[lug] NAS recommendations?

[Jim Buzbee]

On Oct 26, 2009, at 9:46 AM, Jeffrey Haemer wrote:

> Folks,
>
> A NAS, for home backup, seems attractive.  Any of you have strong  
> recommendations these days?
>
> Looks like there are 1Tb NAS boxes on Amazon in the $150-$200 range,  
> and NAS boxes with pairs of 1Tb disks, RAIDed in some cases, in the  
> $250-$350 range.
>
> Kristina and I normally both use Linux laptops, but we have a pair  
> of old Mac laptops that we could stand to dump to a file server, too.
>
> The Linux boxes have 80G disks, and I think my Mac has a 40Gb hard  
> disk and hers has a 20Gb hard disk, so it's not like we need an 8Tb  
> file-server or anything. :-)  Still, having a Terabyte or two  
> available as backup storage, with some sort of rsyncing going on  
> would be comforting.
>
> What would you suggest?

I've worked with many, many different NAS boxes over the last few  
years. Most of them work well enough, but aren't really all that  
impressive when it comes to flexibility and doing things like rsync.  
For my own usage, I like to use external drives hooked up to a NAS.  
That way when you need speed (or if the NAS were to die), you can  
unhook from the NAS and plug the drives in directly and easily. For a  
long time, I used a NSLU2 because it has no moving parts, no noise,  
runs Debian and only draws 4 watts. And of course I showed how you can  
hack it to your heart's desire:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/how-to-nslu2-hack-pt4,review-312.html

But it isn't all that fast. Lately I've been using a hacked TS209 with  
Debian and rsync/cron backup jobs:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30678/77/

This works well, but I miss the tiny form-factor and silence of the  
NSLU2. I just finished a review of one of the new "Plug Computers"  
that Marvell has going. These can be had for $99, run Debian, and draw  
4-5 Watts with no moving parts. - 1.2 Ghz, 512 MB Ram, Gigabit  
Ethernet all while drawing the power of a night-light.

Here's my review of a "CloudPlug"

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/30959-ctera-cloudplug-reviewed

and here's the site for the $99 development version:

http://www.plugcomputer.org/

With one of these, you can get the performance, use external drives,  
do your own rsync, etc. Very cool. I may just have to switch away from  
my TS209 and since I use external drives already, I'm set!

Jim



>
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>
> Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
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