Thinkpads Forum

hi all, i'm a thinkpad freak and i'm glad to find this forum!

i've been lurking for a couple weeks here to help me decide on a replacement to my T40(P_M, 1500mHz, 1.25GB, 35GB HDD + 160GB ultrabay). it's still going strong but it's starting to show it's age(although I do believe that this thing will outlive me.) This laptop is a TANK.

Soooo....I managed to get a hold of a nice deal on an x300 with Win7Ultimate. This was sort of an impulse buy.. I was actually planning to get either the T400s or the T410s, as the 1440x900 WXGA+ was a top priority, and along came the x300. I think that I can sell the x300 for about the same price or more if I decided it wasn't for me. I'm beginning to worry that I made a bad choice though.....


now to my questions:

1> the x300 comes with 2-1GB SODIMMS. Is it possible to replace just one with a 2GB DIMM, thereby utilizing 3GB?

2> How does the L7100 CPU compare to the P-M 1500mHz? I took a look at the http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Pro ... 436.0.html but wanted to see if anyone had similar upgrade stories to share?

3> A lot of the x300 topics here have to do with SSD driver issues/compatibility/etc...Are SSD's really that troublesome to handle? Do they require different handling than with typical HDD's?

4> I scoured this forum and found the answer to my next question, but i want to ask it again because I don't want to believe what I read!!! Is there a drive caddy for the 1.7mm DVDRW in the x300?

And this takes me to my final question: this may not be the ideal place to ask but as the 64 GB SSD won't allow me to store my music locally, I am considering upgrading my WD mybook to the NetGear ReadyNAS Duo. Is that a good NAS?


Any help in answering these questions would be greatly appreciated!!!

The max memory for the X300 is 4GB, though I wouldn't be surprised if it took 8GB. When the manuals were written, 2GB was the largest memory sticks and they almost never update them.

Most tasks like Office, Media and Internet don't really push the CPU enough to where you'd notice a difference. If you're using an applications which can use more than one Core, the L7100 will offer a significant advantage.

I don't think the SSDs are different, but they're 1.8" drives, which have limited upgrade options.

A standard hard drive is too tall to fit the bay on the X300. Plus the bay on the X300 is not modular. The DVD drive or battery is secured to the chassis with a screw.

I don't know anything about NAS. You're on your own there. Good luck and welcome to TPF.

miscthree wrote:Are SSD's really that troublesome to handle? Do they require different handling than with typical HDD's?

No and no.

And this takes me to my final question: this may not be the ideal place to ask but as the 64 GB SSD won't allow me to store my music locally, I am considering upgrading my WD mybook to the NetGear ReadyNAS Duo. Is that a good NAS?

Personally I just got the cheapest ThinkCentre I could and turned it into a NAS with FreeNAS. Cheap, effective, easy to upgrade, and easy to expand.

ThinkRob wrote:Personally I just got the cheapest ThinkCentre I could and turned it into a NAS with FreeNAS. Cheap, effective, easy to upgrade, and easy to expand.

And i can recommend Chenbro ES34069 case + Zotac H55ITX motherboard. It is quite energy efficient; it is small and quiet; it supports 2.5" SATA HDD + slim SATA optical drive + four hot-replaceable 3.5" SATA HDDs; and someone can install some Windows on that 2.5" HDD + virtualization software (personally i'm preferring Hyper-V, but that because i'm a student and can get my free copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 through dreamspark) + some OS of your choice (FreeNAS or Windows Home Server) into the virtual machine, and ultimately get NAS (up to 12TB as of today), home gateway/router and HTPC in a single case. ES34069 + H55ITX + i3-530 + 8GB of RAM + some 2.5" HDD pulled out from a thinkpad in order to upgrade thinkpad to 500GB will make it about $300+$100+$100+$150=$650 (plus 3.5" HDDs for storage plus software), which is more than competitive with dedicated single-function NASes imho.

