Need help with network storage

Currently, we have two wireless laptops (windows 7 on one and Windows XP on the other). We are already wireless, but now want to be able to accomplish 3 additional things:

1) Share music/movies/files on the network so that anyone on our network can access them w/o having to always have a computer turned on.

2) Back up all of our data from both laptops as well as any music/files shared on the network drive.

3) Remotely access network drive to be able to listen to music when not at home.

We currently have an old D-LINK wireless G router, but likely will upgrade to N router (and probably with a USB port as well). Don't yet know which router, but potentially D-LINK 655, Netgear WNDR3700 or 3400, or Linksys E3000.

So my questions are this: what is the best way to accomplish all 3 goals above? I think the options are

a) 2-bay NAS with RAID 1.
B) 1-Bay NAS (cheaper) with a USB hard drive (NAS is the server, hard drive is the backup).
C) 2 external USB hard drives (1 to share files, 1 to back-up all 3 drives)
D) external USB hard drive with online backup
E) 1-bay NAS with online backup.

We are not tech wizards, but we're also not idiots. That being said, I'm looking for easy solutions, in which the five options above don't exceed about $200-$300 in combined price. What is the best answer for a 2-computer network, streaming video to Internet TV, and getting good enough speed where we don't have lags and delays? Maybe all of the options above are similar and it becomes just a question of price, but I'm not clear. USB hard drive or NAS is my main question I guess, but any other advice would be really helpful please.

Thanks!

 

Go with Synology, they make great NASes.

 

Go to Smallnetbuilder.com and read their reviews.

I would recommend a true NAS and not a usb drive connected to a router. Local access is easy, remote access is a little different. Can be down several ways, it just depend on what you are going to use for a music player.

Take a look at DropBox, it may be another option.

 

Interesting article about RAID vs. two NASes in a home environment: Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID - SmallNetBuilder

If 2 NASes aren't in the budget... I'd probably prefer 1-bay NAS + USB backup drive rather than RAID 1... at least deletions aren't instantly replicated.

 

Both are notebooks, I would opt for a completely different solution.

Have both notebook on ALL the time. They don't consume much more energy than a NAS, may be less. Then you can cross backup.

Spend 0 dollars.

If you want you can also attach USB external to them.

Want to save some energy, only keep one on 24/7.

 

Would this solution work for a) remote access? b) shared music/video to stream to Internet TV or other wireless device?

How do you "cross-backup?" I'm not a tech expert, so would need the solution to be simple to execute for someone with basic comprehension but definitely no tech background.

I think I'm leaning towards a single-bay NAS (thanks to the article on RAID posted above), and then backing up both notebooks to the NAS, and backing up the NAS either online or to a USB hard drive at some point. Just trying to figure out which NAS is best for our needs (<$200, and ideally $150 or less).

 

^ be careful not all NAS drives are equal. Some are so bad it's a few megabytes a second download speed. This will be a problem streaming video. It'll also be a problem uploading data to the server or when doing back-ups (takes forever). Look for something 40 to 110 MB/s download speed. Upload speed can be anything decent (at least 40 MB/s will be nice). If they don't print the bandwidth/speed in their specs... please avoid it. Have fun. Bye.

 

What kind of remote access you have in mind ? I have 3 laptops that are thousands of miles away and each can reach the others for RDP which then I can do whatever I want, just a simple port forwarding at the router of the location. If you have Windows Live, you can use it to and don't even need port forwarding. And can also use the Live Sync to backup to Microsoft's SkyDrive(only 5GB and 50MB/file restriction though).

If it is Windows 7, I believe it has very good integration with other devices(like streaming to TV). Windows 7 is just a full featured server by itself.

cross backup just mean copying files from laptop A to B and vice-versa. This way, you achieve the same purpose of if either one dies, you have backup on the other one. And file sharing is quite easy to setup in Windows 7.

In fact, it achieve what Mac does in terms of zero configuration.

I thought I should mention an alternative which is effectively free, use less power than most NAS, more powerful than most NAS and is pretty easy to setup.

But whichever solution you are comfortable is fine.

 

Hi,
You might want to do a bit of reading on Windows Home Server (WHS). I have no experience with it, so I can't recommend it, but you might find some of it's features beneficial. I'm pretty sure it can do all three of the things you wanted to accomplish. If you aren't interested in WHS, you might still want to read a few reviews on it so you can compare it to other solutions. I'm currently looking for a solution similar to yours too.

Windows Home server boxes on Newegg.com

Note1: HP will stop selling Windows Home Server boxes as they are moving to WebOS products, so they are clearing out inventory.

