RAID (1 and/or 5), direct wired or NAS
in [Mac Systems]
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From: BreadWithSpam on 1 Jul 2010 12:50 Hi, folks. Just looking to get some opinions and experiences - I'm seriously thinking about home office network backup and storage and need to weigh out costs, simplicity and reliability. Anyone used a Newertech Guardian Maximus? It's a RAID1 dual drive array which plugs right into the desktop machine's firewire. No need for me to boot off of it, but it'd make a great TM drive and would serve as a great place to hold an encrypted sparse bundle disk image for data which needs to be both secure and continually backed up. Pros or cons of going up-market to a RAID5 box? OWC has one which comes with four 1TB drives and in a RAID5 config, getting approximately 2.6TG of redundant storage, more speed, and just the same level of simplicity (plug into FW port and all done). But then, if I'm going to spend $600+ on that RAID5 box, it starts to look like it'd be nicer to have something on the network so I can use it with both the desktop as well as the laptops on the network. Are there any NAS/RAID boxes which will get me 2TB+ of storage which are worth working with for anywhere near that price range? I've seen some information about these: Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-bay - Amazon's got it diskless for about $200 and I could put a pair of 2TB drives in for another couple of hundred bucks (though on the Amazon page, it talks about 1TB drives - anyone knoe if it'll take 2TB drives or if there's likely any issue with that?) Western Digital My Book World Edition II 4TB ($450). It looks about as simple as such a box can be - the drives drop in from the top and config looks pretty easy. Reviews are a little mixed and most seem to be from folks using Windows. Performance isn't going to be great, but since it'll be mainly a backup drive that shouldn't be much of an issue. D-Link 2-Bay NAS ShareCenter enclosure (about $180 without drives). (DNS-323). Seems pretty similar to the Netgear box. Additional nice things (in theory) about the NAS boxes is that they all claim to be able to do things like act as media servers for iTunes sharing. I'm seriously thinking about that My Book World Ed. II deal. That's no more expensive than the Guardian MAX, but it's NAS. Thanks so much for your thoughts and opinions. -- Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
From: Claude V. Lucas on 1 Jul 2010 13:12 In article <yobr5jni1tq.fsf(a)panix3.panix.com>, <BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net> wrote: > >Hi, folks. Just looking to get some opinions and experiences - > >I'm seriously thinking about home office network backup and storage >and need to weigh out costs, simplicity and reliability. > >Anyone used a Newertech Guardian Maximus? It's a RAID1 dual drive >array which plugs right into the desktop machine's firewire. No need >for me to boot off of it, but it'd make a great TM drive and would >serve as a great place to hold an encrypted sparse bundle disk image >for data which needs to be both secure and continually backed up. > Have a newish one. Seems to work OK for the most part but it has, on several occasions including the initial install, confused the SMC requiring a reset in order for the array to be visible/usable by the system. OWC TS seems to think the issue is with my 2006 iMac rather than their device... I use it mainly for a clone of my internal, but don't really trust it yet so I occasionally also clone it to a single drive in a different box. > >Pros or cons of going up-market to a RAID5 box? OWC has one which >comes with four 1TB drives and in a RAID5 config, getting >approximately 2.6TG of redundant storage, more speed, and just the >same level of simplicity (plug into FW port and all done). > > >But then, if I'm going to spend $600+ on that RAID5 box, it starts to >look like it'd be nicer to have something on the network so I can use >it with both the desktop as well as the laptops on the network. > >Are there any NAS/RAID boxes which will get me 2TB+ of storage which >are worth working with for anywhere near that price range? I've seen >some information about these: > >Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-bay - Amazon's got it diskless for about $200 >and I could put a pair of 2TB drives in for another couple of hundred >bucks (though on the Amazon page, it talks about 1TB drives - anyone >knoe if it'll take 2TB drives or if there's likely any issue with >that?) > >Western Digital My Book World Edition II 4TB ($450). It looks about >as simple as such a box can be - the drives drop in from the top and >config looks pretty easy. Reviews are a little mixed and most seem to >be from folks using Windows. Performance isn't going to be great, but >since it'll be mainly a backup drive that shouldn't be much of an >issue. > >D-Link 2-Bay NAS ShareCenter enclosure (about $180 without drives). >(DNS-323). Seems pretty similar to the Netgear box. > >Additional nice things (in theory) about the NAS boxes is that they >all claim to be able to do things like act as media servers for iTunes >sharing. > >I'm seriously thinking about that My Book World Ed. II deal. That's >no more expensive than the Guardian MAX, but it's NAS. > >Thanks so much for your thoughts and opinions. > > >-- >Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed. > >
