Thinking about a NAS for home. Opinions?

Post #332,744 by Another Scott 9/18/10 9:59:00 AM Reply	Thinking about a NAS for home. Opinions? I need to implement a backup solution for our home network (Win, OSX, Linux). I prefer a 4 bay solution that's turnkey and doesn't require much handholding. I could set up a server, but I really don't have the time and am willing to pay for the convenience. I want something that I won't outgrow in a couple of years. I don't want to pay a premium for a system that only uses 2.5" drives (I'll probably be using Hitachi or Samsung 3.5" SATA drives). Our network is 802.11g and 100BT but I have a 1000BT switch around here somewhere that I'll eventually install. I've got no personal experience with a NAS, but have done some reading over the years. Synology and Qnap seem to have good reputations, and I've seen some Buffalo boxes at work (though they seem to have many detractors). Does this Qnap box seem reasonable? http://www.provantag...roii~7IEIT03V.htm Any gotchas that I'm missing? Cheaper Qnap boxes use slower CPUs that apparently are easy to saturate. I probably won't guy anything for a few weeks - I like to agonize over purchases like these. ;-) Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
Post #332,764 by boxley 9/18/10 8:41:14 PM Reply	thats too much for no harddrives Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
Post #332,765 by Another Scott 9/18/10 8:56:45 PM 9/18/10 8:57:26 PM Reply	What do you suggest instead? (Drives are cheap.) Edited by Another Scott Sept. 18, 2010, 08:57:26 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #332,769 by boxley 9/18/10 11:39:45 PM Reply	Re: What do you suggest instead? (Drives are cheap.) http://www.bhphotovi...y_NAS_Server.html http://www.google.co...&ved=0CCsQ8wIwBA# http://reviews.cnet....2_7-34006041.html personally I would buy a 4 drive case and hang it off the back of an existing or sub $300 linux box and do it that way. Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
Post #332,771 by Another Scott 9/19/10 12:04:56 AM Reply	Thanks muchly.
Post #332,790 by Andrew Grygus 9/19/10 12:13:16 PM Reply	Yeah, what I'd do . . . . . is build a Linux box from clients' Windows upgrade cast-offs. If I had to I'd pay a hundred bucks for a nice Antec cabinet with power and lots of drive bays. Stick in some drives and an extra fan or two, install Debian and off we go.
Post #332,797 by folkert 9/19/10 2:42:56 PM Reply	DING DING DING ^^^ what he said. Take your Win2K machine and put it in the new box and shove it full of drives. And Just leave it alone.
Post #332,798 by Another Scott 9/19/10 3:08:25 PM 9/19/10 3:12:37 PM Reply	May do that, I dunno. The idea of getting a new, small, dedicated NAS, popping in 4 new drives, plugging it in, setting the addresses, etc., via the web interface, and being done with it is very appealing at the moment. I don't really want to mess with figuring out setting up a RAID on a Linux box. I realize it's not that big a deal these days to set up a file and print server, but dedicated appliances are good. Of my 2 Win2k Opteron boxes, one locks up for no apparent reason (whether running Ubuntu or Win2k) when sitting at idle for periods as short as 12 hours. Power supply? Heat? RAM? Something else? I dunno, but the diagnostics I've tried (including running Memtest86 for hours) haven't shown what the problem is. The other box is assembled from leftover/recycled parts (including a Foxconn motherboard I bought as an OpenBox special at Newegg) and is just a bare Win2k install. I've not seen a major problem with it, but I don't know how reliable it is. I've also considered making this box my "new" MythTV box, that being yet another project that is in an incomplete state... I dunno. If it's like my usual pre-purchase process, I'll agonize about it for another few weeks at least. I've got to break that habit though - time's clicking by... I really need to do something fairly soon - we need a backup strategy. [edit:] Typos. Sheesh, my eyes are going... Cheers, Scott. Edited by Another Scott Sept. 19, 2010, 03:12:37 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #332,799 by malraux 9/19/10 3:16:18 PM Reply	What I do right now: I have an extra TB drive external to the Mac Pro. Everything else in the house I care about backing up is a Mac, so they use it as a remote Time Machine drive. The Mac Pro is on 24x7. If I were to do something standalone I wouldn't build it myself. My time is too valuable to me. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #332,802 by Andrew Grygus 9/19/10 5:47:56 PM Reply	Yes, I remember back in the 286/386/486 days . . . . . and even a ways into the Pentium days, when building a computer and getting it to work was quite a chore. Today, I unpack a cabinet, screw a mother board down in it and plug in a few cables and its done. Loading and updating an OS takes quite a bit of time but rather little attention. Now configuring a desktop the way you are used to and setting up all the applications - that's a hassle and a half - takes all day.
