Network Storage

it's tiny, about fag packet size (um, closer to a videotape now i actually look at it) and i don't think it does anything other than let you access usb2 drives over network (configuration is via some web page interface that it serves up though). we have one here at work but i had trouble getting it to work when i borrowed it (apparently i wasn't waiting long enough for the attached disk to power up - have seen it working fine in the office). useful if, like me, you have lan but don't have usb2 capabilities.

possibly interesting

it seems ok!

This freecom box has built in Apache.

but, if i installed apache on the nslu, then i could use that as a web server the whole time, and it wouldnt matter if my laptop was on or not?

also, the linksys mounts fine, when i do it through finder, but it doesnt want to mount, if i do it through terminal? why would this be? well, other than the fact that i'm doing it wrong. in which case, how do i do it right?

after doing quite a bit of time-wasting research i think this is the one to get - synology ds-207+

two bays for drives which can be set up as raid 1 for very fast backup recovery if one fails, bittorrent client, php, mysql, apache, ftp, upnp av streaming, itunes server

is there any reason why i couldn't just take an old PC, hook it up to an external hard drive, put a wireless card in it and use it as a network drive on our home (mac) wireless network?

electricity bill?

hmm, didn't think of that! Not that I have any idea how much electricity having a laptop on 24/7 would use, now I come to think of it.

pretty damned decent, but why the + over the straight 207?

more RAM, faster processor -- they may not matter at all but it's only like £20 more (actually it just occurred to me that a faster processor means more of an energy drain, hmm)

toby if you don't want all those features there are definitely cheeper ways to go but i like this one because it seems fairly future-proof and it acts as its own backup

arf, i'm doing this - komplett has an almost 2-for-1 deal going on 500GB western digital caviar drives

last night, dragging the laptop all over the house because of guests, realizing i didn't have access to my sound effects cause they were on an external HD behind a door in a room in which two people were sleeping -- the last straw

getting the "+" is actually about £40 more :/

Kind of tangential but if you have networked storage and you don't do anything fancy...what about one of these for your laptop?

http://eeepc.asus.com/global/product.htm

trace, that does look good. i have one of those nslu2 units, which for only 50 quid means you have to put up with 100mbps and no AFP. bothered at the mo. future proofed, possibly not.

i need me some cheap 500GB drives though. i recently bought one very cheap (for work) from maplins. reason it was cheap is it comes in this AMAZINGly ugly box/enclosure. but if you can beat 40quid i'd jump on it.

ds207 power consumption:54W(Spin); 36W(Access); 34W(Idle); 15W(Hibernation)

(i don't know what my HD enclosures run at, but the NSLU is only 2 or 3W)

that maplin drive
http://www.maplin.co.uk/images/300/a00gy.jpg
(they WERE on offer at 45 quid i think, no longer it seems)

the seagate drives before that series were better (looked like toasters) and the ones after were better too, that one (which i have one of at home) looks like it'll tip over if you look at it hard. (they have problems with winding up again in linux too)

old:
http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk/hard-disk-drives/seagate-160gb-hard-disk-drive-7200rpm-usb-2-0.asp

new:
http://www.finalsense.com/news/it/desktop/maxtor_onetouch.htm

alan those power numbers look very high actually...! yikes

Hmm, this NLS2 thing sounds interesting! The only irritating thing is that these days our wireless network is all Airport Expresses, and they only have one ethernet port. Someone here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=177195

says:

"How about an Ethernet switch and something like the $80 Linksys NSLU2?

Plug the Cable modem, NSLU2 & Airport Express into the switch. "

Does that seem plausible, or is it obviously not going to work?!

if all you want is a big honkin hard drive accessible on your network you get get any old external USB drive and plug it into your Airport Express, and it will be an "Airport Disk", which you can set to mount automatically, i believe

Nope, only works on Airport Extreme, sadly - the Express only has a USB port which is good for printers.

woops yeah you're right.

alan the apple macintosh users' group review of the synology reports these numbers, which are better:

According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the Synology Disk Station DS-207 utilizes 25 watts when operating with two 320GB Hitachi T7K500 SATA hard drives installed. The power management settings of the DS-207 provide a "HDD Hibernation mode". This feature allows the hard drives to spin down after 20 minutes of inactivity. The user can alter this setting to change the amount of time that is required to pass before hibernation is activated or remove the hibernation mode entirely.

Once the Disk Station DS-207 has entered hibernation mode the energy usage with two 320GB Hitachi T7K500 SATA hard drives installed drops to 14 watts.

Yea, I'm a little upset about he NSLU heat

so, if all I want is a network drive, with access fast enough to stream music, are there any other (cheaper) options?

loads!

such as?!

* D-Link DNS-313

* Time Capsule

+ many more

oh also you can get a dual-bay Linksys NAS200 for less than £100

I don't think those are cheaper, though - I'm kinda thinking sub $100. Surely there must be something?!

The "CNet CLD-101" appears to be a ~$50 Ethernet disk enclosure. Pricewatch says that you can get a 250GB drive to stick in for about $50. This of course assumes that you are willing to deal with assembling it yourself, hoping it all works in concert with your router, and buying stuff from somewhat less than reputable sellers, but with shipping its probably going to be not much over $100.

