Best Home Network NAS 802
jammerjam writes "My WD 120GB drive got its MBR scrambled so it no longer mounts in my W*ndoze box (I can recover the data so I know that's intact). But now that's made me realize I need to implement my data backup plan. Scouring the Internet I can't find a reliable resource for home NAS solutions. For every positive review I can find a negative that refutes it. My first choice from what I found starts at $1200...I've got $500. Anyone have a suggestion? I'm not looking for enterprise-level storage here — but I do want reliability."
OpenFiler (Score:5, Informative)
As for the botched MBR, boot an MS-DOS or even a FreeDOS boot disk and do a fdisk
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Re:OpenFiler (Score:5, Interesting)
fdisk /mbr. (Score:2)
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Re:OpenFiler (Score:5, Informative)
You have to buy the drives as well of course, but I paid less than 70 quid for my 500Gb EISA drive. In my specific setup, the main drive could of course go bang, but I'm using it for network attached backup rather than primary storage. No reason you couldn't do it though.
NSLU2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I did mod the box so that it powers back on automatically after a power failure.
Re:OpenFiler (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&SubCategory=124&N=2000150124 [newegg.com]
Right there at the top is a 5/5 rated Lacie 320GB Ethernet Disk for $153.
If you want something a little more secure and flexible get this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822102007 [newegg.com]
And add some of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148261 [newegg.com]
If you use two of those drives in a RAID 1 array, you have 250GB of redundant storage for a total around $370.
Re:OpenFiler (Score:4, Insightful)
All for just under $700. If you really want to rock and roll, get some of the new 1TB drives!
I don't use the raid chip on the mobo, just Linux Software Raid all the way. For a home backup system, it's the way to go - I can always stick the drives in a new system and have it recognize and reconstruct the array. OTOH, I have had a hardware raid card go bad, and man, that's a world of hurt unless you have an exact duplicate card on hand. Not good for a file server! The performance of a software raid is more than adequate, given that the CPU has nothing else to do - it's a file server! The cost/risk/usefulness balance is very heavy in favor of software raid.
I divided the drives into 4 partitions each: a small one mirrored across all drives for the
The remaining partition on all four drives is used for the (raid 5) actual file storage, I put it on
For software, I see some turnkey systems that people are pushing around here, but I just went with a basic Ubuntu server 64 bit. That way I can install any number of packages from Ubuntu's massive package repository.
For backup solutions, I went with backupPC, though I am also experimenting with Bacula. Samba and Webmin round out the file services and maintenance.
The best part of the whole thing? Since I implemented this, I have had 2 complete system losses
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RAID is NOT just for availability (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't, and that's why using at least something like RAID1 is a smart way to go. When one drive fails, your data doesn't all go with that one drive. I've seen drives from batches fail literally within a couple of days of each other. If you're smart and rebuild offline as soon as a failure occurs, your chances of losing all your data are very small. Reliability engineering is all about probabilities, and the mirroring and parity concepts of RAID facilitate this reliability. The only place where your argument holds sway is on RAID0, and that's a pretty specialized application to be sure.
If you want to swap drives without disassembling the machine, get case with enough 5.25" bays for the drives you need and buy some removable trays for $10 a piece. When one drive fails, you turn a key, pull the tray, swap the drive and back in it goes for a rebuild.
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Re:OpenFiler (Score:5, Funny)
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I know parts for European cars are a little more expensive in the US, but a Porsche 924 is pretty much just a mixture of Golf and Passat bits, with an engine worryingly similar to the LT-series vans. Bits really are cheap, as long as you're not looking for a Porsche sticker on the box. Those AP brake pads are just the same. You're paying a lot for a sticky label...
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Re:OpenFiler (Score:5, Interesting)
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Your cost is $240 and you get 320GB of storage.
Consider that 500GB drives cost about $100. So raise your cost by 25% (3x500GB for RAID-5) and you get 467% of the storage.
The time where 80GB drives are cost effective is long past; they can't compete with larger drives for cost-per-gig.
In fact, you suggest (for some reason) spending $200 on a RAID card, which may be a bit overkill for a bunch of tiny 80GB drives. I'd suggest that you're better off shifting $
Re:OpenFiler (Score:5, Insightful)
When your RAID card does die (2 years? 4 years?), what will you do? If that card isn't being made anymore, are you out of luck? Or can a different card read the disks? I don't think they can. I know a few people that ran into this.
