Network Hard Drive for Home Networks?

[StuartC]

I'm looking for an external network hard drive to provide file storage capabilities, and enable me to rationalise my home PC setup.

Ideally, it needs to connect via Ethernet to my network switch/router, so that it's available 24/7 to whichever device I wish to access the files from (i.e. 2 wired PCs, 1 wireless PC, 1 wireless laptop).

Main purpose is to store media files, but also act as a backup repository for photos, work data etc.

The Freecom Classic SL units look like they'd do the job, and have USB2 and Ethernet connectivity. Does anybody have one, and can you tell me if the internal HDD is upgradeable? The specifications would suggest that they are upgradeable with a standard 3.5 inch HDD.

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...avigationKey=0

Alternatively, I've seen this Netgear box, which you put your own disk(s) into. Some of the reviews and user comments are a bit varied, and it seems it's prone to running slowly, losing drive mappings, and doing a good impression of a toaster that wants to cook your HDD.

http://www.netgear.com/products/details/SC101.php

So, does anybody have an external HDD and what are their experiences?

[keith_henson]

no external hdd here - i have a dual athlon MP 2600 with 400 gig of raid 0+1 and a gig of ram. Combined with a midi tower under the stairs with ultra quiet cooling its all good. Never failed yet in two years of running.

External network drives from my experience have been rather dodgy, IMHO i would spend 100 quid on getting a cheapo box with a RAID133 or SATA150 raid controller and use that - much more reliable.

Well thats from my experience - any questions drop me a mail

keith

[Keiron]

That Netgear item is actually really nice in theory until you dig a little deeper and find out the following: No cooling, so the little bugger can run real hot, not ideal when you have large power hungry HD's in there.

Most importantly, it uses it's own patent filesystem, so you cannot add a drive already with data into the unit, and if it dies you are forced to buy another to get your data off. What happens if they are no longer in production????

Yup, simply get a cheap box, network that and then go from there. Wouldn't bother with RAID unless you want some protection for your data, has absolutely no speed benefits in real-world processing at all, benchmarks and placebo effect, yes!!!! If you do fancy a RAID setup, and let's face it, they do have benefits then I would recommend a RAID 1+0 rather than a 0+1.

[StuartC]

I thought the Netgear box was a good idea, but reading their forums it looks like it's been badly implemented.

A few have modded it with a cooling fan, but you shouldn't need to do this if it's designed properly.

I don't really have the space for a PC to stay on permanently to act as a disk storage unit, so was looking for a dumb unit that would just provide a disk store.

As for RAID, one of my PCs has RAID 0 with 2 ATA133 disks, doesn't make much difference in terms of real-world performance, and complicates life when it comes to needing to upgrade etc.

I may well just end up re-configuring my PCs, and build a unit that stays on and goes to standby when not in use.

[keith_henson]

aye

raid dont make much difference unless you are moving HUGE files or working with the same in movie format. May raid is both for performance and backup (200 gig is for the main performance, and then 200 is for the mirror half). Dont fancy loosing company info and stuff like that.

Keith

[rustuk]

I know it sounds a bit overkill, but I've had/got a similar situation at home - 2 laptops, 2 desktops & variety of PC's in for repair/rebuild.
I looked at NAS/SAN solutions and in the end built a server with lots of disk in and stored all my files on that...
The affordable NAS boxes don't carry any redundancy and that's what decided it for me...
At least with a server you can go RAID5 and know everything's going to be safe..

[GLOC]

I had a friend recently who regretted having a RAID setup. She got her brother to build the system for her (professional photographer) and he put raid on. However, the system crashed and one of the drives was corrupted. It was going to cost her about £2k to get the data off the drives, which she couldn't afford. Fortunately she didn't lose that much but it did teach her a lesson about backing up.

She now uses a standard Windows filing system and backs up regularily onto an external drive.

[Keiron]

Well, the RAID setup was absolute tripe then. There are various configurations of RAID and maybe he should stick to photography rather than IT systems???!!! Sounds like he just set it up for speed and maybe kudos, which as I said earlier has no real-world advantage whatsoever. You'd need to have an absolute massive failure over many drives to negate some of the RAID setups that are possible. Striping over drives always strikes me as a dodgy idea anyway!!

RAID can be an absolute godsend for data-critical operations if setup by someone that knows what they are doing. It's a trade-off between cost and security.

[GLOC]

Yes, I agree. Julie was somewhat pissed off but has learnt that she doesn't need RAID for stills photography.

[troc]

Originally Posted by GLOC

I had a friend recently who regretted having a RAID setup.

Sounds like RAID 0. Which isn't a RAID at all. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives (also sometimes Independent Drives). RAID 0 is also known as striping and essentially is used to make 2 drives act as one larger one. i.e. 2x250Gb becomes (to your computer) 1x500Gb. This is great as it's very fast and holds lots of data but very very very bad as 2 drives are twice as likely to fail as one would be (so you are more likely going to get a problem) and if one fails you lose ALL your data.

RAID 1 is mirroring, where you have the same data on two independent drives i.e 2x350Gb is 1x250Gb to your computer but you have a perfect replica in case one of the drives fails, quite a good option these days as drive space is cheap.

RAID 0+1 combines the benefits of both system, so your data is mirrored across two sets of drives and also striped across two drives in each set, so you get the benfits of a fast virtual drive from RAID 0 with the security of a mirrored copy from RAID 1.

RAID 5 is also quite common, especially in enterprise and areas where data integrity is key. Here you have oodles of drives and the data is spread out across them together with parity data such that if one drive fails, it can be swapped out and the rest of the drives have enough info to rebuild the missing data. Works best with a minimum of 4-5 drives. If two drives fail together (which I have seen happen) then you are usually screwed.

Things to take into account with RAID - each added drive increases teh chance of a failure. All drives should be teh same - so they will all have the same failure modes. RAID 0 is very bad.

Troc

PS RAID 0 is very bad.