• Pi as main storage and server.

    From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to All on Fri Sep 29 11:45:30 2023
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos

    The drives are western digital 3.5" SATA

    WDC WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 (82.00A82)
    WDC WD40EZRZ-00GXCB0 (80.00A80)

    It probably doesnt need that much.

    Totting up the partitions its only 2.6TB total. of which 1.6TB is simply
    videos that dont really need backing up at all

    What I would like to do is have something that boots faster after a
    power cut, has far lower power consumption, and if it cant use the SATA
    drives has something reasonably cheap to replace them with.

    I think a 2TB + 2TB setup is more than i need, 2 + 1 more than adequate probably.

    So some of the known unknowns are:
    1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
    its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
    6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning
    2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?
    3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
    as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write
    4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

    I've looked at the current hardware and its basically

    Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz × 2 - about 75W!!!
    GeForce 210/PCIe/SSE2 which is another 25W or so, so it looks like that
    combo is dominating the power draw stakes.

    Currently UK electricity is around £0.35p a kWh, so an annual
    consumption is roughly £3 per watt per year.

    Saving 100W would net me £300 a year electricity savings (well almost -
    the server is a great room heater in winter)

    Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
    fscking a big server after a power cut is a long process. I'd probably
    boot off an SD card and mount something else for everything that moves
    so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.

    CPU power is not an issue. I could probably do this with a Pi
    Zero+Ethernet or an early Pi with onboard. I only have a 100Mbps
    switch, so networks speeds are not massively needed to be high.

    I am guessing that for spinning rust drives, a powered USB hub plus USB
    to SATA cables would work?

    And might be enough to power a Pi as well?

    I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
    usb ports that are connected together both with power.

    Having looked at the actual power figures I am leaning towards - as a
    first step, t any rate - simply trying to use the disks but dump the motherboard and graphics board and the PC case - or at least use them
    for something else on a more occasional basis.

    Conceptually that would mean a powered hub, two USB to SATA cables, and
    an Ethernet equipped PI with at least 2GB RAM - it is nice to sometimes
    run a GUI on the server, though if I dumped that probably 512M would be
    enough. It looks like a zero with an ethernet + 3USB hat would do the
    job cheapest...

    What have I misunderstood/forgotten?

    --
    It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house
    for the voice of the kingdom.

    Jonathan Swift

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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Sep 29 12:19:50 2023
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos
    ...
    So some of the known unknowns are:
    1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
    its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
    6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

    For some data points, I have a couple of HP Gen7 microservers. I think they take sub 20W on their own.

    Box A (N54L) has 6x 3.5" HDD, an HP RAID card and a USB 3 card. Takes ~100W idle.

    Box B (N36L) has 4x 3.5" HDD, a DVD burner and no PCIe cards. Takes ~40W
    idle

    So looking at box B we might budget about 5W per drive. I'm not sure where
    the watts go: in one of them (don't remember which) there's an 80Plus bronze Seasonic PSU, but maybe the HP PSU in the other one isn't so good.

    2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

    Depends on the FS, but it shouldn't use them if not accessed. One thing to watch is for software that does background indexing to make file searching faster - one such is 'xapian'. I never use desktop search (just 'find' and 'grep') so I turn this off.

    3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
    as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

    Sounds plausible. If it's idle it's doing nothing really.

    4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

    Either a USB-SATA adapter. Or PCIe - the Pi 5's PCIe lane looks promising
    for a future PCIe SATA HAT. Going direct to SATA from PCIe is more robust
    than going through $5 Chinese USB-SATA adapters.

    Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
    fscking a big server after a power cut is a long process. I'd probably
    boot off an SD card and mount something else for everything that moves
    so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.

    On the Pi 5 each USB port has dedicated bandwidth, whereas on the Pi 4 they
    are shared. HDD won't saturate a USB3 port, but SSD will.

    I am guessing that for spinning rust drives, a powered USB hub plus USB
    to SATA cables would work?

    Yes.

    And might be enough to power a Pi as well?

    If the PSU is big enough, don't see why not. Although the hub may limit the output power on a given port.

    I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
    usb ports that are connected together both with power.

    Depends on what the Pi does for power routing, I'm not sure about current versions.

    Having looked at the actual power figures I am leaning towards - as a
    first step, t any rate - simply trying to use the disks but dump the motherboard and graphics board and the PC case - or at least use them
    for something else on a more occasional basis.

    Have you considered just getting a big SSD? A 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVMe is £150, a Samsung 870 QVO SATA is £168: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#A=3200000000000,22000000000000&sort=price&t=0

    Or similar for multiple smaller drives.

    Then use a SATA to USB or NVMe to USB dongle. Or a CM4 or Pi 5 with an M.2 HAT.

    Conceptually that would mean a powered hub, two USB to SATA cables, and
    an Ethernet equipped PI with at least 2GB RAM - it is nice to sometimes
    run a GUI on the server, though if I dumped that probably 512M would be enough. It looks like a zero with an ethernet + 3USB hat would do the
    job cheapest...

    You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s on the single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too. Pi 4, CM4 or
    Pi 5 are the only sensible platforms if you want decent bandwidth.

    What have I misunderstood/forgotten?

    I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of thing
    - they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models, and PCIe
    is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what happens - or think of
    a stopgap solution.

    Theo
    (who is thinking of replacing the Microserver motherboard with a Pi 5 + SATA HAT when such appear)

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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Andy Burns on Fri Sep 29 12:30:46 2023
    Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
    Theo wrote:

    I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of
    thing - they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models, and PCIe is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so
    I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what
    happens - or think of a stopgap solution.

    Biggish USB3 SATA drive(s) for now, later get an M.2 hat for faster NVMe
    boot drive?

    I think it's a good plan for a NAS to separate the boot drive from the data drives. So whether you do that with an SD card or an SSD is up to you,
    depends on what you're going to use it for.

    You could use a USB SSD for boot drive, and then an M.2 for a data drive, as another possibility.