Note2: Microsoft just finished Beta Testing "Vail" which is the next version of Windows Home Server

Windows Home Server Reviews
Windows Home Server in depth: the Ars Technica review

Review - Asus TS Mini Windows Home Server Review | bit-tech.net

Windows Home Server PP2 adds Media Center integration -- Engadget HD

http://hd.engadget.com/2009/05/22/is-the-future-of-windows-media-center-with-windows-home-server/

Vail Preview
Windows Home Server "Vail" Preview

 

Windows Home Server sounds great, but unfortunately, it's well beyond my budget of about $200-250 (at the very most) for the network storage.

Based on some advice above about RAID, I've decided that a 1-bay NAS is all I need. Not opposed to a 2-bay NAS if it's a good deal and a good NAS, but I probably won't buy 2 drives for it. Anyhow, I've been having trouble sorting out which consumer NASes are best for me (good quality, simple to use, relatively quiet, and priced under about $200 or so).

A couple that have popped out are:

1) DLINK dns323 ($110 on Amazon currently after rebate) + a 1TB hard drive ($75), for a total of $185. Seems to get good reviews that indicate it's easy to use and meet the basic server needs I mention above. I did see a bunch of comments that indicated that DLINK is not as reputable or helpful with support as other companies.

2) Synology 110j (or 111j when it comes out): gets great reviews and indicates great support, but was scared a bit by the comments that it's a devil to set up for someone who's not experienced with networking outside of the basics. Cost is $150 for system and then $75 for a drive, so $225 or so in all.

3) Perhaps an entry level Buffalo LinkStation Live model?

4) Others?

I'm really confused on what's good value for the price and what's going to make me pull my hair out. Can anyone help me with this last piece of the puzzle?

thanks again for all the great help above!

 

Any advice on the network storage devices I referenced in the previous post? I've listed my main needs in the first post of this thread (backup of 2 laptops, shared music/photos, remote access of files from the internet).

Looking to keep under $200 for NAS (and hard drive together if NAS is diskless). Any advice on the suggestions I listed or other devices?

 

Between the 110j/111j or DNS323, I'd pick the 110j/111j.

 

I have the DNS323 and its simple to use for sharing and backing up, but its not the fastest option around (only about 19MB/s throughput)

 

Forget those little NAS boxes.

Take a look on eBay for Compaq DC7100, it's a small form factor workstation. It has 3 bays (2int. 1ext.) 2 sata ports, gigabit ethernet and pci-e. Mine came with a 40gig SATA HD with legal, fresh install of XP, a DVD burner and 2gigs of ram for $110 (I have seen 1gig ram, and no drive go for $50). I swapped the 40gig for a 1TB, removed the DVD, and added an Esata card. It's cheap, it's efficient (idle is about 30wats), and transfers at 100MB/sec (on large files), which utterly destroys any NAS box under $400 and if I need more functionality, I have room for it.


*Note that, while I do recommend this little box to people all of the time here for this purpose, I do not have them for sale on eBay, I simply have found them to be an excellent system for this purpose and are very cheap and readily available.

 

An interesting article which I mostly agree with. RAID alone won't protect you from a number of errors, like deleting files you didn't intend to. In the 32TB NAS servers I build for my own use, I use ZFS and have scheduled backups to tape (LTO4 library with the "starter" 44 tape slots filled). Weekly, the tapes are loaded into environmentally-controlled transport cases and sent off to a secure data retention facility in another state. Each night, the contents of each 32TB server is mirrored to an identical server about a mile away (but on a different electrical grid so most minor power failures don't take out both the master and the mirror). The offsite units also maintain their own history incrementals (not using ZFS snapshots). All of the links are dual-Gigabit, but as I upgrade the infrastructure switches, I'll be going to dual-10GB links - currently I get > 100MB/sec out of the servers, but local performance is at 500MB/sec or greater speed, monitored during stress-testing continuously for several days. The maximum burst rate is about 4GB/sec for up to 10 seconds.

This is way overkill for your home server(s) - though this is what I do for my home servers. But the story of my planning may be useful to your decisions.

If you're interested in a "roll your own" system, you might to consider FreeNAS or something similar. That lets you choose the appropriate hardware for what you need done. In my case, I do a lot of processing on the NAS itself, so I have 48GB of registered ECC RAM and dual Xeon E5520 CPUs in each box. I'm running FreeBSD 8 w/ some stuff MFC'd from 9, like ZFS v28 and some driver updates.

 

Dare I ask why you need so much space and redundancy?

 

Mostly, the race car (see my post in the windows desktop thread here) produces 64GB/day or more - mostly video, but also some telemetry and other data.

I also do storage / bandwidth favors for friends - for example, the ftp://ftp.info-zip.com stuff is served from my house.