Posted on 02/25/2010 7:40:34 PM PST by Constitutionalist Conservative
I'm planning to buy a network hard drive (1TB or more) for our home network. I am planning to use it as backup storage for our other home PCs. It doesn't need to be a music server or anything fancy like that.
I've looked at various NAS options on Newegg, Buy.com, etc, and I see devices that vary in price by as much as $1000.
Any advice on a make/model that is a reasonable combination of quality and price?
Target and Staples sell HP external drives.
Many years ago I had a network HP drive that ran 24x& for years without a hitch. NewEgg has good prices but Target can be pretty good too.
I bought the 1 TB Maxtor xtHD for personal use on Black Friday 2008 and it’s been a beaut. Just added the Iomega NAS xtHD Black Friday 2009 1 TB as well, and it’s performing as expected. Do your research and dont bust the bank.
I have a 1T external hard drive by Western Digital that I can network through my router if I want. It cost all of $100. Western Digital is well rated.
Not to jack this fellow’s thread but does anyone know a good freeware backup program. BounceBack that came with my Seagate external went flaky. I back up the network over an XP machine.
If your concern is backup, you may not really need NAS. You might alternately consider just buying a few portable (USB powered) hard drives. They have really come down in price (you can get 500 gig name-brand drives for about $75).
The advantage of multiple backup drives is redundancy. You can keep one drive at home, and another external drive at work. Swap them once a week or once a month and now you’re really covered.
I just bought 2 WD 1T External HDD’s. For two years they have worked great.
Make that 2 USB HDD’s. Sorry for the confusion.
Semper Fi
I picked up some cheap 1-gigabit NAS unit from Iomega (1 terabyte). I haven’t set it up yet, but it supports Raid 0 (500 gig) if I want. It was really cheap, and came with backup software, although I’m thinking of getting some real back up software that does images.
I used XP as well but I use Syncback and Easeus free “only” for stuff that I wont cry for if ever something bad happens. I would say I have over 250 megs on both. My apologies to the uploader..carry on ;).
I’ve been eyeing Apple’s “Time Machine”. Bonus is the Ethernet ports for wired network devices, and the USB port for a printer.
For home backup?
Go to Walmart and get a Western Digital MyBook Essential 1 TB external for about $100.00.
If you want freeware for burning images, try Macrium Reflect.
That (500GB) would be RAID1 (mirroring). 1TB would be RAID0 (striping). The difference being that with RAID1 if you lose a drive you replace it and lose nothing. With RAID0 if you lose a drive you lose everything on both drives.
For backup, I use a combination of bash scripts, rsync, and tar. (Linux system)
For a more complicated, robust backup, Cobian Backup (also free)
It now sits nicely within the stack, along with three other HDs. Not an ideal, but nice for storing the massive LRO narrow-angle camera pictures I'm studying. Nothing but storage. So far so good.
IOW, keep it simple. Storage is cheap and simple, these days.
Right. Raid1. It will of course also do Raid0. I just haven’t decided if I’d rather have more space and periodically back up everything, or have less space but not worry about backup.
On the other hand, I’d probably back up a Raid1, in case a catastrophic failure corrupted both drives. So I’ll probably make it a raid0. Disks are pretty cheap, and I’ve got several USB drives sitting around.
My problem is two new cameras which have 12 megapixel resolution, and a family who loves to take pictures, but not to go through and delete the bad ones. We have over 36,000 pictures stored now. On a good day, I might get through a couple of hundred.
I have a different drive for videos. They are even worse. At least I’ve cut just about every video I have to a DVD by now. I’ve still got I think one old VHS tape left.
My next task is to take all the DVDs and get them back on a hard drive (I only have my digital camcorder stuff on hard drive, the rest was 8mm DAT which I did direct-to-DVD, and for which I no longer have an 8mm reader). I have a backup hard drive that plays direct to TV, so I need to get my DVDs onto it.
I remember being excited to get a 20 meg drive.
USB will likely be the cheapest, but is also slow; moreover, the disk will be attached to a computer which will need to stay on. USB is usually the cheapest solution
eSATA is very fast, but will require you to add an eSATA card to your computer if your motherboard doesn't have this already; like USB, it is attached to one computer which must remain on for other users to access the drive.
The third option, NAS/ethernet, is usually the most expensive, with the plus that you can power off your main computer yet still have access to your data from other networked computers in your home as well as outside.
If your speed requirements are low (i.e. not using to stream blu-ray movies), you may be interested in a USB/NAS converter to convert an external USB device to a network device (e.g. Addonics' NAS 2.0 adapter - http://www.addonics.com/products/nas/NAS2XU2.asp - $60 retail)
I would suggest getting a 2- or 4-bay NAS unit with RAID for improved performance and data redundancy - Thecus has a very good line with great features.
MOST IMPORTANT: The cost of your replacing your data, especially if you have multiple people using the storage unit, will vastly exceed the cost of one of the Thecus units; a cheap NAS will be frustrating and likely more expensive in the long run
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.