    Theo

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  • From Andy Burns@3:770/3 to Theo on Fri Sep 29 12:27:22 2023
    Theo wrote:

    I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of
    thing - they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models,
    and PCIe is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so
    I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what
    happens - or think of a stopgap solution.

    Biggish USB3 SATA drive(s) for now, later get an M.2 hat for faster NVMe
    boot drive?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Sep 29 14:10:28 2023
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    On 29/09/2023 12:19, Theo wrote:

    You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s
    on the
    single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too.

    The question is, is that actually more than good enough anyway?

    In most use cases I will be backing up from the Internet at 5MByte/s
    max, or serving data over 100Mbps (12.5MByte/sec) Ethernet, so at first glance it looks like its not a serious issue, although the sharing of
    the same bus between ethernet and disk does raise some question marks .

    I.e can a USB2 bus support reading off a disk and pumping out to a
    network simultaneously at 100Mbps?

    I can't comment on the simultaneously question - I'm sure there's info about that out there - but what would irritate me is that disk speed *inside* the
    box would also be slow. eg if you wanted to copy something from disc 1 to
    disc 2, that's subject to the USB2 bottleneck (~25Mbytes a sec after USB overhead and because you have to transfer the data over USB twice). If
    you're searching files, you need to pull them all over USB 2. And so on.

    Once you start going multi-TB, at these speeds jobs start stacking up into
    the hours or days, and that gets irritating.

    I have discovered that there exist *powered* usb to SATA *cables* that
    run off 12V and those would work OK . I could hack them to run off an
    old PC case+PSU I have that would also be a decent cradle for the SATA drives.

    The problem is a PI 4 or 5 costs more than a Zero, plus ethernet/USB
    HAT and yet still cannot power a 3.5" spinning rust drive over its USB.

    You didn't mention cost concerns, beyond being saving your electricity bill.
    Up to you, but any Pi is going to buy you a big saving in electricity every year. How much price/performance you want at this point is your choice.
    But the delta to get much better performance is not huge.

    No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

    As far as SSDs are concerned, *once booted* I don't have any speed
    issues with my existing rust. They remain a 'nice to have one day' option

    Your existing rust is likely on 6Gbps SATA3, and you're proposing going to something 12-25x slower (although the HDD likely can't saturate SATA3 for
    long periods so it's not quite so bad). Your decision whether that matters
    to you.

    Theo

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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Theo on Fri Sep 29 13:23:24 2023
    On 29/09/2023 12:19, Theo wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos
    ...
    So some of the known unknowns are:
    1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
    its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
    6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

    For some data points, I have a couple of HP Gen7 microservers. I think they take sub 20W on their own.

    Box A (N54L) has 6x 3.5" HDD, an HP RAID card and a USB 3 card. Takes ~100W idle.

    Box B (N36L) has 4x 3.5" HDD, a DVD burner and no PCIe cards. Takes ~40W idle

    So looking at box B we might budget about 5W per drive. I'm not sure where the watts go: in one of them (don't remember which) there's an 80Plus bronze Seasonic PSU, but maybe the HP PSU in the other one isn't so good.

    2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

    Depends on the FS, but it shouldn't use them if not accessed. One thing to watch is for software that does background indexing to make file searching faster - one such is 'xapian'. I never use desktop search (just 'find' and 'grep') so I turn this off.

    3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
    as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

    Sounds plausible. If it's idle it's doing nothing really.

    4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?

    Either a USB-SATA adapter. Or PCIe - the Pi 5's PCIe lane looks promising for a future PCIe SATA HAT. Going direct to SATA from PCIe is more robust than going through $5 Chinese USB-SATA adapters.

    Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
    fscking a big server after a power cut is a long process. I'd probably
    boot off an SD card and mount something else for everything that moves
    so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.

    On the Pi 5 each USB port has dedicated bandwidth, whereas on the Pi 4 they are shared. HDD won't saturate a USB3 port, but SSD will.

    I am guessing that for spinning rust drives, a powered USB hub plus USB
    to SATA cables would work?

    Yes.

    And might be enough to power a Pi as well?

    If the PSU is big enough, don't see why not. Although the hub may limit the output power on a given port.

    I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
    usb ports that are connected together both with power.

    Depends on what the Pi does for power routing, I'm not sure about current versions.

    Having looked at the actual power figures I am leaning towards - as a
    first step, t any rate - simply trying to use the disks but dump the
    motherboard and graphics board and the PC case - or at least use them
    for something else on a more occasional basis.

    Have you considered just getting a big SSD? A 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVMe is £150, a Samsung 870 QVO SATA is £168: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#A=3200000000000,22000000000000&sort=price&t=0

    Or similar for multiple smaller drives.

    Then use a SATA to USB or NVMe to USB dongle. Or a CM4 or Pi 5 with an M.2 HAT.

    Conceptually that would mean a powered hub, two USB to SATA cables, and
    an Ethernet equipped PI with at least 2GB RAM - it is nice to sometimes
    run a GUI on the server, though if I dumped that probably 512M would be
    enough. It looks like a zero with an ethernet + 3USB hat would do the
    job cheapest...

    You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s on the single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too. Pi 4, CM4 or Pi 5 are the only sensible platforms if you want decent bandwidth.

    What have I misunderstood/forgotten?

    I think the Pi 5 is looking as an excellent platform for this sort of thing
    - they've finally ironed out the I/O quirks of the earlier models, and PCIe is attractive. The PCIe HAT ecosystem hasn't developed yet, so I might be tempted to postpone this for a few months and see what happens - or think of a stopgap solution.

    Theo
    (who is thinking of replacing the Microserver motherboard with a Pi 5 + SATA HAT when such appear)

    Ah Theo, excellent and well appreciated comments. I dont need speed.
    But looking at a Pi Zero +ethernet hat +USB extenders, you make the
    point that it all goes over the one USB connector and not a fast one at
    that.

    You can't fit USB 3 to a Pi Zero, so you'd be limited to <60Mbytes/s
    on the
    single USB 2, and that would be shared with the ethernet too.

