Home Network Attached Storage

[char]

I'm looking at adding a NAS drive to my home network like this:

http://store.buffalotech.com/store/b...100/quantity.1

I know very little about these systems but I'd like to have central drive to back up a 2 Macs and a PC. Ideally I'd also like to be able to point a few Ipad apps at it as well. The ability to access it from outside the home would be nice, but not absolutely necessary.

I don't need a ton of storage, and I have another portable hardrive that lives in a fire proof safe for important stuff.

WiFi router doesn't have a USB port so I can't go that route with an external hardrive.

[::: :::]

I have a LaCie 2big NAS that has been reliable...it's connected to the router with an Ethernet cable

[Lindahl]

I'm a big fan of the QNAP devices, myself.

[highangle]

Recommend you study NAS and save your pennies for something with redundancy, as drive redundancy generally makes things faster as well as offering protection from disk failure.
If you have a good enough internet connection, you can use a cloud storage as your off-site backup.
There's a lot to "Computer Storage", but it's more fun than it looks...

If you have an HTPC or smart TV, that little Buffalo thing will likely disappoint you if you try to use it as a streaming server. If all you can spend is $150, get a $19 USB3 external hard drive case, and a 3TB Toshiba HDD off Amazon for $129.99.

Consumer NASs are usually overpriced. Enterprise NASs are usually astronomical. The solution is to configure one yourself and run free software. I built a nice ZFS JBOD for about $270+disks. It'll hold 24 SATA or SAS drives, if I ever need it to. Runs on ESXi, along with a few other VMs on a server in my basement. Mostly what it does is backup other computers and serve up media, which is probably typical of most home NASs, but it will soak a couple of gigE lines on file transfers from 2 hosts, so I got that going for me...

Start with your network: gigE or 10G Ethernet are probably best, short of some kind of Data Center fabric. Wireless? Not so much, as it's generally slower, and drops more packets which have to be re-sent. If all you have is wireless, that will be your choke point, as most wlans really can't keep up with single-disk R/W speeds.

Now, think about your File System - how your data gets organized on your NAS's hard drives. There are many file systems. Your NAS probably won't run OSX or Apple Server, unless you really need to pay or have something laying around, so there's ZFS, BTRFS, UFS, EXT, NTFS, Reiser, ...

If you want a NAS, you want to run RAID* or RAIDz with at least mirrored drives, and serve up at least Windows Shares and FTP. Drive redundancy is ultimately the only way to protect your lolcats and ponyporn from hardware failure (and ultimately all you're doing by "Backing Up" anything). FTP and Windows Share clients are free or already built in to your computers, tablets, phones, cameras, TVs, etc. NFS, AFP, etc protocols are optional, but also free to use on whatever operating systems you have, should you wish to delve in to that shit.





Example Cheap JBOD: http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/1417322...lpid=82&chn=ps









*Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

[Norseman]

I'm blown away by that epic post. Saving that monologue to my computer right now.

[::: :::]

^^^^Holy shit

Spend a few bucks, get the LaCie or Qnap & run it as a raid and have all that shit he mentions above dealt with, all with a warrantee the company stands behind

And maybe also have a offsite cloud backup on Dropbox or some such

[highangle]

Waiting at the baggage claim for my shit, so I can drive 2.5 hours home. Can't wank in airports anymore, so....


Synology. But even a sexy prosumer NAS isn't going to make a slow wlan any faster. So don't even worry about a NAS if your network is shit.

[huckbucket]

Keep your little portable drive for secure stuff. Everything else ... use broadband, google drive, forget about it. Seriously. If you're worried about interactivity, test it out with the 15Gb they give you already. 100Gb for $2/month. Available everywhere. Never lost.

[RShea]

Buffalo makes some nice stuff. They have entry level as well as higher end boxes that are overkill for typical home users. The JBOD vs raid also depends on how you plan on using it, how important the data is, what your budget is and finally what your backup strategy is- RAID is NOT a backup replacement!!! If you would get infected- things like the Cryptolocker ransomware stuff out there, the files would still be gone on a Raid redundant device as easily on your USB drive in the safe.

