Momitsu MS-R5 1TB / 1.6TB Media Server

By Alexander Grundner | March 27th, 2005

Momitsu steps up to the plate in a big way with its addition of the MS-R5 1TB / 1.6TB media server, capable of RAID 0 / 1 / 5. Previously the company introduced the V800N network DVD player, which can playback just about any digital file format you can throw at it (seriously) including DVD VOB files and DivX. But now Momitsu has married the two products to form a compelling solution for any networked home (see suggested configurations). However, people will most likely use the MS-R5 as a central file server, and possibly a media server, for streaming media files to PCs, wireless handhelds, and media adapters.

Momitsu gave the MS-R5 line all the power of an enterprise-level file server, like FTP access and LAN print serving, and shrunk it down into a shoe box sized device packed with all the storage most people will ever need. Each MS-R5 includes 4 SATA hard drives, 2 USB 2.0 ports (for print serving or daisy chaining more storage), and is wired (100/1000 Ethernet) or wireless (via a wireless 802.11a/b/g bridge adapter) network ready. And my personal favorite feature (simple I know, but indispensable) are the 4 LED indicator lights on the front panel that alert you when a drive has failed – comes in handy when you have to do quick drive swap in a RAID 5 array (no more guess work).

So how much can you store on each server? According to the manufacturer’s site:

MS-R5 Capacity: 1TB (Street price: $1,799)
1TB = 1,000GB = 1,000,000MB
= 2000,000 MP3 Songs
= 1,538 CDs
= 1,538 DVD Quality MP4 Movies (720×480)
= 232 DVDs

MS-R5 Capacity: 1.6TB (Street price: $2,999)
1.6 TB = 1,600GB = 1,600,000MB
= 320,000 MP3 Songs
= 2,461 CDs
= 2,461 DVD Quality MP4 Movies (720×480)
= 372 DVDs

* Compatible with Windows, Mac OS and Linux/Unix systems

RAID level options:
RAID 0 – Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disk drives) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance. If one drive fails then all data in the array is lost. (100% of total disk capacity available)

RAID 1 – Mirroring and Duplexing: Provides disk mirroring. Level 1 provides twice the read transaction rate of single disks and the same write transaction rate as single disks. (50% of total disk capacity available)

RAID 5 – Block Interleaved Distributed Parity: Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance. Level 5 is one of the most popular implementations of RAID. (65% of total disk capacity available)