    The question is, is that actually more than good enough anyway?

    In most use cases I will be backing up from the Internet at 5MByte/s
    max, or serving data over 100Mbps (12.5MByte/sec) Ethernet, so at first
    glance it looks like its not a serious issue, although the sharing of
    the same bus between ethernet and disk does raise some question marks .

    I.e can a USB2 bus support reading off a disk and pumping out to a
    network simultaneously at 100Mbps?

    I have discovered that there exist *powered* usb to SATA *cables* that
    run off 12V and those would work OK . I could hack them to run off an
    old PC case+PSU I have that would also be a decent cradle for the SATA
    drives.

    The problem is a PI 4 or 5 costs more than a Zero, plus ethernet/USB
    HAT and yet still cannot power a 3.5" spinning rust drive over its USB.

    I get would CPU memory and bus speed that I may actually not need...My
    current RAM usage WITH Mate and X-Windows is only 650Mbyte. If I went
    headless I doubt that it would be much greater than my ZERO W at 55MBytes

    As far as SSDs are concerned, *once booted* I don't have any speed
    issues with my existing rust. They remain a 'nice to have one day' option



    --
    “Some people like to travel by train because it combines the slowness of
    a car with the cramped public exposure of 
an airplane.”

    Dennis Miller

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Chris Elvidge@3:770/3 to Theo on Fri Sep 29 17:01:30 2023
    On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:
    No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

    2.5" HDDs - not always true.
    I had a 4Gb Seagate the ran fine from USB on a Pi3B. When I changed to a
    5Tb WD, I had to add in external power (via a Y-cable).


    --
    Chris Elvidge, England
    I WILL REMEMBER TO TAKE MY MEDICATION

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Chris Elvidge on Fri Sep 29 17:42:56 2023
    On 29/09/2023 17:01, Chris Elvidge wrote:
    On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:
    No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V.  They
    all have
    external PSUs.  A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

    2.5" HDDs - not always true.
    I had a 4Gb Seagate the ran fine from USB on a Pi3B. When I changed to a
    5Tb WD, I had to add in external power (via a Y-cable).


    I feel that the Pis power supply limits to its peripherals are one of
    its most poor features.
    One feels one ought to be able to bang a 50W psu on a pi and not have issues

    --
    The lifetime of any political organisation is about three years before
    its been subverted by the people it tried to warn you about.

    Anon.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ahem A Rivet's Shot@3:770/3 to Chris Elvidge on Fri Sep 29 18:14:44 2023
    On Fri, 29 Sep 2023 17:01:31 +0100
    Chris Elvidge <chris@mshome.net> wrote:

    On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:
    No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

    2.5" HDDs - not always true.

    Especially if you use one of the 15Krpm screamers made for high performance storage arrays just before NVMe SSDs took over.

    --
    Steve O'Hara-Smith
    Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/
    Host: Beautiful Theory meet Inconvenient Fact
    Obit: Beautiful Theory died today of factual inconsistency

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Chris Elvidge on Fri Sep 29 19:15:08 2023
    Chris Elvidge <chris@mshome.net> wrote:
    On 29/09/2023 14:10, Theo wrote:
    No 3.5" USB HDD is powered from its USB, since they need 12V. They all have external PSUs. A 2.5" HDD can run from 5V USB bus power, but not 3.5".

    2.5" HDDs - not always true.
    I had a 4Gb Seagate the ran fine from USB on a Pi3B. When I changed to a
    5Tb WD, I had to add in external power (via a Y-cable).

    It *can*, but not all USB ports have enough bus power. In that case you
    need a powered hub to provide more bus power.

    Point being a 3.5" *can't*, because they use 12V power and USB hubs don't provide that (maybe a USB-C PD hub could, but I doubt any HDD are built that way).

    Theo

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  • From NY@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Sep 29 20:56:54 2023
    On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos

    I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case of
    usb ports that are connected together both with power.

    Beware if you use a powered hub. My Pi 4 refuses to boot (it hangs
    before even displaying anything on screen) if I have a powered USB hub
    and HDD connected to it, and the Pi, hub and HDD are powered on
    simultaneously (eg when power is restored after a power cut). If the hub
    and HDD are powered on first, and the Pi 4 a couple of seconds later, everything is fine. My older Pi 3 did not have this problem.

    I had to change to a powered USB/SATA caddy and a SATA drive, rather
    than a powered USB hub and a USB HDD.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to All on Fri Sep 29 21:34:22 2023
    On 29/09/2023 20:56, NY wrote:
    On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos

    I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case
    of usb ports that are connected together both with power.

    Beware if you use a powered hub. My Pi 4 refuses to boot (it hangs
    before even displaying anything on screen) if I have a powered USB hub
    and HDD connected to it, and the Pi, hub and HDD are powered on simultaneously (eg when power is restored after a power cut). If the hub
    and HDD are powered on first, and the Pi 4 a couple of seconds later, everything is fine. My older Pi 3 did not have this problem.

    I had to change to a powered USB/SATA caddy and a SATA drive, rather
    than a powered USB hub and a USB HDD.


    Someone suggested that the Pi 4 didn't like the +5V line of one of its
    USB ports being powered by an external source, if the hub feeds power *upstream* to the Pi as well as downstream to the HDD. But that doesn't
    explain the exact opposite which is what I see: the hub *not* being
    powered at boot time. I did try making up a special USB cable with its
    +5V line cut, but that did not help.

    It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
    USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
    with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
    I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the
    drive.


    (*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
    try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Fri Sep 29 22:11:54 2023
    On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos

    The drives are western digital 3.5" SATA

    WDC WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 (82.00A82)
    WDC WD40EZRZ-00GXCB0 (80.00A80)

    It probably doesnt need that much.

    Totting up the partitions its only 2.6TB total. of which 1.6TB is simply videos that dont really need backing up at all

    What I would like to do is have something that boots faster after a
    power cut,  has far lower power consumption, and if it cant use the SATA drives has something reasonably cheap to replace them with.