penartur wrote: And i can recommend Chenbro ES34069 case + Zotac H55ITX motherboard. It is quite energy efficient; it is small and quiet; it supports 2.5" SATA HDD + slim SATA optical drive + four hot-replaceable 3.5" SATA HDDs; and someone can install some Windows on that 2.5" HDD + virtualization software (personally i'm preferring Hyper-V, but that because i'm a student and can get my free copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 through dreamspark) + some OS of your choice (FreeNAS or Windows Home Server) into the virtual machine, and ultimately get NAS (up to 12TB as of today), home gateway/router and HTPC in a single case. ES34069 + H55ITX + 8GB of RAM + some 2.5" HDD pulled out from a thinkpad in order to upgrade thinkpad to 500GB + 4*2TB 3.5" HDD will make it about $300+$100+$150+4*$100=$950 (plus software), which is more than competitive with dedicated single-function NASes imho.

Well... yeah, building your own machine is an option too -- but not everyone wants to do that. I've built my own servers before (I've got one such box sitting on my network right this moment), but for most folks it's more hassle than it's worth.

ThinkRob wrote: Well... yeah, building your own machine is an option too -- but not everyone wants to do that. I've built my own servers before (I've got one such box sitting on my network right this moment), but for most folks it's more hassle than it's worth.

But the result is much much better than a huge heavy noisy thinkstation.
Or, alternatively, one may purchase IdeaCentre D-series: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/products/life ... index.html
However, it is a bit larger than ES34069, runs on a single-core intel atom 230 (as opposed to e.g. intel i3-530 i'm using, i've forgot to mention it in my previous post) which makes it impossible to turn into a hybrid NAS+HTPC solution; and there is no dedicated system drive.

The x300 takes a max of 8 gigs, but 1 + 2 gigs is just fine. It uses a 1.8 inch sata hdd, the ssd per gigs is more expensive than the platter variant, but you do get the speed (especially with the modified bios that enables the sata 2 capability).

The l7xxx CPU performance is on par with the t2xxx CPU, this class of CPU produces very little heat. If you want performance I suggest you look away, also the CPU is physically soldered to the motherboard. If I am you I would get the x301 instead since you would gain the intel 4500 MHD gpu and displayport, this allows you run external monitor on the digital video connection (usb2dvi will not able support streaming of 1080p at it's native resolution. Also if you ever want to watch 1080p movies the intel 4500 MHD is the pre-requisite).

For nas you can use the old t4x laptop.

lead_org wrote:The x300 takes a max of 8 gigs, but 1 + 2 gigs is just fine. It uses a 1.8 inch sata hdd, the ssd per gigs is more expensive than the platter variant, but you do get the speed (especially with the modified bios that enables the sata 2 capability).

The l7xxx CPU performance is on par with the t2xxx CPU, this class of CPU produces very little heat. If you want performance I suggest you look away, also the CPU is physically soldered to the motherboard. If I am you I would get the x301 instead since you would gain the intel 4500 MHD gpu and displayport, this allows you run external monitor on the digital video connection (usb2dvi will not able support streaming of 1080p at it's native resolution. Also if you ever want to watch 1080p movies the intel 4500 MHD is the pre-requisite).

For nas you can use the old t4x laptop.

You, sir, are efficient and effective with your words. Thank you.

I love the idea of creating a NAS from ground up but I have neither the inclination, time, and/or technical ability to take it on. Perhaps if I become unemployed( cross fingers)

or you could just purchase a second hand power efficient NAS unit and use that.

I got a D-link NAS unit for only 40 dollars (second hand) with no hdd installed, and i bought 2 x 2 tb WD drives and connected that to my wifi unit, now it serves as a wireless data backup unit.

I find this to be cheapest way of doing a NAS setup.

lead_org wrote:or you could just purchase a second hand power efficient NAS unit and use that.

