Computermabob help - NAS drives and RAID? NLC

[Rich H]

Hello all,
I'm thinking a NAS drive would be a good idea...
And RAID dual redundancy sounds like a good idea too.
Is this even possible and how hard is it to setup?
I've got a wireless router with plenty of sockets on the back...

Everywhere I look there are specs that mean nothing to me
Doesn't need to be huge, ~200GB will be plenty as the broadband is too slow to download anything massive.

Any SE recommendations?

Thanks!
Rich

Pic of the Esprit in tanks:

[graeme]

Check out QNAP. Basically just a wee open-source linux box with a nice web interface for admin. No proprietary nonsense like Netgear etc do. Lots of features. Good support, good community.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-212-Mar ... 207&sr=8-1

Add your own disks to make it any size you like.


Hot swappable:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/QNAP-TS-219P-1- ... 207&sr=8-5

Check out their website for loads of models.

[robin]

You can also use a plain-old-linux release too if you're happy to administer it old skool (i.e. by typing stuff rather than clicking in a web page).

And run it on one of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-prolian ... 658553-421

If you only need 200GB then simply adding a second 250GB drive to this machine will give you 250GB of RAID1 protected storage.

Don't forget to claim the cash back and it'll cost you well less than £200 all in. We use one of these machines at work for a test setup and it's quiet, well made and quick enough to be a low end NAS easily.

For the few pennies that it is you could add in a DVD writer.

Cheers,
Robin

[BiggestNizzy]

I have an Iomega StorCenter I plugged it in and it works, you can even get it to work with apple stuff apparently.

[kerryxeg]

I'm no expert, but my brother is pretty hot in technology. So following his advice I got a synology 211 and put 2 x 2tb drives in it, supplied by scan uk. It was't hard to setup - I just followed the instructions, but I have seen some reviews of NAS drives which required you to figure out correct settings etc so they may not all be so simple. The actual NAS drive can do some clever stuff if you want to do more than just have remote storage. The main differences between the drives are data transfer speed, ease of loading data and networking functions.

I've not set everything up yet so not really seen the system working 100%, but in theory you can have all your media on the NAS drive plug it into your wifi router and be able to access from any networked device ie not necessarily a PC. So in my case the plan is via networked TV's, printer, wifi radio and PC's.

There are a huge range of options out there and a big range in prices, just depends how far you want to go.

[Sanjøy]

What are you trying to achieve ? Safe storage of your data as or to increase the availability of your data around the house to your devices?
Good ideas from everyone and I would also add that to while raid technology is great why not go ultimate raid and cloud it
Old windoze PC with whatever size drive in it and a carbonite or similar online service which drips your data up to their cloud storage making it available for restore and on connected devices eg iPads work PC etc.

I ran freenas on and old PC for years as a storage box. Would not trust netgear Nas boxes as they use their own proprietary file systems. Ie in event of failure you cannot pull a disk out and stick it in a PC to read easily.

S

[Ferg]

The only issue I have with cloud backup solutions is that the liability clauses in the T&Cs are such that your data can be accessed and indeed if they cock up and lose it, you have no comeback. Some of those NAS solutions look really good.

[Lazydonkey]

ReadyNAS duo here and loving it - two 1TB drives RAID'ing away quite the thing.

I'm sure you're paying a premium compared to some of the options above but you plug it in, few clicks of a mouse and you're away.

Only issue is once you've started down the storage route, you then start to become quite paranoid about fires and thefts - things you never ever considered before As such i take a back up of my (backup) drives once a week and leave them in my office.

[Rich H]

Cheers all, will take a look.

The reason I want it is safer storage for her pics and a few other bits, at the moment they are split between a external HDD and the laptop drive.
There is nothing vital but it's not backed up. I don't have any software I'm particularly attached too as all of it is free Linux stuff.

Ta
Rich

[graeme]

If you're happy with Linux tinkering then I think Robin's DIY idea is best value.

[Rich H]

I wouldn't say 'happy' but I can muddle through!

Need to sit down and look at the options.

Cheers
Rich

[campbell]

Even more DIY, and even cheaper, is a couple of drives hooked up via external enclosures, their own power supply, and USB. No RAID, just plain old fashioned periodic backups from one drive to another. Mine are done through combo of Areca Backup for music files etc, and manual initiations of Picasa Backup for photos (don't think it can be invoked by a scheduler or backup tool as yet). And we're putting our "critical data" on Dropbox (household files, letters, small-scale files ie non-photo etc).

Needless to say all of the above was courtesy of Iddon Consulting so the advice was free and the warranty is limited, but he's never let me down yet

Oh and the drives can all serve stuff out to our DLNA network for viewing/playing on "the big telly" etc, courtesy of Mezzmo. Other DLNA and streaming solutions are available of course.

[pete]

The server mentioned earlier in this thread is back below 100UKP (OK only just) having leapt up to more than twice that whilst I procrastinated last year...

http://www.ebuyer.com/weekend-deals

[Rich H]

Decided not to bother in the end - ta!

[pete]

Decided not to bother in the end - ta!

I just bought one. Now just need to work out how what software to put on it.