    I think a 2TB + 2TB setup is more than i need, 2 + 1 more than adequate probably.

    So some of the known unknowns are:
    1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
    its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
    6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

    They require a lot of power to spin up. That pretty much dictates they
    cannot be powered from the rPi USB, even a 2.5" hdd requires a
    separately powered USB to SATA connector.

    2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

    I assume it spins them down. I've been abusing a laptop 2.5" hdd for
    years, mainly used to write rsnapshot backups.

    3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen figures
    as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

    It's low enough, not to matter.

    4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?


    AIUI spinning rust does not use a huge amount of power normally, when
    spinning, but does require a lot of power to spin up. There was some
    discussion of an SSD and HDD being equivalent power for constant access,
    I'm not sure if I believe that, but whatever it is only a few watts.
    SSDs are clearly more power efficient for occasional access.

    I have used a rpi4 as a NAS since a couple of weeks after it was
    released. It is surprisingly unproblematic. I use SAMBA. I did remote
    desk benchmarking, showing I was getting 80 or 90% of the 1Gb/s network
    speed.

    I've used various USB2SATA cables. Unpowered for only SSD, powered for HDD.

    Currently, I'm using this:

    <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B217QRWJ>

    Supposedly handles 3.5" hdd (although I use 1 ssd + 1 2.5 hdd)

    In the past I used
    <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EQ7PNZY> <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N2JIQR7>




    I've looked at the current  hardware and its basically

    Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz × 2 - about 75W!!!
    GeForce 210/PCIe/SSE2 which is another 25W or so, so it looks like that
    combo is dominating the power draw stakes.

    Currently UK electricity is around £0.35p a kWh, so an annual
    consumption is roughly £3 per watt per year.

    Saving 100W would net me £300 a year electricity savings (well almost -
    the server is a great room heater in winter)

    Disk speed is essential to have except for booting. As I mentioned
    fscking a big server after a power cut is a long  process. I'd probably
    boot off an SD card and  mount something else for everything that moves
    so to speak. So USB interfaces to the SATA drives would probably work.


    My rPi4 does boot slowly, off SD, but I have 5 docker containers running
    on it as well as the NAS, including CCTV.

    CPU power is not an issue. I could probably do this with a Pi
    Zero+Ethernet  or an early Pi with onboard.  I only have a 100Mbps
    switch, so networks speeds are not massively needed to be high.


    100Mb/s is slow for disk access. 1Gb/s switches are dirt cheap, and a
    modern one will also be lower power.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From NY@3:770/3 to Jim Jackson on Fri Sep 29 22:50:50 2023
    On 29/09/2023 22:21, Jim Jackson wrote:
    On 2023-09-29, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

    It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
    USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
    with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
    I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the
    drive.


    (*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
    try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

    Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
    My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.


    Is your Pi in a case? Mine is, in a case without a CPU fan, which will
    limit the cooling from the heatsink a bit. I stopped powering the HDD
    from the Pi when I smelled hot plastic case... Admittedly the Pi and the
    disk are kept in a cupboard of a cabinet on which the TV stands, so the enclosed space in the cabinet gets a little bit warm.

    With the HDD powered by a USB/SATA caddy adjacent to the Pi in its case,
    the Pi's CPU runs at about 60 deg C. Not sure what it got up to when the
    HDD was powered by the Pi.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jim Jackson@3:770/3 to me@privacy.net on Fri Sep 29 21:21:38 2023
    On 2023-09-29, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

    It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
    USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
    with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
    I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the drive.


    (*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
    try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

    Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
    My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Chris Green@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Sep 30 09:50:54 2023
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos

    I have/had something similar. However the computer I use is a Fujitsu
    Esprimo P9xx which consumes only around 15 watts when idle. If you
    shop around and look at the 'Energy Star' listings you can find even
    lower power 'desktop' machines nowadays. Some of the newer Fujitsu
    machines use less than 10 watts and yet have all the things you want
    like NVME disk drive ability, SATA, etc. You also get a box to put it
    all in! :-)

    I currently have an external 8Tb USB3 drive which powers down when
    idle.

    I have several Raspberry Pis but I don't think they make particularly
    good NAS/Backup machines.

    ...oh, almost forgot, you can get refurbished Fujitsu Esprimos (lots
    of different models) quite cheaply.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to All on Sat Sep 30 11:23:02 2023
    On 29/09/2023 20:56, NY wrote:
    On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos

    I am not au fait with powered hubs, and what powers what in the case
    of usb ports that are connected together both with power.

    Beware if you use a powered hub. My Pi 4 refuses to boot (it hangs
    before even displaying anything on screen) if I have a powered USB hub
    and HDD connected to it, and the Pi, hub and HDD are powered on simultaneously (eg when power is restored after a power cut). If the hub
    and HDD are powered on first, and the Pi 4 a couple of seconds later, everything is fine. My older Pi 3 did not have this problem.

    I had to change to a powered USB/SATA caddy and a SATA drive, rather
    than a powered USB hub and a USB HDD.

    Yeah. In my case further acquisition of Knowledge™ has made the question redundant. You can't apparently run (bare) 3.5inch drives off *just*
    USB because they need 12V.

    There exist USB to SATA cables that take a 12V power source. And that
    looks to be a simpler solution.


    --
    Microsoft : the best reason to go to Linux that ever existed.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Pancho on Sat Sep 30 11:39:30 2023
    On 29/09/2023 22:11, Pancho wrote:
    On 29/09/2023 11:45, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    ..
    2/. How does Linux (Mint) operate disks which are seldom accessed?

    I assume it spins them down. I've been abusing a laptop 2.5"  hdd for
    years, mainly used to write rsnapshot backups.

    3/. What is the power consumption of a typical SSD? I have seen
    figures as low as 50mW idle. And a couple of watts on read /write

    It's low enough, not to matter.

    4/. How could I connect any disks that are not USB, to a PI?