I got a D-link NAS unit for only 40 dollars (second hand) with no hdd installed, and i bought 2 x 2 tb WD drives and connected that to my wifi unit, now it serves as a wireless data backup unit.

I find this to be cheapest way of doing a NAS setup.

Cheapest indeed, but not as usable/futureproof/convenient, as a specialized good NAS.

penartur wrote:Cheapest indeed, but not as usable/futureproof/convenient, as a specialized good NAS.

not sure what you mean by convenient, my D-Link 323 NAS can be setup in 10 minutes.

lead_org wrote:not sure what you mean by convenient, my D-Link 323 NAS can be setup in 10 minutes.

But it doesn't support that amount of features NAS i'm talking about supports. It seems that D-Link 323 is just a HDD enclosure with a network interface. It is a NAS, of course, but just in the most liberal definition (storage, has network).
E.g. when all the storage is occupied, you can't just upgrade it with a higher HDD, you should do a backup and then restore or something (from what i understand). Or you can't say "i mostly store BluRay copies on it, so i'm okay if these are lost, but there is some sensitive data too i don't want to be lost, so, please, le me occupy as much storage as possible with these Blu-Rays, but duplicate sensitive data in some way so that if one HDD dies, only some Blu-Rays are lost".

it have RAID 0 & 1 features, it is probably one of the better entry grade NAS enclosure out there.

Thanks rob for mentioning FreeNAS. It looks like a daunting project for me; I do have a couple machines around that might be up to the task..but still, I'm not a talented programmer/hacker like you guys..for the nas issue I think I'll stick with plug and play.

I like the x300 a lot..had buyers remorse for a couple weeks when the crazy holiday deals started rolling in, but this hits a happy medium for me.. Thanks again all, happy holidays!

miscthree wrote:Thanks rob for mentioning FreeNAS. It looks like a daunting project for me; I do have a couple machines around that might be up to the task..but still, I'm not a talented programmer/hacker like you guys..for the nas issue I think I'll stick with plug and play.

It's really not difficult for the basic stuff. It's all web-GUI-based, and you don't need to touch the command line. Heck, you don't even need to install it -- you create a USB stick and it is literally plug and play!

lead_org wrote:it have RAID 0 & 1 features, it is probably one of the better entry grade NAS enclosure out there.

But Drive Extender is so much better than RAID for a consumer use!
With Drive Extender, you can always add a new HDD of any capacity to the storage pool (rather than RAID0/RAID1, where you have to purchase two HDDs of the same capacity and remove both old HDDs, and to get some backup drive that will act as intermediate between old raid and new raid, because i doubt you can set up two separate RAIDs on that NAS).
With Drive Extender, you can easily upgrade an old low-capacity HDD with a new high-capacity one (with RAID, you have to replace the entire array, see above).
With Drive Extender, you can set up per-folder duplication rules (rather than choose between RAID0 and RAID1 for the entire NAS).
With Drive Extender, if one drive fails, you will lose only that portion of unduplicated data that was on failed drive (as opposed to non-mirrored RAID, where you will lose all data you had).

It sounds like Drive Extender is simply another concatenating volume manager (aka. JBOD, although somewhat RAID-1-like IIRC.)

FreeNAS (and... well... most other NAS setups) support concatenation just fine. It isn't a feature unique to "Drive Extender".

Of course both Drive Extender and traditional RAID setups pale in comparison to ZFS... but that's another story.

