Network Hard Drive Storage

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I would like to set up a large capacity stand alone networked hard drive. I would like the hard drive to be able to be accessed by local network as well as via internet (if that does not throw a big performance monkey wrench in things). Internet access is not that big of a deal and speed is not that big of a deal.

Given future Black Friday deal potentials out there, what would you recommend?

Thanks!
Jeff

[LCHIEN]

there's lots of external drives out there with Ethernet ports instead of USB ports and these can generally be put on a home network and be a named, letter drive on Windows.

You cannot access it over the intenet unless you geta dedicated IP address instead of a DHCP IP address, usually that will cost you more per month; you would alos likely want a registered DNS name so people can read you drive not by IP address but something like Jeff_Schronce.com.

[cgallery]

You cannot access it over the intenet unless you geta dedicated IP address instead of a DHCP IP address, usually that will cost you more per month; you would alos likely want a registered DNS name so people can read you drive not by IP address but something like Jeff_Shronce.com.

You can actually get-by w/ a dynamic DNS service (like dyndns.org) and a dynamic IP. Many routers these days support dyndns.org, making implementation a snap.

Basically, a dynamic DNS service allows you to register a subdomain (like lchien.dyndns.org) and then run a client on your PC or router that updates dyndns.org any time your local network's IP address changes. So when you lookup lchien.dyndns.org, your requesting machine is pointed to the correct IP.

dyndns.org is free. They have some paid services that do allow you to bring your own domain.

[cgallery]

I would like to set up a large capacity stand alone networked hard drive. I would like the hard drive to be able to be accessed by local network as well as via internet (if that does not throw a big performance monkey wrench in things). Internet access is not that big of a deal and speed is not that big of a deal.

Given future Black Friday deal potentials out there, what would you recommend?

Thanks!
Jeff

I like the NDAS technology from XIMETA (www.ximeta.com). The advantage over most of the other low-cost solutions is speed. Even at 10/100 the units outperform many of the 10/100/1000 solutions from other vendors because of the way the client works. These devices work more like high-end NAS solutions (emulating a locally attached SCSI device).

I noticed Lacie will soon be shipping a 10/100/1000 version of what appears to be a licensed XIMETA product. XIMETA's Giga product isn't quite shipping yet.

For access via the Internet I still like just setting up a machine w/ rdesktop.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

DNS, NDAS, XIMETA, 10/100 Giga . . . .holy smokes. This is not going to be simple huh?

Looks like reviewers are taking a dump on the Western Digital My Book World Edition 1 TV Network Storage System with Data OnHand. Data OnHand is "From any PC, use Windows Explorer to securely browse through folders on My Book World Edition. Open, edit and save files as though they are right there with you. "

I really don't care how much this thing costs. I would just like a large drive say 1TB or > which can be very occassionaly accessed from remote locations. 95% of access will be local network.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

What about this with a couple big ass drives installed in it? I could USB my current back up drive into this as well.

http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Links...oductDetail.do

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I like the NDAS technology from XIMETA (www.ximeta.com). The advantage over most of the other low-cost solutions is speed. Even at 10/100 the units outperform many of the 10/100/1000 solutions from other vendors because of the way the client works. These devices work more like high-end NAS solutions (emulating a locally attached SCSI device).

I noticed Lacie will soon be shipping a 10/100/1000 version of what appears to be a licensed XIMETA product. XIMETA's Giga product isn't quite shipping yet.

For access via the Internet I still like just setting up a machine w/ rdesktop.

I guess I should have looked at the link first. The Ximeta products look quite feasible. So the NDAS is really not just marketing hooie? Sounds like the way to go. Seems like this unit puts RAID1 in easy to use format as well. Luckily most of my business data and employee biz data is stored out on a vendors server. My accounting and other back office functions are what I am concerned about being able to share with others (selectively of course!) and backing up.

[LCHIEN]

Here's a unit for $130 that has a 320GB drive already installed. Low end, low cost, 320GB is a lot for MOST home users.


http://www.buy.com/prod/iomega-320gb...205120567.html

[cgallery]

The Iomega drive that Loring linked to looks pretty nice.

I should also mention that, in order to be safe, you still need a way to backup your data.

I've had a number of customers add USB/Ethernet drives to their systems and use them as primary storage w/ no provision for backup. They say stuff like, "and my data is safe because it is a backup drive."

Which is obviously very wrong.

I recently did some data recovery work for a large casting outfit. They use an IBM RS6000 for CAD, with data saved to a mirror (Raid-1). The RAID failed (with some very weird front-end damage to the drive(s)) and it turns out that someone had changed their backup scripts so some of their most important data was no longer being backed-up (NOT me, I wasn't brought in until after a large west-coast DR outfit dropped the ball--I've never worked with either company before). Finally, they no longer had a tape drive that would read some old backup tapes that were already several years old and of questionable value.