    AIUI spinning rust does not use a huge amount of power normally, when spinning, but does require a lot of power to spin up. There was some discussion of an SSD and HDD being equivalent power for constant access,
    I'm not sure if I believe that, but whatever it is only a few watts.
    SSDs are clearly more power efficient for occasional access.

    I have used a rpi4 as a NAS since a couple of weeks after it was
    released. It is surprisingly unproblematic. I use SAMBA. I did remote
    desk benchmarking, showing I was getting 80 or 90% of the 1Gb/s network speed.

    I've used various USB2SATA cables. Unpowered for only SSD, powered for HDD.

    Currently, I'm using this:

    <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B217QRWJ>

    Supposedly handles 3.5" hdd (although I use  1 ssd + 1 2.5 hdd)

    In the past I used
    <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01EQ7PNZY> <https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N2JIQR7>

    Ah, that caddy looks neat.
    ..

    My rPi4 does boot slowly, off SD, but I have 5 docker containers running
    on it as well as the NAS, including CCTV.

    CPU power is not an issue. I could probably do this with a Pi
    Zero+Ethernet  or an early Pi with onboard.  I only have a 100Mbps
    switch, so networks speeds are not massively needed to be high.


    100Mb/s is slow for disk access. 1Gb/s switches are dirt cheap, and a
    modern one will also be lower power.

    Not a 1U rack mounted 16 port one. And not sure the house wiring is up
    to it!
    It is on my list of 'nice to haves' if i can come up with a decent cheap one

    But its not a crashing essential - i can play HD videos OK over the
    network and that's the fastest transfers I normally do...



    --
    "First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your oppressors."
    - George Orwell

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Jim Jackson on Sat Sep 30 11:25:44 2023
    On 29/09/2023 22:21, Jim Jackson wrote:
    On 2023-09-29, NY <me@privacy.net> wrote:

    It was definitely an interaction with the hub, because if I plugged the
    USB HDD directly into the Pi (*), or if I didn't plug the HDD in at all,
    with an auto-mount command in /etc/fstab in both cases, it worked fine.
    I suspect it was a hardware problem, long before Unix tried to mount the
    drive.


    (*) Don't do that as a long-term solution: the Pi runs *very* hot if you
    try to power a spinning HDD from its USB ports. I found that out...

    Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
    My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.

    I think the answer would be 'it depends on the drive and if linux is
    configured to spin down on idle' .
    You are in effect powering an electric motor and the more friction there
    is and the more rpms you want it to do. in general, the more power it
    will need

    --
    “But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!”

    Mary Wollstonecraft

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Chris Green on Sat Sep 30 11:49:12 2023
    On 30/09/2023 09:50, Chris Green wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Currently my house server is x86, linux and mostly standard Linux Mint.

    It is power hungry and old and runs a 2TB SATA drive as its main data
    store and a 4TB SATA drive as its backup area, and a repository for
    un-backed up videos

    I have/had something similar. However the computer I use is a Fujitsu
    Esprimo P9xx which consumes only around 15 watts when idle. If you
    shop around and look at the 'Energy Star' listings you can find even
    lower power 'desktop' machines nowadays. Some of the newer Fujitsu
    machines use less than 10 watts and yet have all the things you want
    like NVME disk drive ability, SATA, etc. You also get a box to put it
    all in! :-)

    I currently have an external 8Tb USB3 drive which powers down when
    idle.

    I have several Raspberry Pis but I don't think they make particularly
    good NAS/Backup machines.

    ...oh, almost forgot, you can get refurbished Fujitsu Esprimos (lots
    of different models) quite cheaply.

    That is an interesting thought. My newest desktop is an HP EliteDesk
    running a core i5 and is rated at 37W. It for sure runs cooler than what
    it replaced

    The problem with the Esprimo is that it isn't in a case that will take
    two 3.5"hdd
    That rather why a Pi is preferred - I can maybe get an empty rack mount
    case and fit everything in it.

    But it is food for thought.



    --
    “A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,
    who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,
    “We did this ourselves.”

    ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Sep 30 13:16:22 2023
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Not a 1U rack mounted 16 port one. And not sure the house wiring is up
    to it!
    It is on my list of 'nice to haves' if i can come up with a decent cheap one

    On power consumption terms that switch must be hungry too. If it has a fan
    it must be taking a good few watts.

    I like the TP-Link Easy Smart range because you get extra features like port mirroring and VLAN tagging. Going rate for a 16 port one on ebay about 30-60 quid, eg with PoE:
    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155801541673?
    and that takes max 8W plus whatever PoE loads you have.

    If you've only wire 2 pairs per socket that will prevent doing gigabit
    though.

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Theo on Sat Sep 30 15:03:50 2023
    On 30/09/2023 13:16, Theo wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Not a 1U rack mounted 16 port one. And not sure the house wiring is up
    to it!
    It is on my list of 'nice to haves' if i can come up with a decent cheap one

    On power consumption terms that switch must be hungry too. If it has a fan it must be taking a good few watts.

    I like the TP-Link Easy Smart range because you get extra features like port mirroring and VLAN tagging. Going rate for a 16 port one on ebay about 30-60 quid, eg with PoE:
    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155801541673?
    and that takes max 8W plus whatever PoE loads you have.

    If you've only wire 2 pairs per socket that will prevent doing gigabit though.

    Theo
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.

    --
    "Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social
    conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the
    windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "

    Alan Sokal

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sat Sep 30 17:22:38 2023
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.

    Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max
    in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because
    the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

    Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch),
    put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably pass traffic. You might be surprised.

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Chris Green@3:770/3 to Theo on Sat Sep 30 18:52:02 2023
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit. Cable might have too much attenuation.

    Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

    Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably pass traffic. You might be surprised.

    Yes, my experience is that tens of metres of home made (by me) CAT5
    UTP cable does gigabit quite happily.

    --
    Chris Green
    ·

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Theo on Sat Sep 30 18:28:08 2023
    On 30/09/2023 17:22, Theo wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.

    Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

    Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably pass traffic. You might be surprised.

    yeah. Some of the links almost certainly would, But I checked the watts
    on the one I have. Its pretty low - less than 20 - and I think I
    wouldnt save much more than 10 watts.
    And to find one that would physically fit was as much money as a PI4B or
    more

    So I am afraid Gigabit ethernet has been relegated to the 'nice to have,
    some day' category

    Theo

    --
    “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

    ― Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de
    M. de Voltaire

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jim Jackson@3:770/3 to Pancho on Sat Sep 30 20:48:56 2023
    On 2023-09-29, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:
    1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
    its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around
    6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

    They require a lot of power to spin up. That pretty much dictates they
    cannot be powered from the rPi USB, even a 2.5" hdd requires a
    separately powered USB to SATA connector.

    Not necessarily. I run USB powered 2.5in hard drives from raspberry
    pi's. Some are the Western Digitial USB external drvies, and others are
    run from USB powered USB-SATA converters.

    I also run 3.5in sata drives - but then you do need powered USB <-> SATA.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Jim Jackson@3:770/3 to Chris Green on Sat Sep 30 20:50:48 2023
    On 2023-09-30, Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.

    Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max >> in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because >> the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

    Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), >> put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably >> pass traffic. You might be surprised.

    Yes, my experience is that tens of metres of home made (by me) CAT5
    UTP cable does gigabit quite happily.

    And if it's cat5E then 100m or more works

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Michael Schwingen@3:770/3 to Theo on Sun Oct 1 08:54:12 2023
    On 2023-09-30, Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.

    Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

    The limit is 100m for 100BaseT/1000BaseT. Cat5e is good enough for 100m 1000BaseT, and lower-quality cabling should work for shorter runs.

    Standard 4-wire telephone cable (star quad) works for >30m 100BaseT,
    although the standard requires Cat5, twisted pair cable.

    cu
    Michael
    --
    Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Jim Jackson on Sun Oct 1 09:43:32 2023
    On 30/09/2023 21:50, Jim Jackson wrote:
    On 2023-09-30, Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> wrote:
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit. >>>> Cable might have too much attenuation.

    Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max >>> in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because >>> the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

    Try it and see? Patch a couple of ports together (without using a switch), >>> put a machine at each end and see if a gigabit link will come up and stably >>> pass traffic. You might be surprised.

    Yes, my experience is that tens of metres of home made (by me) CAT5
    UTP cable does gigabit quite happily.

    And if it's cat5E then 100m or more works

    I am not sure what my longest run is. Could be around 50m
    Anyway, 'fast enough and not power hungry enough' is my current feeling
    on what I have


    --
    Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have
    guns, why should we let them have ideas?

    Josef Stalin

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sun Oct 1 10:49:16 2023
    On 30/09/2023 15:03, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Theo
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.


    When I did mine, the problem I had was kinks in the wire, due to twist
    from unrolling it badly, and the pulling it tight. Something about bend
    radius. I found them and it is OK now.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Michael Schwingen on Sun Oct 1 10:37:36 2023
    On 01/10/2023 09:54, Michael Schwingen wrote:
    On 2023-09-30, Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.

    Many domestic installations don't get anywhere near the 305m that's the max >> in the ethernet spec. So you can get away with out of spec cabling because >> the spec expects the attenuation from 305m but you only have 30m.

    The limit is 100m for 100BaseT/1000BaseT. Cat5e is good enough for 100m 1000BaseT, and lower-quality cabling should work for shorter runs.

    I *think* 305m was 10baseT?
    Mmm. no. it seems ALL twisted pair ethernet is characterised as 100m..it
    must be a delay issue rather than attentuation when doing all nodes
    traffic.

    Standard 4-wire telephone cable (star quad) works for >30m 100BaseT,
    although the standard requires Cat5, twisted pair cable.

    Wash yer mouth out with soap...


    --
    In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
    In practice, there is.
    -- Yogi Berra

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to Jim Jackson on Sun Oct 1 10:49:52 2023
    On 30/09/2023 21:48, Jim Jackson wrote:
    On 2023-09-29, Pancho <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:
    1/. How much power is used by the spinning rust, when most of the time
    its idle? I find three figures quoted, active, idle and sleeping. Around >>> 6-7W active and a couple of watts spinning

    They require a lot of power to spin up. That pretty much dictates they
    cannot be powered from the rPi USB, even a 2.5" hdd requires a
    separately powered USB to SATA connector.

    Not necessarily. I run USB powered 2.5in hard drives from raspberry
    pi's. Some are the Western Digitial USB external drvies, and others are
    run from USB powered USB-SATA converters.

    I also run 3.5in sata drives - but then you do need powered USB <-> SATA.


    Yes, sorry, I shouldn't have over generalized my own experience.

    Nominally, the total power available from a rPi USB, for peripherals, is enough. I couldn't get it to work, reliably, but others may have a
    better power supply to the rPi and may have a lower power 2.5" HDD.

    My HDD is old, taken out of a new laptop about 10 years ago. Back then
    it was cheaper to buy a laptop with an HDD, and replace it with a SSD,
    rather than just buy one with an SSD, for some bizarre reason?

    So I had the HDD just lying around and repurposed it for the rPi, it's
    been running for 4 years, as a NAS, which has exceeded my expectations.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Pancho on Sun Oct 1 11:17:08 2023
    On 01/10/2023 10:49, Pancho wrote:
    On 30/09/2023 15:03, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

    Theo
    Oh no, me mate and I wired the whole house to full CAT5/structured
    cabling standards . BUT that isn't necessarily good enough for gigabit.
    Cable might have too much attenuation.


    When I did mine, the problem I had was kinks in the wire, due to twist
    from unrolling it badly, and the pulling it tight. Something about bend radius. I found them and it is OK now.

    I got lots of that.
    probably. But it all works at 100...

    --
    "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
    and understanding".

