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Nerdatorium: NAS and RAID for home filesharing and backup
September 11, 2008
2:22 am
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Dan-H
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I'm looking into an 100Mbit ethernet Raid enclosure/drive setup.

anyone looked into this?

I want safe backup for photos, but also a way to share files for more than one computer.

I don't have high performance demands, so dual disk RAID 1 seems like a decent fit.

What I'm looking to find out is
1) whats really reliable
2) what software is needed, ether on the NAS or on the client for access

ps: for the non-nerds

NAS is Network Attached Storage -- think shared drive, but without a computer

RAID is Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks -- think hot backup. if one fails you still have all your data.

why?

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September 11, 2008
2:27 am
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JohnDF
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"Dan-H" wrote: why?

Why not just use an external hard drive?

I used to wheel a lot. . .

September 11, 2008
2:32 am
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Dan-H
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an external hard drive connects to a computer (usually via USB ) and needs a computer running to serve the files to other computers.

The files aren't available unless the computer its connected to is running.

Also, a single external drive has no redundancy. If the drive dies, your backup is dead.

finally, the performance of a shared drive running behind windows isn't that great. Not that big of an issue, especially if wireless laptops are accessing the shared drive (wifi is really slow compared to everthing wired).

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September 11, 2008
3:41 am
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I set a raid at my business years ago and it has worked flawlessly for well over 5 year. (knock on wood) It is in a standalone case with it's own power supply and runs off of a pc. I have been rally happy with it. About the only downside is that the drives are only about 7gigs. From there I back up to CD.

September 11, 2008
5:24 am
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funny you should post this. i was just talking to heidi about this. we've been looking at something simple and i think the winner in our home will go with the netgear 500gig nas removable hdd. the cool thing about that is its already set up to image the first drive once you slide a second drive in. no having to configure the raid yourself. then once its full pop in another drive and keep on truckin. more than likely go to a terrabit drive once the 500 is full. we have lots of photos and music. its also compatible with the ps3 so i can stream video, music and photos without turning heidis pc on. also it is a print server so i dont have to have heidis cpu on when i want to print from my laptop. 8)

September 11, 2008
5:30 am
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Dan-H
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I was looking at the exact same setup.

I have no need for a print server. I run a wired print server off of my wifi network direct to a parallel port. (HP Jet direct printer port). I think it was 15 bucks on eBay.

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September 11, 2008
5:37 am
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"Dan-H" wrote: I was looking at the exact same setup.

I have no need for a print server. I run a wired print server off of my wifi network direct to a parallel port. (HP Jet direct printer port). I think it was 15 bucks on eBay.

lol thats what we used to use at work before they actually started buying printers with them built in. it sucked because they stick out depending on where the parallel port was located. ours were big too. kind of like a small ethernet hub. lol

September 11, 2008
1:26 pm
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Fred
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I've been using a Maxtor Shared Storage network attached drive & print server. It's not the fastest thing around but it's worked well for a few years now. It doesn't have raid, but I use is as a second level backup anyways so it doesn't matter too much.

I backup our laptops to a Linux server. The linux server backs up to the Maxtor Shared Storage drive.

September 11, 2008
1:43 pm
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Justin
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"Dan-H" wrote:

ps: for the non-nerds

Thank you.

September 11, 2008
1:56 pm
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"Justin" wrote: [quote="Dan-H"]

ps: for the non-nerds

Thank you.

Thank you for reading the whole post and highlighting the p.s. part. My eyes had glazed over by that point. 😀

I just back up everything on a portable hard drive that I lock in my safe. Is that a bad thing?

September 11, 2008
2:22 pm
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Dan-H
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"Bender" wrote:

I just back up everything on a portable hard drive that I lock in my safe. Is that a bad thing?

If backup only was my concern that might work. the risk is your backup drive in your safe decides to stop working, or part of the drive becomes corrupt and you don't learn this until you need it to restore something you lost.

Backup to CDs or DVDs is also possible (what I do now) but I've got a pile of them lying around.

another approach is network backups to some provider on the internet, but I don't want my data just "out there".

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September 11, 2008
2:30 pm
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JohnDF
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The only data I store on my computer are pictures and some blank work documents. I lead a simple life.

I used to wheel a lot. . .

September 11, 2008
3:12 pm
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Justin
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I back up my laptop to our server at work, and also to my desktop at home. What are the chances of all 3 (Laptop, Server, Desktop) taking a dump?

September 11, 2008
4:31 pm
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Dan-H
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"Justin" wrote: What are the chances of all 3 (Laptop, Server, Desktop) taking a dump?

pretty small .

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