With a software RAID, you do lose some performance, but any Linux distro will be able to read the disks. If the OS bugs out (an infrequent occurrence), you might lose a little data, but not a ton... I'm actually not convinced you'll have a good linux distro w/frequent kernel panics anyway. If you lose your card, will you lose it all?
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If I'm reading this right, I do not agree with your theory at all. RAID is not a backup solution, it is for availability and/or speed. One slip of the mouse, one accidental save over, one virus, one power fluctuation, one random controller anomoly, an OS issue (assuming your RAID setup also contained your boot drives) and the list goes on.. and your RAID setup will happily wipe out the data across all of your drives leav
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With hardware RAID, you need to be able to replace the RAID card with an identical one in order to guarantee that you'll have access to your data. With software RAID, it would seem like all you need is a compatible OS (i.e. the one you were using before.)
If the OS trashes your data, you're screwed, but this can happen even with hardware RAID.
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RAID-5 suffers from the write hole problem; if your power fails in the middle of a write then you lost the entire stripe. Worse, if a single block on a single disk is corrupted, you lose the entire stripe since
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RAID-Z [sun.com] is designed to prevent this.
Re:OpenFiler (Score:5, Informative)
With software (Linux) RAID the actual RAID set is just partitions on the physical drive, not the whole entire drive. My
Hardware RAID controllers may have made sense 10 years ago when commodity hardware was much slower (and so a dedicated CPU for RAID was a must), but unless I'm missing something they no longer make sense today.
I prefer them for an office environment. (Score:4, Insightful)
That is because I can get them hot-swappable and with lots of nice lights.
I have a new SATA server that has fakeRAID, and the drive lights are not supported and they aren't hot-swappable.
For a home environment where YOU know what you have and how it is configured, I'd say go with whatever you're comfortable with. Just make sure you document what is what and where
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They exist and work just fine. You can even get the nice blinky lights you like if you buy the right hardware.
Re:OpenFiler (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, I just had a RAID controller die. Fortunately it would still let me mount the disks read-only and recover the data. That pretty much convinced me that RAID is not what I want for home.
To replace the RAID (and because I needed more storage anyway) I went out and bought two 500GB drives. I have them mounted as two plain ol' ext3 drives -- not RAID, not even software RAID. Just two drives. I have a cron job that rsync's one to the other every night. I took a cue from this page [mikerubel.org] and keep a week's worth of backups as hard links. This gives me seven days to recover anything I accidentally deleted before it's gone for good, but doesn't take up much more backup space than just a single copy. My data is mostly unchanging files like CDROM ISOs and MP3s, so after the initial 5-hour mass copy was done the nightlies only take a few minutes.
Now if either drive craps out I can mount the other in any Linux box and recover the data. If anything in that box craps out, including the controller, I can take the drives and recover the data. Yeah, it's possible that the controller could fubar both drives if something dire happens. A RAID controller could do the same. If I had 500GB of storage off-site I'd rsync to there instead.
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But there are still plenty of applications for hardware RAID.
For one thing, most RAID cards have 512+ MB of RAM cache, which is nothing to sneez
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Software RAID is slower (though a reasonable system doing just software RAID has no trouble outperforming a cheap "real" RAID card) but you can move the drives into another system running the same software and have access to the d
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You really don't understand this, do you?
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I should have been clearer in my post. While the disk performance in normal operation may be comparable hardware RAID does have several key advantages. The first being that with anything other than RAID 0 or 1 the cpu hit from the RAID driver during heavy use will be high even on a high end machine.
No, it won't. Even a 500Mhz P3 has a RAID5 checksumming speed of ~1GB/sec. A current low-end CPU (eg: 1.6Ghz Pentium E2140) has a RAID5 checksumming speed of around 4GB/sec.
Suffice to say your average SATA a
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Otherwise, it's pretty easy to build a DIY NAS for right around $500:
WD Caviar SE 16 500GB 3.0Gb SATA drive
Re:OpenFiler (Score:4, Insightful)
Buy responsible, buy informed
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Although FreeBSD 7.0 (the version with ZFS) is still in Beta, it's been in a feature-freeze for a long time, and it's generally rock-solid. Just read the ZFS guides from OpenSolaris and the tuning guide for FreeBSD:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSTuningGuide [freebsd.org]
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-5461 [sun.com]
h [solarisinternals.com]
cheapo walmart linux box (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:cheapo walmart linux box (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no raid controllers and setup to worry about, no elaborate "recovery process" to follow if there is a failure, never a need to open up the computer, nothing special needed for installation (plug them in and share them out), and the external drives can be plugged into any USB port on any computer and mounted. Total cost for 500GB of "network" storage backed up to another 500GB drive on your desired schedule will be about $200 +tax.