    Marshall McLuhan

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Michael Schwingen@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sun Oct 1 18:22:04 2023
    On 2023-10-01, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    The limit is 100m for 100BaseT/1000BaseT. Cat5e is good enough for 100m
    1000BaseT, and lower-quality cabling should work for shorter runs.

    I *think* 305m was 10baseT?

    No. For 10Base2, the limit was 185m, while 10Base5 (thick ethernet /
    "yellow cable") could go up to 500m.

    Mmm. no. it seems ALL twisted pair ethernet is characterised as 100m..it
    must be a delay issue rather than attentuation when doing all nodes
    traffic.

    There is both attenuation, as well as maximum round-trip time so that collisions are properly detected everywhene on one segment.

    Standard 4-wire telephone cable (star quad) works for >30m 100BaseT,
    although the standard requires Cat5, twisted pair cable.

    Wash yer mouth out with soap...

    I would not install such an abomination, but if the wire is already in the wall, it is worth a try. At my mother's house, it works just fine.

    cu
    Michael
    --
    Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Pancho@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Sun Oct 1 22:08:12 2023
    On 01/10/2023 11:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    adius. I found them and it is OK now.

    I got lots of that.
    probably. But it all works at 100...


    Yeah, mine initially worked at 100 Mb/s, I untwisted the kinks, and then
    it worked at 1Gb/s. Probably lesson 101 for professional cable layers,
    but it confused me. I was thinking length, when it was just kinks.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Pancho on Sun Oct 1 22:46:58 2023
    On 01/10/2023 22:08, Pancho wrote:
    On 01/10/2023 11:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    adius. I found them and it is OK now.

    I got lots of that.
    probably. But it all works at 100...


    Yeah, mine initially worked at 100 Mb/s, I untwisted the kinks, and then
    it worked at 1Gb/s. Probably lesson 101 for professional cable layers,
    but it confused me. I was thinking length, when it was just kinks.

    you do get reflections off kinks.

    ANYWAY, no switch upgrade.

    I have decided that a headless Pi4B with 1GB RAM and some powered SATA
    cables will do the biz.

    Big issue will be packaging, and Ive stretched the goodwill of the mate
    with a 3D printer a bit far..I hate itzy bitsy usb wall warts, and stuff
    in separate boxes...

    --
    Of what good are dead warriors? … Warriors are those who desire battle
    more than peace. Those who seek battle despite peace. Those who thump
    their spears on the ground and talk of honor. Those who leap high the
    battle dance and dream of glory … The good of dead warriors, Mother, is
    that they are dead.
    Sheri S Tepper: The Awakeners.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From TimS@3:770/3 to Pancho on Sun Oct 1 21:46:50 2023
    On 01 Oct 2023 at 22:08:12 BST, "Pancho" <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:

    On 01/10/2023 11:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    adius. I found them and it is OK now.

    I got lots of that.
    probably. But it all works at 100...

    Yeah, mine initially worked at 100 Mb/s, I untwisted the kinks, and then
    it worked at 1Gb/s. Probably lesson 101 for professional cable layers,
    but it confused me. I was thinking length, when it was just kinks.

    You have to respect the bend radius. I said this to our Sparks and I think he was impressed.

    While I was a SLAC we were using some 10Base2, and one physics group managed
    to screw up one of the segments. Their offices had been wired, but they
    decided to extend the segment down to the experiment, without asking anyone. And they used their quite thin 50-Ohm coax, which they normally used in patch cords in their equipment. Well of course this was quite a long extension with
    a consequent high DC impedance, which messed up the collision detection.

    And this was not all. They had a quest to "tidy up". Now those who remember 10Base2 will recall that the cable would have a T-piece inserted in it at the workstation location, and the T-piece was plugged into the ethernet socket on the back of the w/s. These physicists didn't like this, as it meant the
    segment entered their office and then left it again. So they moved the segment and its T-piece out of the office, and connected a length of 50-ohm coax from the T-piece, into the office and then connected that to the w/s. Much tidier. This, it seems, messed up the cable impedance so they got lots of reflections and packet loss.

    --
    Tim

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Mon Oct 2 11:39:22 2023
    The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
    I have decided that a headless Pi4B with 1GB RAM and some powered SATA
    cables will do the biz.

    Big issue will be packaging, and Ive stretched the goodwill of the mate
    with a 3D printer a bit far..I hate itzy bitsy usb wall warts, and stuff
    in separate boxes...

    So a case with room for two 3.5" HDDs, the Pi4B, and a built-in
    PSU? 3D printing all that might stretch any friendship. Why
    wouldn't you just bung it all in an old desktop PC case, with a PC
    PSU left in to power the HDDs and manually wired up to power the
    Pi4 (you'll need ground the standby signal wire to make the PSU
    turn on)?

    The powered aspect is what makes USB-SATA adapters more expensive.
    Those that come without power supplies are dirt cheap on Ebay,
    although the cheap ones might not be reliable (I can confirm that
    they're Linux-friendly though).

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Computer Nerd Kev@3:770/3 to Computer Nerd Kev on Mon Oct 2 11:51:06 2023
    Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
    The powered aspect is what makes USB-SATA adapters more expensive.
    Those that come without power supplies are dirt cheap on Ebay,
    although the cheap ones might not be reliable (I can confirm that
    they're Linux-friendly though).

    Well the USB2 ones are Linux-friendly anyway, I notice there are
    now SATA-only USB3 ones. I was talking about the earlier 3-way
    IDE/SATA ones, which are still available. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/374701594944

    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Michael Schwingen@3:770/3 to Computer Nerd Kev on Mon Oct 2 10:44:42 2023
    On 2023-10-02, Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
    Well the USB2 ones are Linux-friendly anyway, I notice there are
    now SATA-only USB3 ones. I was talking about the earlier 3-way
    IDE/SATA ones, which are still available. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/374701594944

    Be careful about size limits: some older adapters (and those supporting IDE *may* use older chips) have limits regarding the disk size they support:

    https://superuser.com/questions/308492/is-there-a-size-limit-on-external-usb-hard-drives

    When buying new, I would recommend USB3 SATA-only.

