slim FDD Bay

 

 

I was exactly in the same thoughts, as I needed something small for my kid going to university to have a Local Backup at the Dorm for the homeworks and stuff in case s*** happens and needs a quick restore.

 

An old obsolete laptop re-purposed with XPEnology is perfect for such task, :smile: thanks for the idea.

 

Originally my mind was locked into using a mini-cube or something or maybe even a real Synology Box, I totally forgot about my spare old laptops collecting dust in the basement, they have been so forgotten, that I didn't even remember I had them, until I read this thread :razz:

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All the laptops I used had a CD-ROM drive in a media bay. There are SATA HD adapter trays that plug into the bay and shows as a second SATA hard drive. This limits the size of the hard drives available.

This is a set up I was thinking about. I'm fine with only 2 disks.

1. The only thing I worry is: are these disks able to work as mirror cluster (RAID1)?

2. How about WoL (Wake on Lan). Did you manage to get it work?

 

I made some tests some time ago and have used an old ThinkPad laptop with C2Duo processor and 4GB RAM with one HDD inside. Xpenology works ok and that time I loved Synology's DSM. But of course for a full utility I needed 2 disks and working WoL but unfortunately laptop could automatically switch off but couldn't start up with WoL. I use Synology maybe twice a day for 1-3 hours so it's really important to me that the machine will be suspended at no use time. I often use it remotely so WoL is a must have.

For now I've bought Synology device DS214SE but I'm very dissapointed with working speed. The old laptop with Xpenology worked about 5x faster so in the end the calculation is very simply: for same money you can get A LOT faster machine working on Xpenology.

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The Wake Up on Lan might or might not work.

 

The WOL feature is more in the Laptop's BIOS than in XPEnology.

If you currently, you send the Wakeup packets and the Laptop is Off, and it Wakes up after receiving the packets, then it will work as well with XPEnology.

 

Some of my older machines have working WOL, and ironically newer machines that I run XPEnology doesn't have working WOL even when enabled in BIOS.

This was testing when the machine was running Windows with all the necessary drivers installed, not that it's driver dependant.

 

As for the 2 disk Mirror RAID1, it should work just fine.

If XPEnology can see 1 HDD, it should see also the 2nd HDD on the CD/ROM port

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RAID1 mirror should not be a problem. If DSM sees two SATA hard drives, it will let you mirror. I have two identical drives set up as SHR in my laptop, which basically is a mirror because it is only two drives. I chose SHR for flexibility if I ever wanted to add more drives.

 

The HD adapters I use were originally designed by Dell for their own laptops. I got OEM versions on eBay. That ICY dock adapter linked by AllGamer looks pretty neat. I like that it is metal which helps with heat. The one from Dell\OEM are mostly plastic.

 

I run my systems 24X7 but the Dell Latitude BIOSs have been really good for WOL. From what power state do you want to WOL from, off or sleep? WOL from off is easier than from sleep. WOL from off is entirely controlled by the BIOS. WOL from sleep usually requires the host OS to be configured correctly.

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Well, the only option I can see in my DS214SE is HDD hibernation which turns off my station somehow and this is enough for me. The disks stop working and only one led is on. The time I try to log in the station fires up.

So your Latitude will start via WoL either way from sleep or off?

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WOL from off is not a problem, just tested.

 

WOL from hibernation\sleep is going to be a problem. You should be aware that there are different builds of the boot loader available. I am currently running XPEnoboot 5.2-5644 with DSM 5.2-5967 Update 1. Certain power settings are broken, one of which is HDD hibernation so I cannot test.

 

XPEnoboot 5.2-5967.1 was just released and it is supposed to have fixed the power issues with DSM 5.2-5967. I will try to test this soon.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Yes, I have. All of them have been Dell Latitudes and I am currently running it on a D6420. Some of these have an eSATA port but they are not port multiplier compatible. If you connect the Dell laptop to an eSATA enclosure that supports multiple disks, it will only see one drive. You're only option is to use an external enclosure that has RAID0/RAID1 built in and only shows the host computer one LUN. USB drives cannot be part of any Synology RAID.

 

I'm interested in repurposing the old laptop too - mostly for the Surveillance system add-in.

But I'm not sure I totally understand the above comment . . .

 

1. For an esata external drive box, using port mulitplier, it seems to be that it totally depends on whether the laptop's esata port is port mulitplier compatible.

If not, then what happens ? If you had two 1T drives, would it see just one big 2T drive ?

 

For example, what's going to happen if you attach this Rosewill box w/ or w/o port mulitplier compatibility, with four 1T drives:

Rosewill RSV-S4-X - 4-Bay

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132029&cm_re=esata_storage-_-16-132-029-_-Product

 

They are including a port mulitplier compatible SATA card in that bundle, but of course that wouldn't end up being part of the equation with a laptop.

 

2. USB connected drives

Will Xpenology recognize USB attached drives in general ? just not as part of a RAID array ?

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1. For the Rosewill RSV-S4-X:

 

If the eSATA is port multiplier compatible, you will see four 1T drives. What raid you set up depends on the OS.

If the eSATA is not port multiplier compatible, you will only see one 1T drive.

 

The raid functionality of the above enclosure depends entirely on the controller it is attached to. On other enclosures, the raid functionality is built into the enclosure. See Mediasonic HFR2-SU3S2 PRORAID 4.

 

2. DSM automatically shares USB connected drives as usbshare1, usbshare2, etc...

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