Network Attached Storage

[my-rifle]

OK I finally bit the bullet and bought one of these. It's also called a NAS. I got the Trendnet TS-S402, a cigar-box sized (8"x5"x5") box into which I snapped two Western Digital 2TB drives. The thing plugs into my router via an ethernet cable just like any other workstation, and it has a browser-based interface that lets you choose whether you want to see two 2TB drives (JBOD or "Just A Bunch Of Disks"), one 4TB drive (with data striped across the two drives), or a RAID1 configuration with one drive mirroring the other. The browser-based interface does all the work of configuring the drives into whatever you choose. I chose a 2TB mirrored RAID1 configuration for safety.

It couldn't have been easier to set up, and I carved a bunch of network shares out of it that my other workstations see just like any other shared drives.

In the end it cost about $600. $250 for the box and $150 each for the 2TB drives. And shipping and my time to set it up. For that I got effectively unlimited storage for movies, photos, music, my websites, etc. Wow.

I recommend this NAS very highly for price, ease of configuration, and access speed.

 

[themcfarland]

Running two seagate 1 gigs nas with usb external support and network and internet access..

I watch vids at work that I have here via port 80 internet

 

[lsufan1971]

We just bought a Dell Powervault NX 300 NAS at my office. Pretty nice. Was at a client site Thursday and they had 2 brand new 7TB Dell Equalogic SAN's total badass!! 60K each

 

[my-rifle]

Well, 60K is a bit pricey for the consumer market, but I'd be happy to have 7TB

If anyone wants to get into mirrored drives though, this setup is ****. Right now 1TB drives are about $100, so you could get into a NAS for about $450 if you were happy with 1TB. Mirroring your data provides a tremendous level of comfort - specially if you run your power through a UPS. That way you're safe from power spikes and drive failures. The only thing you're not safe from is human error.

 

[themcfarland]

we have 4 dell sans , and need more! I have 8 tb local and another at a DR site..

 

[Splash]

The only thing you're not safe from is human error.

or fire

 

[my-rifle]

or fire

OK. You got me on that one

 

[Suburbazine]

I've got 12TB /2 on my local server, and another 2TB offsite for disaster recovery.

I've only used 3TB total and most of that is TiVo recordings.

 

[SKYWLKR]

NAS is good stuff, I use it for small companies and home users that need the space or back up. I also install it when ever I cant get a client that really needs a server with dedicated backup and storage that wont drop the bucks.

Pay me now or pay me later....

 

[noob]

redundant storage is EXTREMELY important. i have several NAS boxes, but my favorite is my ReadyNas NV+. it has a RAID5 array on there now. but i've also have had Buffalo Linkstations and a Kuro Box, as well as built a few from old XBOX's (the original, not 360). those weren't redundant. there are many reasons to have Centralized Storage as well as redundancy and i won't go through that. but how's the read/write speeds w/ your Trendnet box? i think i want something faster for mine, thinking about purchasing a Netgear Pro, i can always built my own as well, but i don't think i can get it as compact as they can.

 

[LeftyDiego]

What the hell do you Guys save?

 

[ryan]

If I knew what any of that ment, it might be cool to me, lol.

 

[Suburbazine]

What the hell do you Guys save?

I mostly save video, pictures, and documents. I have a heavily encrypted Linux virtual box on there that I use to store sensitive information.

 

[my-rifle]

or fire

Actually the cool thing about RAID 1 is that you can pull out one of the drives, and slide in another. The second one will rebuild, and continue to work just like the one you pulled, and the one you pulled is now a backup that you can take off-site.

 

[El Rubio]

or fire

or supply voltage surge.

You probably realize this but some may not. Your off site storage is still in the same location and is subject to dangerous surges. A power strip with a MOV inside isn't going to go very far and just like a fire, a surge could ruin everything plugged in.

 

[my-rifle]

A NAS isn't off-site, but you're right about the surges. I bought a couple CyberPower uninteruptable power supplies with suppressors built in and software to show the condition of the units. Also a generator to back up the UPSs. It's also not a bad idea to have real off-site backups, but the only way I've found to do so is removing a drive in a RAID array, and replacing it with a new one, so the removed drive is a backup.

 

[lsufan1971]

It's also not a bad idea to have real off-site backups, but the only way I've found to do so is removing a drive in a RAID array, and replacing it with a new one, so the removed drive is a backup.

There are many ways to do offsite backups. There are several company's that offer off site servies for next to nothing. Carbonite is one. they charge 54.95 a year per machine unlimited space. You can also setup your own FTP site somewhere and do incremental backups at night (this is how we backup our company's source code). There is very inexpensive backup software called tK8 that will do incremental and move to an FTP once it's done locally.http://www.tk8.com/