NAS

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Jonathan
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NAS

Post by Jonathan »

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136746

Catriona found this while poking around. She has approximately 1TB of video, photos, and documents that she keeps on an external USB hard drive. Recently I knocked it over from its perch on our ottoman, so she has been looking for something that can be safely tucked away where it isn't in danger. The WD My Book Live appeals because she could get at her data from her phone while she was out of the apartment.

Has anybody ever tried anything like this before?

Some things I am concerned about:
access. We'll definitely be running Android, Ubuntu, & Windows 7/Vista. Probably we tack on Win8/iOS soon enough. We really need something usable every which way. If there's a decent way to get at photos from one's phone over cellular networks, that'd be an interesting capability to have.
reliability. We have perhaps 300GB or so of slowly growing personal data which we can't redownload, etc. The really important bits on my web server, but that's fairly slow. So is redownloading the other 1TB of data from the web. So, I would like maybe four years out of this NAS solution without worrying about it breaking down under the huge cat fur load it will encounter in our apartment.
speed. Even with gigabit ethernet, NAS access may be kind of slow, which is concerning. I think I may need to hold out for at least 10 GbE, in which case I need to make sure the rest of my network is up to spec.

quantus
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Re: NAS

Post by quantus »

Gigabit ethernet is generally good enough. You can move a 4GB file around in under a minute. I personally don't move around much more data at a time when I'm sitting and waiting in front of the computer. I'll do larger batch moves or checksums, but generally just get it going and go to bed. It'll be done easily by morning. Also, it does depend on the performance of the drive and system if it'll actually saturate a gigabit link. My NAS will saturate the link. Older computers, especially ultra-mobile laptops like my wife's, don't have a gigabit ethernet card, so they become the speed limiter. My older Netgear NAS would only transfer at 300-400Mbit/s at best (lately it's much worse because one of the drives is going bad and I didn't feel like replacing it because I was getting a new NAS that supported >2TB drives).

Computers are generally easy to support with samba and some NAS's support dropbox like applications. Phones are harder, but most providers have written apps for the major phone OSes now, but some are more mature than others. Video streaming is still the hardest because of transcoding (from HD down to phone). If no transcoding is necessary, then DLNA support is sufficient, which is pretty much universal at this point.

My NAS from Synology has apps for file sharing like dropbox, photo sharing, and music streaming. I believe Netgear has similar apps already or in the works. Most support running a web server to provide access to your data remotely as well as long as you set up a dyndns name. I'd give you an account to take a look, but I'm having trouble with my new Uverse internet setup blocking the incoming ports still :-\ Uverse gives gateways instead of modems, and it's a crappy gateway (100Mbit with 802.11b/g support only and pretty unconfigurable), so I've pretty much had to put my own router behind it. Router behind router setups are generally a bit wonky.

What's your plan for data growth? With that, you pretty much have to replace the unit when you run out of space. You might consider the entry level, 2-bay NAS's from Synology or Netgear. You don't need to populate the second drive right away.

What about redundancy when the drive fails? 4 years is probably pushing it to avoid a single drive failure with high confidence. A 2-bay device allows you to have automatic mirroring if you have 2 drives. You can still replace 1 drive at a time (allow rebuild of RAID in between) with bigger drives if you need more space.

I started with an early 500GB WD NAS (6+ years ago, well before the My Book Live line) and quickly found it unusable. It only had a 100Mbit link, which was painfully slow and wifi links at the time weren't really good enough for streaming if you're more than 20 feet from the router. My data needs were more in the 2TB realm at the time, which meant I needed multiple drives to achieve it. You're probably like most people and can always store your data on the largest drives available today.

Vinny's the only other person here with a NAS I think, and he'll likely have some perspective to add.
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quantus
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Re: NAS

Post by quantus »

I'm assuming you don't want to build your own NAS...

http://www.openfiler.com
http://www.freenas.org/
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quantus
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Re: NAS

Post by quantus »

quantus wrote:I'd give you an account to take a look, but I'm having trouble with my new Uverse internet setup blocking the incoming ports still :-\ Uverse gives gateways instead of modems, and it's a crappy gateway (100Mbit with 802.11b/g support only and pretty unconfigurable), so I've pretty much had to put my own router behind it. Router behind router setups are generally a bit wonky.
FIXED! ... I hope
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quantus
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Re: NAS

Post by quantus »

$1,028.99 for NETGEAR RNDP6000-200NAS ReadyNAS Pro 6 Diskless 6-bay unified network storage for Business bundled with 2x Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM A little pricey still since the RND The arrangement of the drives makes me a bit nervous about the top row of drives running hotter than the bottom row. It's x86 inside, so it's partially supporting Intel. It's like getting the HD's for $50 over the cost of the unit, or another way to look at it is that the drives are about $100 each, so you get the unit for $828.99. In the end, way overkill for what you described as your usage.

If I see a deal on a 2-bay or maybe a 4-bay unit, I'll post it...

Maybe this would work: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/1210519/ I have no idea if that's a decent enclosure or if it supports all the features you want. For the price though, it might be a decent starter unit.
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Jonathan
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Re: NAS

Post by Jonathan »

So, I don't think I need a NAS?

Catriona has some pirates TV shows she wants to hang on to. She doesn't care much about quality so the file sizes are generally small. Right now she's filled 1TB of USB attached external hard drive. It's getting old and has been dropped a fair amount, so I want to replace it before it goes completely kablooie. She said it would be best if whatever we got worked wirelessly, so I'm concentrating on that. The device itself needed necessarily be wireless, but she wants to access it from her Android tablet and her Windows laptop without messing around with cables.

Our network is dead simple. My desktop plugs directly into the modem; all other devices are on the model's wifi network. My desktop is a bad place to attach storage, because the time she is most likely to want to use this storage is while I'm playing a game.

Any suggestions for what kind of thing I need? If I need a NAS I'll get a NAS, of course. But it seems like overkill?

quantus
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Re: NAS

Post by quantus »

Something like this maybe?

Seagate Wireless Plus 2TB Portable Hard Drive with Built-in WiFi (STCV2000100) - https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00JSQV44S/?tag=lookjar-20

I actually have a 64GB flash drive with built-in wifi by san disk so I can store stuff to it from my phone. It'll make its own wifi if no known wifi network is around...
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