QNAP and Synology are a few other players out there too as well as the drive manufacturers like Western Digital. The freeware/open source load your own that Highangle mentioned above can be a geeks dream, if you want to play around some and download software to start, go for it with something like NAS4Free.

[char]

If you have an HTPC or smart TV, that little Buffalo thing will likely disappoint you if you try to use it as a streaming server. If all you can spend is $150, get a $19 USB3 external hard drive case, and a 3TB Toshiba HDD off Amazon for $129.99.

So I can spend $130 at buffalo to get a NAS, which appears to do what I want, or I can get a external harddrive, which I already have and doesn't solve my problem?

To clarify, the NAS would be wired to my wireless router, which in turn is connected, by a wire to my modem. I'm not streaming video from this, I don't have a smart tv, I don't have an extensive digital video or music library.

I am already using google drive, but it is a pain in the ass with certain programs as you can't treat it like a drive (I have Kumo on some computers I have access to, but not at home).

I don't really care about RAID as I back everything important up and put in a safe.

[highangle]

It reads like you just want a little gizmo to save the trouble of plugging in a USB drive, something you consider uncool.

Totally lost interest here. Why don't you just get a Time Capsule and stfu about it?

[huckbucket]

I am already using google drive, but it is a pain in the ass with certain programs as you can't treat it like a drive (I have Kumo on some computers I have access to, but not at home).

Potentially stupid question, but did you actually install the google drive app or are you just going through the web interface? The app mounts drive like a local folder.

[char]

Yes, I want an inexpensive gizmo to save me the trouble of backing up 3 different computers on a home network to an external 1TB USB drive (which I already do/have, so I don't know about the uncool part). It also needs to act as a viewable drive that a few different devices can access. Cloud access would be nice as well. I need the storage upgrade anyways, so if I can get it connected to my network for a few extra bucks why not?

While I appreciate the advice regarding RAID, JBOD, 16 bay rackable storage expanders, none of that is really in my wheelhouse.

So what should I get?

Or should I just buy the eurospec, manual, AWD, diesel Audi?

[char]

The other part of this is I need a simple option for the wife, who has also maxed out her free google storage, tends to not back up her computer on a regular basis, etc...

And another part is that I'm using multiple "free" options to do something that I think could be accomplished with a single NAS and a periodic backup to a secondary USB drive.

[char]

Potentially stupid question, but did you actually install the google drive app or are you just going through the web interface? The app mounts drive like a local folder.

You are correct, I was thinking of a particular computer I use that doesn't have the app installed (not allowed to install) and until recently (pre-Kumo) was requiring me to download files through the web interface.

[highangle]

Buffalo makes some nice stuff. They have entry level as well as higher end boxes that are overkill for typical home users. The JBOD vs raid also depends on how you plan on using it, how important the data is, what your budget is and finally what your backup strategy is- RAID is NOT a backup replacement!!! If you would get infected- things like the Cryptolocker ransomware stuff out there, the files would still be gone on a Raid redundant device as easily on your USB drive in the safe.

QNAP and Synology are a few other players out there too as well as the drive manufacturers like Western Digital. The freeware/open source load your own that Highangle mentioned above can be a geeks dream, if you want to play around some and download software to start, go for it with something like NAS4Free.

I was saying the way to fly is a Solaris or BSD-based NAS, which wouldn't run Windows programs like Cryptolocker very well...


Also, my use of "JBOD" was more about software RAID vs olschool hardware RAID cards that only slow your shit down these days. Hardware RAID is a dying beast, since processor capability has made software RAID a lot faster than little RAID cards can handle anymore.

A JBOD will typically contain one or more RAIDs, which will each hold one or more filesystems. It's not a case of "Either/Or". The JBOD is usually connected to the OS hardware via a "Host Bus Adapter" card in Initator-Target (IT) (Software RAID) mode, rather than Integrated RAID (IR (olschool hardware RAID controller)) mode.
You do everything with the keyboard nowadays. The HBA is just a way to expand your onboard disk capacity and link your software to your drives, moreso than a "drive controller".