As with any NAS or backup solution for the home... Speed, Reliability, Cheap. Pick any two.
RAID 0 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:RAID 0 != Mirrored! (Score:3, Informative)
RAID1 = Mirroring
RAID5 = Striping with parity
RAID0+1 = Mirrored Striping
RAID10 = Striped mirroring
Re:RAID 0 != Mirrored! (Score:4, Informative)
How many drives can you afford to lose?
RAID0: you can lose 0
RAID1: you can lose 1
RAID5: if you don't remember this one, you're hopelessly lost anyway, so sure... you can lose 5.
RAID6: RAID5 with an extra pairity drive.
RAID0+1: you've added RAID1 to RAID0.
RAID10: you've added RAID0 to RAID1.
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Re:RAID 0 (Score:5, Funny)
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I've got the DNS-323 (Score:4, Informative)
As a bonus, it's debian based, so you can hack the OS as well to server up things light lighttpd, upgrade samba, or run subversion.
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Re:I've got the DNS-323 (Score:5, Informative)
I also own a DNS-323, and I can't recommend it so much. The 323 is *not* debian-based, it runs busybox. You can install debian on your hard disks, chroot a shell to the debian install directory, and start services like a separate http server, ssh server, etc under debian. It isn't quite the same thing, however...
The kernel that comes with the 323 is a huge problem, and the chroot debian can't fix that. There is a hack to load a new linux kernel image on top of an already-running kernel (akin to the way that you used to use LoadLin to boot linux from DOS, if anybody was doing that way back when). This method of replacing the kernel is highly experimental though. As it stands, nobody knows how to create a custom firmware for the 323 and load it without hardware hacking -- the firmware update interface checks new firmwares for a digital signature from D-Link.
I should also point out that even the latest version of the 323 firmware, 1.03, disappears files. It has also been reported that it will not rebuild RAID-1 arrays correctly. To demonstrate the former bug you try to transfer a file bigger than about 20GB to the NAS. It will report to your operating system's SMB layer that it took the file fine, but the file just won't be on the filesystem. I have tried this using Windows XP, Mac OS X tiger and leopard, and my stock Feisty Fawn boxen, using two different switches. The 323 exhibits the same behavior to all of them. The earlier firmwares are also really notorious for dropping files if you transfer large numbers of small files in batches (like, say, backing up your filesystem).
Also, the 323 only supports ext2 as its underlying filesystem. This probably explains some of the problems that it has when working with terrabyte-sized arrays? Also, the 323 does not provide a safe way of running fsck (you can do it via the command-line if you set up ssh/telnet, but only if you are willing to fsck a mounted filesystem [eep!]). In any case, it has been over a year, and D-Link has not got the kernel right on the 323 (and all they have to do is compile a kernel > 2.6.6 and ship it in a firmware), so I would suggest avoiding it...
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The only downside I have found is that the DNS-323 does not correctly implement the Windows Archive attribut
Airport and USB drives (Score:4, Informative)
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Drobo? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Drobo? (Score:4, Informative)
1. It isn't cheap at $499--without drives.
2. It is not a NAS as such. Drobo is a USB-attached external drive system. Yes, its volume(s) can be shared over a network, but it is not a standalone, network-connected device.
Now, if Drobo had a gigabit Ethernet connection, I would seriously consider saving up for one....
Re:Drobo? (Score:5, Informative)
Freenas (Score:4, Informative)
I use a old beat up computer with 3 500 gig external usb harddrives in a raid 5 which gives me a terabyte of storage
www.freenas.org
FreeNAS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Insttall FreeNAS, http://www.freenas.org/ [freenas.org] .
Raid-1 (mirror) a pair of reliable disks (hitachi or seagates).
Set up CIFs shares.
Old box laying around? (Score:2, Redundant)
Usually people have older hardware laying around doing next to nothing. If this is the case for you, have a look at FreeNAS [freenas.org]. It's really robust and works well for me.