Post #332,803 by folkert 9/19/10 6:01:59 PM Reply	Wait... what? It takes me all of 5 minutes to replicate my settings from my homedir. What's your deal?
Post #332,805 by Andrew Grygus 9/19/10 6:08:40 PM Reply	My deal? Generally it's that . . . . . my client insists (often for valid reason) on running Windows - and usually I'm not called in until the registry is blown out (or needs to be).
Post #332,800 by Andrew Grygus 9/19/10 3:43:54 PM Reply	The main problem with those nice little appliances . . . . . is when they fail. If you can get parts at all, they cost nearly as much as a new unit. If you buy a new box, the ROM based OS in the new one may not recognize the format on the old drives. This has happened to several of my clients.
Post #332,804 by folkert 9/19/10 6:03:18 PM Reply	Re: The main problem with those nice little appliances . . . Yes yes yes. A friend experienced this recently and another friend experienced a drive failure and the mirrored second drive was hosed during the process... making the superblocks un readable.
Post #332,810 by malraux 9/19/10 10:23:44 PM Reply	Same thing happens with built machines. As I can attest to with Chutney. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #332,812 by crazy 9/19/10 10:31:15 PM Reply	But at least you have a chance of figuring it out. I recently had to rip apart a failed buffalo. The file system is XFS, and it was too trashed to get anything back. This was from a mirrored pair. It seemed the mirror was fine, until we called tech support. X amount of time and tech support later, the mirror was blown away. Ooops.
Post #332,815 by malraux 9/19/10 10:36:41 PM Reply	Personally, I don't like using RAID for my own stuff Or at least depending on it. I've had too many bad experiences with it, both software and hardware RAID. I mirror manually. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #332,808 by Another Scott 9/19/10 9:37:57 PM Reply	Thanks all. I decided to take a tangent... I can get an Apple-refurbished 2010 Mac Mini Server for $849 - http://store.apple.c...A?mco=MTg4MjQ0OTY . It's vastly faster than the QNap TS-439 and only costs about $100 more. Comes with a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB, 2x500 GB (2.5" drives, replaceable, but not easily - http://www.ifixit.co..._mini_Model_A1347 ), GB Ethernet and 802.11n, and lots of ports. I have several USB2 (and some Firewire) external drive enclosures, so I'll be able to add storage easily without spend more right now. I've also got an external DVD drive, so lack of one in the box isn't an issue. It'll let me punt on the RAID array decision for a while. VirtualBox will let me put Win2k on it (I think), so it'll let me put off the Opteron replacement decision for a while, too. I just ordered it, to get it over with. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #334,687 by Another Scott 10/23/10 11:25:17 PM Reply	Gadzooks they don't make some things easy... I transferred by Lexmark E234 laser printer from my Opteron machine to the MacMini Server (USB). It was trivial to print to it from the MacMini. But how to get the G5 running 10.4.11 to print to it? It didn't show up in the browser. Trying to add the printer to the G5 manually via the Samba trick (option click on Add printer and so forth) always failed. It turns out, you've got to enable sharing of it in CUPS on the Mini first. http://localhost:631/admin to get to the CUPS interface. If you click "Share printers connected to this system", it doesn't stick. You've got to read this page - http://www.cups.org/...-1.4/sharing.html - then run the "cupsctl --share-printers" command from a terminal (and may need Admin privileges). After running that, the checkmark will stick, and the shared printer will magically show up in 10.4.11. Clear as mud. I hope it sticks through reboots... :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #334,698 by boxley 10/24/10 10:03:43 AM Reply	what you get when you use gui overlays of the command line Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
Post #334,701 by folkert 10/24/10 11:21:01 AM Reply	I've had no problem. I used the Admin Interface and even enabled remote admin on the port 631 interface. Its works just fine for me. I've been printing from Linux and other machines without issue the whole time I've had my iMac.
Post #334,702 by Another Scott 10/24/10 12:03:29 PM Reply	Physics prof: "As you learned in kindergarten,... You solve this problem by completing the square, integrating by parts, and applying Gauss's Law using the Green's Function formalism of the Laplace Transform in the particle's k-space coordinate system. I'm disappointed that only one of you got this problem correct." I'd be disappointed if this weren't easy for you. :-). I'm still learning. I'm very happy that it's been as relatively painless as it has thus far. Cheers, Scott.

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