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Options for lower-cost home NAS/storage solutions

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 11:33:17 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) ( Tech )

I was chatting with my friend John Batdorf the other day ...

[EDIT: Actually it was several days ago, because I lost this post twice and didn't realize it was not already on the blog, so it's being posted again late - But I've made some edits below to include more info from him]

... about home Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions. I have a 750GB Seagate drive that I use via USB2 to store all kinds of stuff on, but you have to plug it in, unplug it, take it to the next machine, etc. And I use a laptop a lot, so it's extra clunky to have to plug in a big external device and corral it up if I want to move, and I move a lot. A network-based mass-storage device would be great for me. And it turns out John is was also looking for something similar.

We discussed some of the requirements. For me it needs to have some redundancy and fail-safe capabilities built in. I have been burned too many times by single-point-of-failure drive crashes. I've almost always been able to do some heavy-lifting and time-consuming recovery (I've learned a few pretty crazy hardware tricks for recovering data over the years), but I really have been quite fortunate not to permanently lose any important data. It's a miracle, really - a lot like dodging bullets. Anyhow, I need RAID and all the good sleep and awesomeness that goes with it.

We both really wanted a true NAS solution providing direct network attachment from anywhere on the LAN, and preferably the flexibility to connect from a variety of common platforms: Windows, Mac OS-X, Linux, Vic20, whatever. Okay not that last one, but the others for sure.

I asked John to send me a summary of his requirements, and here is what he came up with:

Network Attached Storage Requirements on my 10/100 wired network
The primary goal of this purchase is to get all the iTunes media off of my laptop and desktop home systems. It would be a good place to store all my photos (gigs) too. The last ‘goal’ is to be able to backup said laptop and desktop (data files) somehow. It would be cool if the Xbox could access it too, but I think you have to run the connector software to do that.
Necessities:

iTunes Library shared between multiple computers

Should be fast enough to support music transfer with no problems.
Would be great if it could do video too.

Store photos
The device must be able to be mapped as a drive in windows with no software installation
500GB storage
Price point under $300 for WAF.

Nice to Have:

Backup software/solution

Xbox Connectivity

USB port to add other drives

Not a bad list. Starting with John's list, here is what I would add/change for my needs:

Greg's NAS Requirements List for a 10/100/1000 wired and Wireless-N/G Network

Everything on John's list, with these changes:

RAID disk subsystem controller

1TB+ total storage, which will be divided for RAID purposes (if I can afford it I'd like to get 1TB usable space, but we'll see)

Hot-swappable drives are a big plus

Web-based connectivity from the Internet is nice to have, but it must be properly secured

Skip the WAF since I am not beholden to that, but I want to keep it as low as possible - best bang for the buck

So, it turns out John ordered and just set up a 500GB LaCie Ethernet Disk mini NAS system for under $200, and he likes it a lot so far. It's does everything he needs it to do, it's fast, and it took him literally just a couple minutes to set up and start using it. That's a good sign. Read about his day-one impressions on his blog.

But, for my purposes I still have some researching to accomplishate before gearing my brain-organ into the decisionation phase. So, Dear Reader (I always wanted to say that), what do you think is the best way to go about this and stay within the requirements? What requirements have I missed?

Here's a run-down of the couple things I have under consideration so far, but don't let my little list limit you, and feel free to comment on these as well as provide your own ideas:

A Windows Home Server setup (probably home-grown, but who knows)
One of these fine Lacie products

I am sure people who read this will have plenty of other ideas to suggest, as well.

Ready?

Discuss!

Add/Read: Comments [6]

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Wednesday, September 19, 2007 6:14:11 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)

If you have an old machine laying around, why not throw a few big drives in there and use that. Cheap, easy and flexible.

Peter

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 9:29:34 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)

I agree with Peter. Use another computer if you have one. I use USB drives attached to my desktop and share them. Works just fine. I'm using it for movies, music, TV shows, etc. and see no latency when accessing from another computer.

Tony

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 9:59:26 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)

Another alternative is the DLink two drive NAS box they sell. You can get it from Newegg for about $175ish.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822155003

Alex

Alexander Scoble

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 2:18:36 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)

I think peter is on the right track. i would definitely consider the investment in a windows media center PC.
this way, you have the flexibility that the appliance would not give you.

justin

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 9:46:13 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)

I currently have a 2TB Infrant ReadyNAS because I was drawn to its relatively small size, expandable RAID, and hot-swappable drives. It's great when it works, but I discovered one potentially aggravating problem when the power supply died: it may not be so easy to throw the drives into a new system to recover the data (and may be impossible if the device uses a propriety or non-standard file system). It's important to regularly (and religiously) backup storage devices, but I think it's more important to backup storage devices to a medium and format that is easily recoverable.

I've come to the conclusion that propriety NAS devices are great when they work, but they may be more hassle than they are worth when they fail. Backups allow easy recovery, but where do we restore the data so we can get to it quickly? This is the primary reason I've changed my opinion over the past year. Building a home-brew RAID system these days is almost painless and it's relatively cheap. The best advantage in my mind is that spare parts are no further away than Newegg or the spare parts bin in the garage or the closet. Throw Windows Home Server into the mix when it finally becomes available, and I suspect this will be a really sweet system.

Today I'm using a home server as my primary storage device and relegated the NAS to backup storage. I readily admit this is overkill. If I had to do it over, I would build a home server with plenty of RAID 5 storage and use one or two external USB drives as backup devices. I might even be tempted to buy a cheap server from HP or Dell if the price is right.

One caveat is that I've never attempted to setup a server to stream media with iTunes, so I have no idea what's involved.

Greg

Monday, September 24, 2007 3:55:39 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)

I just went through this a few months ago and settled on the D-Link DNS-323 and loaded it with two 750GB drives. It has gigabit ethernet, runs linux and even has a decent modding/hacking community. Zero software install is needed on the clients and it maps to a regular drive letter like any other network path.

The only thing I had to do was change Vista security behavior to default to NTLM v1 authentication if v2 diddn't work. Turns out that current firmware on the D-Link doesn't like NTLM v2.

Trev