"Backup"... Like I said, you can't get around disk redundancy. "RAID" is just a redundancy scheme like "Backup", except it's on the same computer, rather than on a different computer like Backups.
Back up the few gigs of tax returns, property deeds, and family pics a home user is going to need on a cloud somewhere. Use redundant disk arrays on your 24/7 NAS to ensure you don't ever need those backups.

[highangle]

Yes, I want an inexpensive gizmo to save me the trouble of backing up 3 different computers on a home network to an external 1TB USB drive (which I already do/have, so I don't know about the uncool part). It also needs to act as a viewable drive that a few different devices can access. Cloud access would be nice as well. I need the storage upgrade anyways, so if I can get it connected to my network for a few extra bucks why not?

While I appreciate the advice regarding RAID, JBOD, 16 bay rackable storage expanders, none of that is really in my wheelhouse.

So what should I get?

Or should I just buy the eurospec, manual, AWD, diesel Audi?

Why don't you connect a hard drive to one of your existing computers, create a folder on it called, "Backup", and share that folder with every other computer on your network? Bam.

[char]

Why don't you connect a hard drive to one of your existing computers, create a folder on it called, "Backup", and share that folder with every other computer on your network? Bam.

Because they are all laptops which move around the house or leave the house.

[Plainview]

I have one of these:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1140

Works fine. Backing up my photo and music library from my home workstation. Redundancy is supplied by the fact that it simply mirrors the HD in my home workstation so if one or the other fails I still have whichever one didn't.

The interface is a bit clunky but once you figure it out it does what it sounds like you need it to.

It's attached to my wireless router via ethernet cable and I have it mapped as a drive on my HTPC so I can use my TV for digital slideshows or to access my music library from anywhere.

[highangle]

Because they are all laptops which move around the house or leave the house.

1. Cloud

2. I guess it's also uncool to turn on that other laptop so you can backup the first? We already know it's too much of a chore to move a USB external disk from one laptop to another...

3. A NAS needs to be a host on your network, a drive controller of some sort, and have some way to recognize files and send/receive them. This usually entails a complete computer running an operating system of some sort, which is precisely what the Buffalo is - a computer-on-a-chip running an embedded Linux off a ROM. You seem to be thinking you can attach a disk drive to your network without having some way to power the thing. Not gonna happen naturally or by accident. You're going to have to buy or provide a computer with the power to do the above, and you want it to be as fast as possible for the $$, as a gigabyte of file will take 16 minutes, 40 seconds to transfer across your network at 1MB/s. You might get 3-4 MB/s transfer into that $150 Buffalo with the SATA2 laptop drive in it. (The transfer speed in its specs refers to the theoretical design max of a USB 2.0 interface, not the disk or network speed your files will flow across your network.) It just doesn't have the umph to move data fast. Know that going in, and you'll be less disappointed.

4. Low-end solutions to the above will tend to be low-end. If you think that's plain tautology, wait until a low-end solution craps out on ya, then you'll be taut. Tautologies are always true, BTW.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...g&gclsrc=aw.ds

[shroom]

just fucking update Flash

[stfu&gbtw]

You need to consider the basic questions in backup/restore. What data are you backing up? Why? What's the plan for restore?

If you buy a NAS appliance, buy one with mirrored drives. The buffalo devices are fine. Yes, there are less expensive ways to do it, but if you're looking for plug/play, that's the way to go.

As the saying goes, backup is meaningless. It's restores that count.

[irul&ublo]

just fucking update Flash

Like this?








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[RShea]

Take a look at the Transporter which is like a private version of Dropbox. http://filetransporterstore.com/coll.../transporter-1 Then purchase the drive you want to add to it. It will sync the files and allow you to do the backup as well as share the files inside and outside your home network.

[mcski]

Can't you just stream your porn like everyone else?