My point in telling this story is that it is possible for multiple failures to occur. This is a pretty large outfit and they were nearly put out of business through a series of failures.

We were able to recover their data their engineering essentially stopped for nearly three weeks.

Backup your data often.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

The Iomega drive that Loring linked to looks pretty nice.

I should also mention that, in order to be safe, you still need a way to backup your data.

I've had a number of customers add USB/Ethernet drives to their systems and use them as primary storage w/ no provision for backup. They say stuff like, "and my data is safe because it is a backup drive."

Which is obviously very wrong.

I recently did some data recovery work for a large casting outfit. They use an IBM RS6000 for CAD, with data saved to a mirror (Raid-1). The RAID failed (with some very weird front-end damage to the drive(s)) and it turns out that someone had changed their backup scripts so some of their most important data was no longer being backed-up (NOT me, I wasn't brought in until after a large west-coast DR outfit dropped the ball--I've never worked with either company before). Finally, they no longer had a tape drive that would read some old backup tapes that were already several years old and of questionable value.

My point in telling this story is that it is possible for multiple failures to occur. This is a pretty large outfit and they were nearly put out of business through a series of failures.

We were able to recover their data their engineering essentially stopped for nearly three weeks.

Backup your data often.

This looks like the unit to have . . . what are your thoughts?

http://www.ximeta.com/web/products/ndportable1_en.php

Can get that unit for $200, though again cost is not a big barrier, rather simplicity, networked speed and reliability are key. This is a 500gb unit. I could plug my current 500gb drive into the USB 2.0 opening on the Ximeta and do a manual backup of data each night. Probably, with enough effort I could automate that.

Loring, I like Iomega and that is my current 500gb external drive, but that unit does not seem to have any remote access capability. I need that option on a limited capacity. Also, this is actually for my business which has about 300gb of disk drive space occupied right now (thousands and thousands of photos, plus large pricing database files).

I do a regular back up to DVD right now. The data is not needed for longer than a year, so I dont worry about loss of data on DVD. It will be nice to have it all on HD though . . .

Let me know on the Ximeta.

Thanks guys.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

They say stuff like, "and my data is safe because it is a backup drive."

That is pretty funny. Reminds me of an old woman whose central station fire alarm did not call in the fire to the fire department. I mean didn't cancel the number when she moved from the house in PA to FL . . .she just transfered the number to FL. I never got her to understand that meant her house in PA no longer had a telephone as she still had the PA exchange pre-fix!

[movnup]

In my company that we merged into a larger firm I was running dual servers with multiple RAID Drives to mirror the main drives and then used Lacie 250 / 320 GB removable drives for NAS storage/backup. I also ran two different softwares for backup so that the problem described above of the mirror drives crashing or human error wouldn't shut us down.

For remote acess I used a VPN firewall and could acess anything anywhere. The Linksys VPN took a little bit to get set up right but I wanted to be very sure our data was secure as a bunch of it was propietary. Take a look at Lacie's web as they have killer deals on their e-mail list and also refurbs e.g. 320 gb for $90 shipped w/ the same warranty. We ran multiple removables using a USB hub which gave us the same functionality of a NAS without the expense.

The VPN a couple of years ago was $150 for each end ???? or close. I learned my lesson one day when we didn't have this set-up and it cost me $2800 in out of pocket expense to restore data, soft costs of rebuilding files, plus a few more gray hairs to add to the collection I didn't need.

[Chris_B]

Check out the QNAP TS-109.

I have one with a 1TB WD HDD and have been *very* impressed with the stability and functionality. It can be easily set-up for automatic file-level copies to a USB-attached drive for backup, or to an equivalent unit in a geographically remote location for simple disaster recovery.

I have tried several cheaper alternatives (from Maxtor and D-Link) and have been disappointed. The Maxtor stuff in particular is extremely bad.

The QNAP is not super-cheap, but it is stable, completely passive (no fan), and trivially easy to set-up and manage even though it has an extremely rich feature-set. If you do set it up for remote access, be sure to use a very strong password.

Chris

[Sparky2002]

Hate to throw another product into the mix but I have the Buffalo Linkstation Live and does all of the above mentioned tasks. You can access from a web portal setup by Buffalo, or FTP with a dyndns service if you do not have a static IP. It is great to be able to stream my mp3's when I am away from home.

Some other nice features are that you can daisy chain another hard drive on to and it will back back up all the data, as long as you set it up. All while using 23 watts of power. I have had this drive for 11 months and have yet to turn it off or have issues.

[pierhogunn]

or if you have an old PC laying about checkout freenas