Tracer Hand, did you end up getting the Synology DS-207+? If so, how are you finding it? I'm back to thinking about going the NAS route, and am weighing up the costs & pros/cons against either building up a new PC or simply getting some more external HDDs.

i saw the time capsule ad in macuser - if i was starting from scratch i'd buy that. looks good, not much of a markup from buying separate bits either.

krakow i'm still waiting for it!! should be here tomorrow, probably. i'll report back here once i've played around with it.

aside from all the features (it's basically a server), the reason i got it instead of a time capsule is because it's both storage AND backup. the time capsule can be only one or the other, because it's only got one HD.

Thanks, I look forward to hearing how you get on with it. Though it's got quite a hefty price tag, I'm still seriously considering it over building myself a new PC because it would be a lot easier to set up and a lot more efficient and hence cheaper power-wise.

I've been pointed in the direction of the Icy Box IB-NAS4220-B and from my reading up I'm really liking the sound of it. It's ~£100 (inc. VAT etc.), so a lot cheaper than the Synology, and seems to get pretty solid reviews (a bit temperamental at HDD support, but, with judicious/lucky choices should be OK). I could get this with 2 750GB drives for just over £300, which sounds good to me.

My non-NAS icybox (just an external HDD caddy) is pretty moody about whether it feels like having its IDE->USB interface work on any given day, but hopefully the more expensive products will be a bit more solid. And to be fair it did work perfectly until I took it into work one day, but I took it in very carefully wrapped in several layers of bubblewrap etc, so it didn't get knocked around or anything.

A network storage box that does torrents would be great for me, if maybe a bit excessive just for my home usage, as my ISP throttle/shape the shit out of everything until it's basically unusable (eclipse.net.uk, don't even think about using them unless you only ever want to look at websites and you don't do very much of that) except in the middle of the night, but I don't like leaving the computer on all night for power consumption reasons and also because it's quite noisy. So I'd be really interested to hear how the Synology is, how much power it uses, how quiet it is. Thanks!

i haven't had too much time to poke around yet but setting it up was a snap. you just walk thru a web wizard. i've already got several shares that i've mounted both on windows and on a mac, and the itunes server works great. you can set up smart folders on the itunes server that will create playlists based on pattern matching, including the path of the files. synology has extensive forums, which is a nice feeling for when i start hacking it to pieces get a bit deeper into all this stuff. i'm particularly looking forward to doing some web dev with it, install drupal, etc.

when it's active, there is a kind of low constant whirr. it's actually sort of pleasant as low whirrs go, but i'm not sure i'd want it in my bedroom at night unless it was hibernating. i haven't looked at power consumption yet.

i was honestly shocked by the ease of setup. install drives, plug into wall, plug ethernet cable in, insert install CD into my computer, and it just "finds it", formats the disks, creates the volumes, etc., all wirelessly. it is pretty nuts.

I've had an Icy Box USB HDD caddy for a while and it's been OK for me. It's definitely cheapish feeling, but not horrifically so, especially when you consider that it is actually cheap.

I'm wavering again and thinking of perhaps simply adding a couple more HDDs in single external caddies (actively cooled ones though, so I can leave them on all the time without worrying). Although this ends up at about the same price as a basic 2-drive NAS such as the Icy Box IB-NAS4220-B, it's simpler and still answers my needs, as my "network" actually only consists of my single PC.

Decisions, decisions.

Does it leave disks on all the time or spin them up and down as necessary (very important for disk selection)

the Syno spins them up and down as needed; it takes about 10 seconds to get them awake on access all told, which is fair enough

Good to know, as that makes slightly cheaper desktop drives more suitable.

q: if I wanted to format a couple of SATA drives with my Powerbook how would I go about it?

There are doowhackies that do USB to SATA or PC CArd to SATA, some will even provide power.

Are you up at WC today? Send me your internal number.

If you have 2 HDDs in the Synology can you have them set up to be accessed separately or as JBOD, rather than in a RAID1 configuration? I only ever see mention of RAID1 for it.

It says, Basic (I assume JBOD) RAID 0 and RAIN 1 right there on the spec sheet.

apparently it doesn't support jbod, although i don't really understand why not, or even what i am talking about

Thanks. I'm pretty sure I can't afford it (or can't justify the expense) in the end anyway.

ok my initial report is that this thing is awesome

secondary report is that if you actually plan on using it to run a LAMP-based CMS, think again, it runs like a dog. this is a huge disappointment to me, it's one of the big reasons i got it, and the main reason i got the 207+ rather than the plain old 207. pages take AGES to get served up, although plain HTML pages get served up very very quickly.

the torrent downloader is a also a piece of junk.

everything else works beautifully, almost flawlessly.

so - i'm hopeful that firmware and software upgrades will improve the php/sql situation and the downloading situation. as for its main function - storing my stuff and making it accessible to me anywhere i am - it's brilliant.

running this w/popcorn hour is like buttah

I’ve got a DS107+ and it’s pretty good. Reliable, but network transfer are a pretty slow 15mbps over gigabit LAN, which is disappointing when the drive can handle 40mbps.