    I have not yet found any USB adapter that did not work under Linux.
    However, some do support SMART and some do not.

    cu
    Michael
    --
    Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Mon Oct 2 20:06:58 2023
    On 30/09/2023 11:25, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 29/09/2023 22:21, Jim Jackson wrote:
    Does 3 years and counting of 24/7 mean I've killed my Pi :-)
    My Pi powers a USB connected 2.5 spinning disk just fine.

    I think the answer would be 'it depends on the drive and if linux is configured to spin down on idle' .
    You are in effect powering an electric motor and the more friction there
    is and the more rpms you want it to do. in general, the more power it
    will need

    2.5 inch drives will spin themselves down automatically as they are
    aimed at laptops, or I should say were, given everything has a SSD these
    days.

    I used to use my ASUS router which had a USB3 port to attach a drive to
    work as a HOME NAS, but when the Pi 4B came out with gigabit Ethernet
    and USB3, I moved it over to that as it was much faster and allowed
    Linux friendly NFS as well as SMB.

    The drives I've been using are Samsung M3 and later sold as Maxtor M3
    USB3 drives, instead of being SATA drives in a USB caddy these just have
    USB interfaces so are very low power and spin down quite quickly.

    I've recently replaced it with a Samsung T7 portable USB SSD, which
    eliminates the slight spin up delay every time you access the shared
    drive. The Maxtor M3 is now on another Pi 4B as a nightly backup to the
    SSD, and the original Samsung M3 on a Pi 3B is a weekly off site backup.

    My Pi 4Bs are all in cases and I use 40mm rather than 30mm fans to keep
    these cool and quiet.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Oct 3 09:11:18 2023
    On 02/10/2023 20:23, druck wrote:
    Good advice to check each segment individually, as I wasn't getting
    gigabit across the house in both directions, but found it was due to one cable that had been kinked too hard and lost a pair. Ironically was a
    short bit of still shiny new cable, not the 30m segment of older very
    much used looking wire which had been bent around lots of corners in my
    old house. Replacing that 5m section gave me ~970mbs each way.

    Many years ago, we had sent an engineer down to the London office of a Prestigious Accountancy Firm that oddly enough ceased to exist
    overnight* some years later, to install an ISDN router to Connect Them
    To The Internet.

    We got a furious call from a junior executive threatening legal action
    if we didn't come down this minute and fix it, because it didn't fucking
    work. In a big organisation if you have been tasked with something and
    it stops working it's such a blot on your copybook that its career
    threatening. One reason why I hate big companies personally.

    As technical director, I went down with my best engineer to sort it out.
    The BT engineer had already arrived, and we spoke to him 'stupid cunt'
    he said. 'There's some sort of wiring fault inside the building, I've
    checked it at the router and its fucked, but it's fine at the
    termination point where it enters the building, so it's not my problem,
    and its now chargeable'. And he wandered off to whatever dimensions BT engineers go to when not active., I suspect like cats, they simply
    inhabit a different universe...

    The Junior Executive was still in a bad temper 'Its all right, you can
    go now' (another hour and a half on tube and train) '*I* have found the
    fault' (he couldn't find his own arse). 'And what was it? We enquired
    sweetly. He took us to a steel cupboard where he had insisted the
    router be installed, and pointed to the cable, practically sliced in
    half by the person who have closed the door on a trailing ISDN lead
    casually routed across the office floor.

    A we left I asked my engineer, 'who laid that cable?' ' He did. The ONLY
    thing he did do - I will never work in a place like that even if I would
    get three times the money you pay me'.

    Oh yes, wiring issues are no stranger...

    *2002. Enron. Google it


    --
    For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
    wrong.

    H.L.Mencken

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to The Natural Philosopher on Tue Oct 3 12:07:02 2023
    On 03/10/2023 09:11, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 02/10/2023 20:23, druck wrote:
    Many years ago, we had sent an engineer down to the London office of a Prestigious Accountancy Firm that oddly enough ceased to exist
    overnight* some years later, to install an ISDN router to Connect Them
    To The Internet.

    [snip]

    *2002. Enron. Google it

    That would be a _creative_ accountancy firm. :-)

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Oct 3 12:18:08 2023
    On 03/10/2023 12:07, druck wrote:
    On 03/10/2023 09:11, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
    On 02/10/2023 20:23, druck wrote:
    Many years ago, we had sent an engineer down to the London office of a
    Prestigious Accountancy Firm that oddly enough ceased to exist
    overnight* some years later, to install an ISDN router to Connect Them
    To The Internet.

    [snip]

    *2002. Enron. Google it

    That would be a _creative_ accountancy firm. :-)

    They were at one point my previous firms accountants. They told us how
    to break the law and make a lot of money. By 'dressing' the company
    accounts prior to flotation.

    A bit like El Trump is accused of these days.

    Really, if he was a democrat no one would have cared.


    ---druck


    --
    "The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted
    man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest
    thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid
    before him."

    - Leo Tolstoy

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Michael Schwingen@3:770/3 to druck on Tue Oct 3 13:47:44 2023
    On 2023-10-02, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    Very old Cat5 is dodgy, but 5e is normally fine for short runs.

    According to the standards, Cat5e is sufficient for 1000BaseT over the full 100m - if it is properly installed and not damaged.

    cu
    Michael
    --
    Some people have no respect of age unless it is bottled.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From The Natural Philosopher@3:770/3 to Michael Schwingen on Tue Oct 3 17:18:52 2023
    On 03/10/2023 14:47, Michael Schwingen wrote:
    On 2023-10-02, druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

    Very old Cat5 is dodgy, but 5e is normally fine for short runs.

    According to the standards, Cat5e is sufficient for 1000BaseT over the full 100m - if it is properly installed and not damaged.

    cu
    Michael
    I dunno what I installed back in the day. 2001? whatever was current then

    Hmm on the cusp between 5 and 5e.


    --
    Canada is all right really, though not for the whole weekend.

    "Saki"

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)