From: Jolly Roger on 1 Jul 2010 14:22 In article <yobr5jni1tq.fsf(a)panix3.panix.com>, BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net wrote: > Hi, folks. Just looking to get some opinions and experiences - > > I'm seriously thinking about home office network backup and storage > and need to weigh out costs, simplicity and reliability. > > Anyone used a Newertech Guardian Maximus? It's a RAID1 dual drive > array which plugs right into the desktop machine's firewire. No need > for me to boot off of it, but it'd make a great TM drive and would > serve as a great place to hold an encrypted sparse bundle disk image > for data which needs to be both secure and continually backed up. > > > Pros or cons of going up-market to a RAID5 box? OWC has one which > comes with four 1TB drives and in a RAID5 config, getting > approximately 2.6TG of redundant storage, more speed, and just the > same level of simplicity (plug into FW port and all done). > > > But then, if I'm going to spend $600+ on that RAID5 box, it starts to > look like it'd be nicer to have something on the network so I can use > it with both the desktop as well as the laptops on the network. > > Are there any NAS/RAID boxes which will get me 2TB+ of storage which > are worth working with for anywhere near that price range? I've seen > some information about these: > > Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-bay - Amazon's got it diskless for about $200 > and I could put a pair of 2TB drives in for another couple of hundred > bucks (though on the Amazon page, it talks about 1TB drives - anyone > knoe if it'll take 2TB drives or if there's likely any issue with > that?) > > Western Digital My Book World Edition II 4TB ($450). It looks about > as simple as such a box can be - the drives drop in from the top and > config looks pretty easy. Reviews are a little mixed and most seem to > be from folks using Windows. Performance isn't going to be great, but > since it'll be mainly a backup drive that shouldn't be much of an > issue. > > D-Link 2-Bay NAS ShareCenter enclosure (about $180 without drives). > (DNS-323). Seems pretty similar to the Netgear box. > > Additional nice things (in theory) about the NAS boxes is that they > all claim to be able to do things like act as media servers for iTunes > sharing. > > I'm seriously thinking about that My Book World Ed. II deal. That's > no more expensive than the Guardian MAX, but it's NAS. > > Thanks so much for your thoughts and opinions. I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Drobo at all... -- Send responses to the relevant news group rather than email to me. E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM filter. Due to Google's refusal to prevent spammers from posting messages through their servers, I often ignore posts from Google Groups. Use a real news client if you want me to see your posts. JR
From: BreadWithSpam on 1 Jul 2010 15:02 Jolly Roger <jollyroger(a)pobox.com> writes: > In article <yobr5jni1tq.fsf(a)panix3.panix.com>, > BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net wrote: > > Are there any NAS/RAID boxes which will get me 2TB+ of storage which > > are worth working with for anywhere near that price range? I've seen > > some information about these: > I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Drobo at all... Expensive. Empty 4-bay Drobo starts at $350 or so. Okay, it's about the same price as the OWC Mercury Elite Qx2, which is also very slick. In both cases, it's a non-networked solution and after factoring in the price of drives, I get more storage-per-dollar using a two-drive RAID1 with a pair of 2TB drives. These 4-drive boxes are a lot cheaper per TB when going with 4 2TB drives, but I don't think I want to spend $1000 at this point. And then if we add another $200 for the DroboShare, it's a very pricey total investment. The Drobo looks like a very likely alternative to the Qx2, though. Nevertheless, I'm leaning towards giving that My Book World Ed. II a shot. For a total of $450, if I can get it to just behave nicely for network-attached backups, I think it'd be a nice bit of data insurance for me. I'd love to minimize the plug/unplug games of externals on the desktop and laptops. -- Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
From: Kevin McMurtrie on 2 Jul 2010 01:26
In article <vilain-BC8F50.13074301072010(a)news.individual.net>, Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: . . . > I found that most NAS wasn't worth the time and effort to use it unless > it served disks with native AFS. Nice to know Drobo does this because > the Netgear(?) box didn't. Even connected to my network via a cable, it > was painfully slow slogging through all the files on it. > > A friend thought he'd use a NAS in place of a Timecapsule. Extending > this thread further, how well does that work? I can see the Droboshare > working flawlessly, but what about other PC-centric products? TimeMachine can do backups to any filesystem if you allow it. If it's not the right version of AFP it will put a disk image on it. A static IP address and a VPN router will allow you to back up a laptop while away from home. All that aside, one that supports a recent version of AFP makes everything else easier. Check reviews with benchmarks because many consumer NAS are _extremely_ slow. Even speeds down in the 5 MB/sec range are not uncommon. Info on unsupported NAS with TM: http://www.pixelmemory.us/TimeMachineNAS/index.html -- I won't see Google Groups replies because I must filter them as spam |