Drive Extender is not JBOD.
1) When you're losing one JBOD volume, you're basically losing all your data (although you can recover some data by recover utilities like R-Studio, if you're lucky so that filesystem didn't shuffled different blocks of one file through all drives, and if you're using filesystem that supports data recovery). Drive Extender works on a per-file basis, while JBOD works on a per-block basis; also, there is a filesystem on each drive. That means that with Drive Extender, after losing one drive, you will be able to read the remaining data in a natural way (without any recover utilities), and you will only lose files that were entirely on a failed drive.
2) Drive Extender supports files/folders duplication. That is, you may enable mirroring for an individual folder, and after single drive failing (in a multi-drive setup) all the files in such a folder will be safe (and also these will be immediately duplicated on other drives if there is more than one drive remained, so that if another drive fails before you will purchase a replacement, files will still be safe). So that you can enable duplication for folder where your accounting documents are, and still fill up the entire storage space with a not-so-sensitive blu-ray copies (as opposed to mirror RAID). JBOD does not supports duplication.
3) With JBOD, you have to resize filesystem (if it supports resizing) when adding a new HDD. With Drive Extender, everything is transparent, you just plugging in a new drive and pressing the "Add to storage pool" button.
4) With JBOD, you cannot remove an arbitrary drive (not with filesystems i know about, although some filesystems support shrinking, so that you can remove first or the last drive). With drive extender, you can remove any drive from the pool as long as you have enough of free space.
5) With all hardware JBOD implementations i know about, and with some primitive software implementations (possibly the one on that d-link NAS) you cannot span JBOD between internal and external drives. Drive Extender doesn't care about drives interfaces, so that when you want to upgrade your storage, and all internal hdd slots are occupied, you can put a new HDD in the USB enclosure, connect it to your NAS, add it to the storage pool, remove some old HDD from the pool, shut down the NAS, and physically replace old HDD with a new one.
6) If motherboard of your NAS fails, you will spend a long time trying to restore your JBOD. With Drive Extender, each drive could be connected to the PC, and it will appear as an ordinary volume with some of your files.

A closer analog to Drive Extender is not JBOD but LVM; however, even LVM is far beyond Drive Extender.

PS: If you're interested, basically, Drive Extender works like that: there is a number of formatted volumes (with filesystem on each of these) in the storage pool; there are some files stored on each volume; and there is one virtual volume which combines all that files across volumes (so that if there is dir1\file1 file on first volume and dir1\file2 file on second volume, you will see both file1 and file2 under dir1 on a virtual volume). Also there is some system service which maintains data duplication (so that when you will upload some sensitive_file to sensitive_dir, it will create such a file in sensitive_dir on some two volumes of the pool).

Also, the benefit of Windows Home Server is that it could work as a router/gateway/web server at the same time.

By the way, i'm getting something like 80 to 90 megabytes per second when reading data from my WHS box (it seems to be limited either by 1gbps network or by drives speed). I doubt that cheap dedicated NAS with a slow ARM CPU is capable of that. In fact, i read of speeds about 3 to 10 megabytes per second for some of such designed-for-home NASes.

i don't think a lot of people need these extra features on their NAS, or even know how to use it. If people do find the entry level NAS enclosure limiting, then they can always build one themselves, there is no point complicating things for the sake of doing so.

lead_org wrote:i don't think lot of people need these extra features on their NAS, or even know how to use it. If people do find the entry level NAS enclosure limiting, then they can always build one themselves, there is no point complicating things for the sake of doing so.

Drive Extender is the way easier for that "lot of people". They don't need to know anything about RAID, they don't need to know anything about array rebuild or capacities match, they could just use their WHS-based NAS, some folders with sensitive files and duplication enabled, some folders with huge not-so-needed files and duplication disabled, and when they're out of storage space, they could just go to the store, purchase some capacious HDD on a sale, insert it into their NAS box, and click on "Add to storage pool" button (and if they ran out of HDD bays, they could just click on "Remove from storage pool" button for some low-capacity drive, then remove it physically and give it to someone).

And, by the way, there are 4-drives NAS boxes with WHS preinstalled (so it is not necessary to build your own box; however, when building your own box, you can build something that you can use as two-in-one combo, NAS+HTPC), and prices of these are quite comparable with prices of ARM-based NASes like that D-Link.

lead_org wrote:i don't think a lot of people need these extra features on their NAS, or even know how to use it. If people do find the entry level NAS enclosure limiting, then they can always build one themselves, there is no point complicating things for the sake of doing so.