Internal drives are cheap these days.
For the record... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need enterprise storage solutions: great. That means that you probably don't need to do nightly backups.
The lesson in you losing your data is not that you needed NAS, but you needed to make better backups.
Define "reliable" (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want data to survive a hard disk failure? RAID. (Though I make no guarantee that any of these things have implemented RAID terribly well, particularly if a disk fails 2 years later and the replacement you plug in has totally different geometry).
Do you want data to survive your own mistakes? Then use the NAS as a backup for your own PC(s).
Do you want data to survive poor implementation in the firmware? For best results, you'll probably need two totally different devices and some means of keeping them synchronised. (Though a number of Buffallo's Linkstation products can support a separate external USB disk for backup of the NAS itself).
Do you want data to survive a house fire? If you've got immense quantities of data, you'll need a unit you can take offsite. If not, perhaps a subscription-based internet backup provider is the way to go.
How many computers? (Score:3, Informative)
Even if you've got two or three computers, a good external HD will be cheaper and probably more reliable than a NAS box, simply because there are fewer parts to break on a USB drive than a NAS, which is typically a power supply, network card, some RAM, an OS in ROM, drive controller, and one or more hard drives. The only thing you won't get from an external HD is RAID, but you can fake that with software if you get more than one per computer, and RAID only means that the data's still accessible if one drive dies (assuming you're not stupid enough to use RAID 0), so it's probably not important for you.
If your data is valuable, burn the most important stuff to DVD periodically and stick it in a bank's safe-deposit box.
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Is that one of those magic boxes that stops the disk from degrading within a couple of years?
Inexpensive backup (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Inexpensive backup (Score:5, Funny)
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linksys nslu2 (Score:2, Informative)
Some options (Score:2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817716028 [newegg.com]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392017 [newegg.com]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817716051 [newegg.com]
Or this puppy, which looks fricken sweet, on-line array expansion, and does NAS as well as direct-connect:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3143432&Sku=D162-1000 [tigerdirect.com]
Just add hard drives.
MyBook World Edition 2 (Score:2, Informative)
DI 624S (Score:2)
If I'd known that I could have bought one of these, I'd have not bought my 2640B :-(
Been said a lot already, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I run Bacula [bacula.org] (it's not just for the enterprise, folks) and back up all the important data to the disk array.
I think I peek in there once a month or so, mostly to check disk space and see to patching. The box has zero Internet connectivity, so no probs there.
Was in your situation... (Score:2)
Ingredients:
- Cheapo processor/mobo/case combo, $100. Make sure it's a low power, or you'll have a very noisy box. Ensure that the motherboard has onboard network and at least four SATAII connectors.
- RAM: 512MB will do just fine, $20.
- HDD's: 3x500GB, shouldn't run you more than $250 for the lot. I like Seagate drives, but you can get cheaper ones if you wish.
Instructions:
Install your linux distro of choice on one drive and create a software RAID5 using the mda
Linksys NSLU2 (Score:3, Informative)
I'm using a Linksys NSLU2 [wikipedia.org] as a NAS. I've wiped it of the original Linksys firmware and installed the officially supported ARM version of Debian Linux on it. Debian is installed on a 2GB USB Memory Stick, and I have a 500GB External USB HD attached via a tiny USB hub. I also have an HP F380 Printer/Scanner attached.
I'm using the box as a Samba server for file sharing, SANE server for remote scanning, CUPS server for remote printing and a Twonky Media server for steaming audio and photos to my XBox 360. It all works really well.
Not a bad NAS (or really a complete Debian Linux box) for about $250 for the NSLU2 and the Harddisk.
Selected models (Score:2, Informative)
- Thecus (2 bays - 700$ ; 4 bays 950$)
- Synology (2 bays - 750$ ; 4 bays - 800$)
- QNAP (2 bays - 650$ ; 4 bays 1250$)
- Netgear (4 bays - 1300$ ; 2 bay model seems sub-par to me)
Prices are for 2x750GB and a few weeks old.
Check the specs and reviews for what is important to you.
