Network Attached Storage

[Conan the Librarian]

An email dropped in to my box earlier and has me thinking. The Netgear SC101 (or similar) is essentially a dual caddy, that attaches by ethernet, to your router. You install your own flavour and size of hard drive accordingly and this provides central storage for all, but especially for those with more than one PC and seems a more reliable way of storing/sharing/archiving data than through the Win XP network.

Anyone got one? The credit card is itching in my pocket and I have a horrible fear that when I next check in, that I may be a proud owner...

Conan

[The Nr Fairy]

First off, a declaration of (minor) interest - I work in the software bit of a large firm doing storage, including NAS, albeit in network management.

This is a way to have an always-on box to store stuff on, rather than doing the same thing with an expensive PC.

And it seems the only one of the major to do more than Windows or MacOS (i.e. Linux client support) is Buffalo (compared with Maxtor, Seagate and Netgear).

[TheOddOne]

Conan,

Just read the spec. Only £71 plus the cost of 2 drives.

So tempting, oh, so tempting...

TheOddOne

[Conan the Librarian]

HeeHee, bagged an hour or two off and am just going to grab one now. Having a new 300GB drive spare already, has convinced me to go for Gold. Will report back later... :-)

Conan

[BOFH]

It is probably too late now, but nonetheless:

These SOHO NAS solutions are very much in their nascency and many buyers have been gravely disappointed. The Linksys, I believe, was quite problematic, and I wish you better luck.

As the Near Fairy says, Buffalo (a bit more expensive) seems to be the only brand to really get into it, being OS-agnostic. On the other hand, if you are only going to run Windows, and you do not need it through its own IP address, it might be worth a look, particularly if you are retiring those old 160GB ATA drives.

BOFH

[VP959]

I've got the Buffalo, it's less than perfect but OK. It's a pain to set up, particularly if you want to do something obvious, like have all your emails on the shared network drive. Setting up folders has to be done via the setup systems as well, which is a bit of a pain.

A plus point for the Buffalo is the automatic backup to a connected external USB drive. This is great, as you can schedule backups in the middle of the night and be reasonably sure that your data is kept safe and readily accessible if the worst should happen.

A minus point is the built-in print server on the Buffalo. It's rubbish and falls over with monotonous regularity. If you try and print more than a single document it causes the printer to crash, for some reason. I've found that the only way to print big documents, or multiple copies, is to plug the printer back into the main PC and print directly.

Other than that, the performance is OK. I've streamed video from it with no problems and tend to use it as primary storage for virtually all data files. Once accessed for the first time in any session it seems to be almost as fast as the built in drives.

VP

[BOFH]

VP959

indeed. That's why I bought a 2nd-hand laptop for 100 pounds and put the printer, fax/modem, mail/news/FTP/video server and 1 TB of (external) storage on it. And power spikes don't affect it (if you are currently in W4, you'll know what I mean).

To me, the problem with these NAS solutions is that you always need an additional external drive if you want to keep an off-site copy. If they are not IP-adressable, you can't run an FTP or P2P server from them - the technology will be here within a year, I'll warrant.

BOFH
(ooh, just had another outage - heh heh, I have a 36-hour UPS)

[Conan the Librarian]

Well, things here are going well,though not swimmingly. I do think that will be very impressed eventually though. The software needs attention certainly. The prompt to check for updated software is like nothing I have known for a while and is frankly, poorly implemented at present. Very capable and powerful, but silly errors like not allowing firewall warning and advisories to show through the "hung" software installation is embarassing. It would fool a non techie very quickly. (And this has been the same through 2 pcs) It seems that this has been rushed to market, as the updates both to software and firmware are not measured in single versions, but about four ahead. Ok. we have an immature product, but it is promising an awful lot and to be objective, Ii simply think it is still in some sort of beta stage. However, what it promises, it can and will do well, even now. In three months, I think it will be a real winner. Mac and Linux drivers are apparently in development and the whole feel of the thing will be different in the near future.

So. What does it do and does it work sufficiently fast to be viable for most users? The answer so far, is a resounding "Yes" Access times through the wired PC is surprisingly fast. My own requirement is backup and distribution of music and photographs. Not sure if I would like to do video editing as yet, but on the whole, it is quite fast enough. A good point is that you can use any old disk that is hanging around, (though ATA 6 minimum) and give it a useful new life.

In all, I commend it to the house, though in two months, it will be a lot better still. Theo 300GB disk in there now, came from a cheap firewire caddy, but the vagaries of getting access to that from another PC eventually got me down. (Room for two disks, so another 300 will give 600) What I will say, is that with the speed of development, if anyone is thinking of this for a solution, PM me first to see whether I have hung myself. So far, I am optimistic.

Conan

[shuttlebus]

Check out: -

http://www.freenas.org

I had an old PC (P3, 500MHz, 128Mb ram) and dropped all my spare HDs in it.

Had a NAS up and running in about 25 minutes - Cost=£0; Storage=60Gb

Supports Raid 0,1 and 5 in software!

Of course, now having proved the concept, I am going out to get a set of matched 250Gb drives and will set them up as a RAID 1 mirror.

Regards,

Shuttlebus