Yet again, lead org has it right..

Short term, I want to replace my aging and nearly full server with the least amount of hassle. If something happens to the nas, I am not competent enough or patient enough to troubleshoot it, I think...

Long term, I don't expect a new 2x2tb raid-1 to last forever and I expect to eventually either get another nas or just replace it.

I'm the kind of user that won't use all the features of an OTC nas..

miscthree wrote:Short term, I want to replace my aging and nearly full server with the least amount of hassle. If something happens to the nas, I am not competent enough or patient enough to troubleshoot it, I think...

So WHS should be your option (because you should be really competent and patient to troubleshoot RAID problems which will appear on d-link NAS).

Long term, I don't expect a new 2x2tb raid-1 to last forever and I expect to eventually either get another nas or just replace it.

The problem is that it could fail at any time. And, as i have heard from my colleagues, when using consumer-grade (as opposed to enterprisde-grade) HDDs in RAID1, there is relatively high chance to lost all data in case of single data fail (because second HDD may die or produce some read error during the array rebuild). Also, in case some drive dies, you won't be able to access your data until you will purchase another HDD of the same capacity.
Also, if you're going to purchase another NAS, transferring data from the old one to a new one will be relatively painfully.
Also, you can only store 2TB on such a NAS. With most of WHS boxes on the market (e.g. Acer EasyStore or Lenovo IdeaCentre D-series) you may store up to 8TB (4x 2TB drives), and have data duplication for sensitive files at the same time.

I'm the kind of user that won't use all the features of an OTC nas..

Err... what does "OTC" mean in this context?

Given the price of these entry level NAS as a second hand unit, i don't think one should be expecting too much from them.

If the OP really wants these levels of redundancy, then he could obviously get a server. You can get a second hand IBM X3650 server for around 500 dollars, some of the variants can accept up to 8 hdd (i think there is one that can do 16 hdd), these machines beats all NAS in terms of level redundancy and features.

lead_org wrote:If the OP really wants these levels of redundancy, then he could obviously get a server. You can get a second hand IBM X3650 server for around 500 dollars,

Second hand server won't provide the required redundancy, that's why these are so cheap.

some of the variants can accept up to 8 hdd (i think there is one that can do 16 hdd), these machines beats all NAS in terms of level redundancy and features.

What is the difference between such a server and a good old mini tower with 8 hdd bays?
ES34069 (PC case i'm using for my NAS) is relatively quiet and small, and will do all such a server will do (except for it only has 4 hdd bays). What is the point in purchasing a huge noisy second-hand server?
And pre-built branded WHS boxes with 4 hdd bays are even smaller and quieter (because these are Atom-based, and i've chosen Core i7 for my ES34069-based setup).
And still WHS has an advantage (for home user) that there is Drive Extender, which allows for drives combining and data redundancy without all this RAID stuff. If one wants to use 16 hdds in their server, they should purchase all 16 hdds of equal capacity at once (imagine the price!) and combine these in a single raid array. After that, the only option for upgrade will be to purchase another server (for data transfer), to purchase another 16 hdds of equal capacity, to create a new array, and to transfer data from the old array to the new one. With Drive Extender, one could just insert a new HDD in their box (given there is a free bay; but even if all bays are taken, it could be solved by borrowing an USB HDD enclosure) and click "Add to storage pool". The same for removing HDDs.
Server will be much more expensive, not future-proof, huge, energy-wasting and noisy. And not all wifes will appreciate their husband bringing home such a noisy behemoth "just for 500 bucks!"

PS: I've just found that X3650 is a rack server. All rack servers i've seen were noisy as hell, and only a powerful drill could jam these. My wife certainly wouldn't approved that.

My old WD Mybook world has been faithfully performing for over 5 years 24-7..my hardware in general doesn't get hammered with heavy use.

