0905 Results so far:
Copying over network from another computer to USB-connected HDD on NAS: slow as zark.
Copying over network from another computer to internally-mounted HDD on NAS: slow A.Z.
Copying from internal HDD to USB-connected HDD: slow A.Z.
So the first experiment is a bit of a bust; I still don’t know what the bottleneck is.
Onto the second experiment:
Copying from mounted ext HDD to USB HDD: sporadically fast, but spent much time doing nothing at 0MB/s
Copying large files from mounted external HDD to internal HDD: 70-80MB/s
1420
So, I still don't know what the quickest way is of getting data onto an OpenMediaVault machine. Search results don't seem to produce anything useful (or anything I can understand as useful). Maybe I'll just have to accept that getting stuff on there will be a slow process.
One recurring theme I keep seeing during my ‘research’ is Raspberry Pi; a lot of people seem to be running OMV on their Pis. Perhaps if I'd persevered with my Pi(s) earlier in this journey, I would have eventually stumbled upon OMV. Perhaps I would have realised that my RAID attempts were a folly (especially over USB…) and just had the drives connected simply, as they are now. Perhaps I'd have a system that consumes 10W instead of 20W.
…but I'm still glad I divested myself of the Pi paraphernalia. It wasn't a happy time for me towards the end, and I don't miss being constantly told that the problem was low power. Zarkwonks.
The laptop is a bit easier, having a screen & keyboard (and trackpad) permanently attached, it runs OMV at least as well a Pi would, plus it has one major advantage: if I get too annoyed with Linux, I can just put Windows back on there! :-D
1513
Looking back at the experiment results, I think I have an inkling of a ‘strategy’: if I need to get stuff onto PavNAS in a hurry, copying from the mounted, external drive (MED, from now on) to the CD-drive-bay-adaptor-mounted HDD (CDHDD) seems to be the quickest way. It's effectively a buffer, of sorts, and, like any buffer, has a limited capacity (456GB in this case).
Any other time (like leaving it overnight, or when I go to work), I can run the slower job of copying stuff onto one of the permanent stores (USBHDDs), from either the CDHDD buffer, or straight from the MED.
I need to do some more testing to find out if there are any more differences in transfer rates to be discovered, particularly when copying files of different sizes (i.e. large like Films, or small like Music).
Where it gets really ‘interesting’ is when it comes to retrieval: having a NAS as merely a back-up is a bit pointless; a simple harddrive would do the same job. The idea of the NAS, as it has been since the start of this project\log, is to be able to retrieve the data, at any time, easily, from any machine in the house (or even further afield…)
If retrieval over the network is as slow as uploading has been, it might all be a bust. It might be similar to past situations where I know I have a copy of a program, or film, or song, but it's just easier & quicker to redownload it, or play it on youtube, than it is to find. In this new case, it might be quicker to retorrent something than it is to copy over (or even stream) from PavNAS.
To try next: streaming a film from CDHDD and also from USBHDD.
2151
The other thing I need to try: copying from another computer to PavNAS but with both machines ethernetted into the same network switch.