My criteria are : Media protocols capability, BT client, rsync, throughput, software maturity, webserver : I'll go for the Synology DS207+ , that is - unless this discussion
Time Machine (Score:2)
My $0.02 (Score:2)
The computer you buy will be dictated by how much space you need--if you want multiple
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ReadyNAS from Netgear (was Infrant) (Score:3, Informative)
Buffalo is the way to go (Score:4, Informative)
I just got a 2TB buffalo terastation pro II [buffalotech.com] for 1K and it's awesome. Here's [trustedreviews.com] a review of the 1TB model. They offer other options, but this seemed like the best one for me based on price, capacity, and reputation. True reliability means you probably want RAID 5 and that means 3 or more drives. If you don't want to fight with raid cards and configuring it from scratch, then this is a great option.
personal experience: ximeta (Score:4, Informative)
I built a debian box ... (Score:3, Informative)
So I built a debian box (after looking at FreeNAS [freenas.org] and OpenFiler [openfiler.com] and concluding that they were inadequate for the hardware I had already bought ...).
I used: SilverStone GD01 [silverstonetek.com] case (it has room for 7 HDs and big, quiet fans), an Asus AM2 board with 6 SATAII connectors and 2 x gigabit ethernet, I installed a low power Athlon X2 BE-2350 and 2GB RAM as well as 6 Seagate SATA disks with 250GB each. I partitioned the disks to contain a small (2G) partition for RAID-1 and swap (2 x RAID-1 for the root/boot fs - Linux can't boot from software RAID 5 yet, 4 x swap partitions) and the rest of the disk is used for a 5+1 disk RAID-5 setup.
Performance is very good, I can saturate at least the gigabit ethernet LAN connection of my desktop PC both at reading and writing (it chokes at 44MB/s - local speeds are much higher, mail me if you want a benchmark run) and I can also run various server stuff on the box that a normal NAS wouldn't support. The box is extremely quiet, so I'm very pleased.
BackupPC will solve all your problems (Score:3, Interesting)
All you need is a cheap Linux box (Debian works well) with one or more large disks. The disks and disk controller don't need to be particularly fast either since backups happen during off hours. If you are worried about disk failure put in two drives, use software RAID, and forget about it.
What is "NAS"? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, any geek worth his/her salt must know what NAS is. Since it must be a very common term for people to use it without explanation, I looked it up on Wikipedia. Now I no longer need to turn in my geek card, because I know that NAS is a 34-year-old American rap musician [wikipedia.org]. It would surely be awesome to invite him home to perform over the network, thus solving problems of scrambled hard disks with the Best Home Network Nas.
Of course, NAS might stand for any number of other things [wikipedia.org] including Network-Attached Storage, Network Access Server, Non-Access Stratum, Network Audio System, or of course that shining epitome of disk failure prevention, the New American Standard bible.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm done scratching my head over this, because I'm developing a bald spot.
flyback (Score:3, Informative)
http://code.google.com/p/flyback/ [google.com]
Leap Frog (Score:3, Interesting)
I build one drive until I "get it right", then I place anoth drive in the system as slave. Then I boot Knoppix 3.8 or DamnSmallLinux or something similar from the CD drive (I found some Live Linuxes make this process take much longer).
Then I issue the command
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=512M count=160
I have 1G of ram in the machine so I am assured of getting full 512M reads, then 512M writes, so the OS does not have to do extra buffering.
It takes almost exactly 1 hour and 8 minutes to totally mirror a drive. This copies the MBR, all partitons, even the blank, space byte-for-byte from one drive to another. It ignores files, folders, etc (so those long filename errors NEVER happen) it just copies RAW data.
I then take the second drive out of the system and place it on the shelf.
In the event of a failure (I am down to 4 working drives now.)
I take the good drive off of the shelf, make it
I then take
I take the failed (or failing) drive and make it
After the new drive is happy and in place for a few days, and I am sure I got everything I needed off of the failing drive, I re-clone the good drive and put it on the shelf.
So, far it has been the most hassle free disaster recovery plan I have ever used.
You can get 5 identical 80G hard drives for less than $200 with a very short search.
unRAID FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
1) It doesn't stripe and it easy expands to as many as 16 disks.
2) Because it doesn't stripe disks that aren't being used can goto sleep, much less power usage, noise, and heat trust me.
3) One disk is used for Parity and must be as big as or larger than all others but all other disks can be any size you want - they need *not* be identical. JBOD indeed!