Although it is slow and lacks a lot of features that the newer consumer NAS "Over The Counter"(OTC) devices have, it has been reliable and I won't need something as overkill as a rackmount server. And I definitely won't need 8 HDD's for my files. Sure, no nas is deathproof and there may be failures but hey nothings perfect..

miscthree wrote:My old WD Mybook world has been faithfully performing for over 5 years 24-7..my hardware in general doesn't get hammered with heavy use.

And what if it dies once?
Of course, if its reliability and low capacity suits your needs, any other NAS will be an overkill.
If you need high capacity (or at least possibility to get high capacity when you need it) and reliability - then, IMHO, any 4-bays WHS-based solution is the best option for home (and, by the way, there are 2-bays solutions). It will be small, quiet, easily upgradeable, reliable (AFAIK there is no other NAS solution which allows one to duplicate some data and not duplicate some other data), easy-to-use and have a lot of features which are making it not only NAS but also router etc as well - the full-fledged home server. (I personally built a powerful quiet PC in the small ES34069 case, which serves both as HTPC and Home Server, thanks to virtualization).

Although it is slow and lacks a lot of features that the newer consumer NAS "Over The Counter"(OTC) devices have, it has been reliable and I won't need something as overkill as a rackmount server. And I definitely won't need 8 HDD's for my files. Sure, no nas is deathproof and there may be failures but hey nothings perfect..

That's why i can't understand how lead_org came to thought of recommending that IBM server. I just can't imagine such a rackmount server in someone's home. Well, i guess that if i'd came home with such a server and plugged it into a wall, i'd had to sleep that night not sharing the bed with my wife, but rather outdoors, using that server as a pillow

PS: I cannot find an appropriate meaning of "over the counter", could you please explain me that phrase?

i am not sure why we are keep on talking about servers and such, since this is not intended topic of this thread. FYI, the IBM X3650 can still be bought brand new from IBM for around 2000 USD to 5000 USD depending on specs. No i wasn't really recommending him to get a server per se, but rather i am just using it as an example of other devices he can get if he really needs a high redundancy storage device.

OP obviously have already established the purchase criteria for his NAS devices, and there is no point fear mongering people into accepting your point of view and deriding other people's suggestions as less than useful.

Also, there is no such things as a future proof technology, server or nas.

Finally, with these servers you don't need to occupy all 16 slots or 8 slots at once, you can use one hdd if you want. Or have 2 hdd in raid mode (or more depending on the level of redundancy). Also, what proof do you have to say that second hand servers don't have the required redundancy, just because they are cheap?

penartur, it sounds like you're conflating JBOD and RAID-0...

ThinkRob wrote:penartur, it sounds like you're conflating JBOD and RAID-0...

No, i'm not conflating it.
With RAID0, one will surely lost all their data in case of single drive fail. With JBOD there is a possibility of restoring some data (depending on FS).
With RAID0, it is impossible to upgrade storage at all (without rebuilding an array). With JBOD there is a possibility of adding a new HDD (depending on RAID implementation and FS) and maybe even removing an old one (depending on RAID implementation and FS, and only in case HDD scheduled for removal is the first or last in array).
With RAID0, one will experience higher reading/writing speeds. With JBOD speeds will be roughly the same.
Drive extender is something like RAID0, but on files level (rather than blocks level), so it can work on HDDs of different capacities and allows for HDDs adding/removal. Also, it allows for data redundancy of RAID1 sort (although not on all but only on a random two HDDs in array to save the space), again, on files level.
I'm using Drive Extender, and for home it is really much better than any flavor of raid.

So far I've narrowed the nas list down as follows:

Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 (4TB)
Readynas pro
Readynas nv+
D-Link DNS-323

There are others I looked at but these made my shortlist.

After thinking about a homemade nas, that will be a project I'd like to do later on, once I learn what the hell you guys are talking about!