4) If you lose a disk you still have access to the data, if you lose TWO disks you will lose data - two disks worth and NOT the whole array! Yes I know RAID can protect against multiple disk failure but only with hot spares or schemes that mean you get to use even LESS of your disks for data. I get to use ALL of my disk space save just one disk. I'm actually running sans a Parity disk right now since I had a hardware failure, I have access to ALL of my data and am hoping a second doesn't die on me while NewEgg ships.
5) It boots from FLASH memory on cheap hardware, you do not lose storage space to an OS.
6) The trial version supports two data disks and a parity disk, perfect for testing. The full version isn't super expensive. The product has decent support.
7) The disks use standard ResiserFS as their F/S. Want to pull one and take it someplace to mount to a Linux box? Sure, go for it. Need to do a data recovery for some odd reason? It's ResierFS so whatever works for that works for this.
Doing this for just $500 won't be easy without some spare hardware around. The Asus P5B V0 M/B runs about $106 at NewEgg and has 8 SATA ports (one is eSATA) and GigE. That and two 4port Promise cards (SATA or IDE) will get you up to 16 drives but obviously I'd start with just the M/B. Buy some cheap memory, no more than a gig. I spent $25 on the RAM I bought and $60 for a 2.4Gig Celeron D and that's WAY more than enough. Slap all that into a case you have laying around with a decent P/S and you're good to go on the cheap sans drives. Spend the rest on drives, I find Seagates work well and their 5yr warranty rocks! Oh you will need a FLASH stick too, 512meg is WAY more than enough so figure $25 here too.
Some things you might NOT like about unRAID:
1) You aren't going to turn this into a NAS\WEB server\Mail server. It's storage stupid, use it for that. To do all of those things you'd need a swap space and out of the box this doesn't have swap - nor is it needed. It can be added but....
2) Each drive is it's own share. I address them using UNC naming and there are ways to access files across multiple drives as a single share but it's not like RAID with one big fat volume. IMO the advantages outweigh this downside, more details can be found on the unRAID site.
3) It ain't super fast. Yes, it will max out a 100meg NIC pretty good but not the GigE. You're getting the throughput of a single drive with some overhead so there's no aggregation of disks to improve speed. It IS fast enough to stream HD and multiple SD streams are no biggie either. I *do* back my machines up to this without issue using Acronis. Do use a GigE NIC however, it bursts above the 100Meg mark and testing has shown advantages to having it, it just cannot max it out continuously.
4) unRAID doesn't YET support NFS, Tom is working on it. SMB is what I use.
5) The driver is open source but the controlling software is closed source and yup Tom makes some money on it. Source is available for the GPL'd driver software he's modded so you could go around this but frankly I think his pricing is reasonable, zealots might not think so.
Check it out, if nothing the ASUS board is a good base for damned near anything else you might want to build for a NAS and is supported under Linux, it has onboard video on it too. More details about the M/B, HD deals, or other hardware like SATA cages can be found on the unRAID support forums and in the Wiki.
My thoughts... (Score:4, Informative)
My 'dream NAS' would support 3.0 Gb/s SATA transfers, support RAID 0-6 + JBOD, use a Linux-mountable filesystem on the drives (ReadyNas uses EXT3), have iTunes and DLNA media streaming support, firewire 800/USB 2.0 connections for the currently-direct-connect-only OS X Time Machine, support and use 1 GB transfer speeds.
The Thecus 5200B is sinfully fast, but doesn't have the iTunes or DLNA servers (it is a SMB box, not a home server, after all).
Opinions?
BSD and Linux based NAS (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.freenas.org/ [freenas.org]
External Drives (Score:4, Interesting)
Why use NAS when what you need is a backup? (Score:3, Interesting)
Once in a while, yank the drive out of the enclosure and drop it in your safe deposit box and put a new drive in.
Advantages:
1) Easy approach to off-site storage
2) Protected from errors and viruses
3) Doesn't cost much
4) Doesn't waste power
5) Can restore on other systems
Disadvantages:
1) Not a very impressive geek toy
2) Not particularly fast
NAS != backup!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me state something VERY VERY CLEARLY here:
RAID is not backup.
NAS is not backup.
SAN is not backup.
Snapshotting is not backup.
Backup is backup.
A "backup" means A COMPLETE COPIES OF FILES STORED OFFLINE.
RAID is a way of providing data availability and reliability. It doesn't provide backups. SAN and NAS are various frameworks for presenting the data in a storage system (generally RAID, but not necessarily) to an environment. It doesn't provide backups either. Backups consist of making COMPLETE COPIES (and yes that includes incrementals--ultimately, with a base copy plus incrementals, you have a complete copy) of files, STORED OFFLINE. Snapshots provide copies of files (and the smart snapshot systems do provide complete copies), but they're still online copies of the data. They will let you recover files to a point-in-time, but if your storage array goes T.U. for some horrible reason, you're still screwed.
RAID is fantastic for keeping your online data from being destroyed or taken offline due to hardware failures. SAN/NAS is great for making data available to a networked environment. However, if you want backups of your files, then back up your files--don't use RAID (and SAN/NAS on top of it) as a backup scheme, because it ain't.
Re:On the cheap (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Build / buy a Windows Home Server (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new around here, right?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Build / buy a Windows Home Server (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus. The number of times I've said that and regretted it.
Re:Build / buy a Windows Home Server (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/EX470-MediaSmart-Server-Sempron-Processor/dp/B000UY1WSK/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3_s9_rk?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&s9r=8a585b431588ae070115f9650cd90da1&itemPosition=3&qid=1195658849&sr=8-3 [amazon.com]
Re: (Score:2)
You must be new here...
Windows Home Server Review (Score:4, Informative)
I second that suggestion.
I just completed a very extensive review of both the hardware [nyud.net] and software [nyud.net] for Windows Home Server. It is a fantastic backup solution and you can build a machine for very little cost. Not only do you get a great backup solution, but you also get a lot more. Windows Home server has a built in web server that will host all your files online for free. From the website you can also Remote desktop into any of your Windows boxes that support remote desktop. You can also stream all your media content from the Home server to any machine on your network. There are some problems with the Media Streaming, hopefully those will be fixed. Last but not least you have the ability to use add-ins which can add tons of extra functionality.
The biggest limitation of Windows Home Server is that it will not backup anything but Windows machines, but that does not mean someone won't write an add-in that allows other operating systems to be backed up.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, let me break down the out of box comparison.
Ubuntu does not come with client software for windows machines to automatically back up the windows box nightly onto the Ubuntu server. WHS does.
Ubuntu requires you to install Samba. WHS uses windows shares / web server interface.
Ubuntu requires raid hardware or software. WHS uses a 'storage pool' methodology and allows disk redundancy without raid, and automatic growth of the 'storage pool' by plugging in a USB drive or ESATA
Re:Linux is actually cheaper here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Task Scheduler to copy files from client to a network share? Can't be all that complex to set up a basic data backup routine...
Samba has a pretty easy GUI setup, even in Ubuntu. It's also already installed, I believe.
Software RAID is already built-in. If you use Fedora instead of Ubuntu, you can use LVM's GUI tools to do all of the dynamic partition sizing goodness.
Use the Package manager to install rdesktop, which allows remote desktop access to any Windows box. Done.
Ah, now there's one that you've gotten perfectly correct (IIRC), and why I use Bacula [bacula.org] on my home network (which is admittedly not something for the casual user).
I'm not so sure I'd want any un-hardened machine to be accessible from the Internet; esp. a Windows one that both streams media and holds all of my personal data in one easy-to-reach location. That's just begging for a first-class arse-pounding from the first script kiddie to see that you've done that.
I'm sure you probably have... but I don't think you had all the facts at hand when you did. Now know that I'm not knocking your choice at all - if you use something as a beta and like it, and it works for you, cool... but I think that you haven't really looked all too deeply into the alternatives, you know?
Personally, I find that spending $169 for just the OS (when I can get at least an extra hard disk with change left over at that price) to be a bit much. There is also the headaches specific to Windows - the high probability of being targeted, the EULA that says I do it MSFT's way or no way at all, the 'phoning home', the DRM, the extra overhead (I stick with runlevel 3 on my home servers), and the fact that there really isn't much I can tweak on it (at least by comparison)... But then, I do the sysadmin thang for a living - so my needs, skillset, and priorities are a lot different from that of the average home user.
And so it goes... :)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It also has a nice feature that doesn't copy the same file twice (or more) if it's unchanged
You know that's been a basic feature of rsync... forever, right? And that rsync will only copy the parts of a file that have changed? I wouldn't recommend Linux, but OpenSolaris or possibly FreeBSD on the server with ZFS and rsync on the client gives you everything you seem to want:
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