Network attached storage?

  • Thread starter Thread starter dg
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D

dg

Can anybody recommend a product that can allow IDE hard drives to be
accessed over a IP network? I know I could just use a PC with windows
installed, but I would REALLY like to find a device that is small and more
hardware based rather than a PC that relies on the OS being stable every
day.

ANY tips appreciated!
--Dan
 
dg said:
Can anybody recommend a product that can allow IDE hard drives to be
accessed over a IP network? I know I could just use a PC with windows
installed, but I would REALLY like to find a device that is small and more
hardware based rather than a PC that relies on the OS being stable every
day.
Click to expand...

I can't necessarily recommend it because I've never used it, but I came
across this while looking for a NAS solution.
http://store.pcpowerzone.com/guneatstn12.html

For cost effectiveness, I've decided to go the "old PC" route and throw
3 new hard drives in a machine and do software RAID with Linux. It'll
be a bit more clunky than the above unit, but will also be cheaper and
have redundancy.


-WD
 
Thanks for the tip, that product looks pretty good however I would like to
find one that allows the use of a removable drive tray. That way, I only
have to buy 1 NAS device and can use several IDE drives with it (for
backups). The Guslink product is very close, I will definitely keep that
name in the back of my mind for future use.

Thanks again!
--Dan
 
dg said:
Can anybody recommend a product that can allow IDE hard drives to be
accessed over a IP network? I know I could just use a PC with windows
installed, but I would REALLY like to find a device that is small and more
hardware based rather than a PC that relies on the OS being stable every
day.
Click to expand...

Any product that allows IDE drives to be accessed over an IP network is in
essence going to be a PC that relies on the OS being stable every day.
Some are going to use proprietary operating systems specific to the
manufacturer, most use general purpose operating systems tweaked for the
particular purpose.

Just put together a mini-ITX box with your favorite flavor of Linux and you
should be fine.
 
What is your favorite online source for mini PC parts? I still think that a
dedicated ethernet to IDE enclosure would be best, but I am willing to
entertain the idea of building a tiny backup PC. If I had a really good
micro PC site to shop at, I could more easily piece together a scheme in my
mind.

THANKS!
--Dan
 
dg said:
What is your favorite online source for mini PC parts? I still think that
a dedicated ethernet to IDE enclosure would be best, but I am willing to
entertain the idea of building a tiny backup PC. If I had a really good
micro PC site to shop at, I could more easily piece together a scheme in
my mind.
Click to expand...

There's no really good US source unfortunately. Best thing to do is go to
 
Can anybody recommend a product that can allow IDE hard drives to be
accessed over a IP network? I know I could just use a PC with windows
installed, but I would REALLY like to find a device that is small and more
hardware based rather than a PC that relies on the OS being stable every
day.
Click to expand...

There's an inexpensive line of network storage devices from Ximeta at
www.ximeta.com. Looks just like an external USB2 drive (and has a
USB2 port as well). When I tried one, multi-user write access was not
working, but they have new drivers that claim to have added this. It
would work fine for a single user, I believe.

I'm buying another one soon to test out again for use as a remote
backup for my disk images.
 
Do you know if Ximeta makes DOS driver for those devices?
I would like to use Ghost to save my image directly to Ximeta device.
Or, anyone successful with Ximeta and Acronis TrueImage?
 
Peter said:
Do you know if Ximeta makes DOS driver for those devices?
I would like to use Ghost to save my image directly to Ximeta device.
Or, anyone successful with Ximeta and Acronis TrueImage?
Click to expand...

Proprietary drivers scared me away from this device very quickly.
If I had NAS, I would want it to have some sort of standard way of
accessing it, like SMB and NFS. That way, it's pretty much OS agnostic.
I googled a review:
http://www.bigbruin.com/html/ximetanetdisk.htm
and it said that it supported only Win2k and WinXP out of the box.
Recently developed drivers would support RedHat 8.0 and 9.0 and Mac OSX

So my Gentoo-based MythTV machine wouldn't be able to access it?
Acronis TrueImage could probably image to it, but the (linux-based)
recovery CD probably wouldn't be able to restore from it.

No thanks.


-WD
 
So my Gentoo-based MythTV machine wouldn't be able to access it?
Acronis TrueImage could probably image to it, but the (linux-based)
recovery CD probably wouldn't be able to restore from it.
Click to expand...

During the short period I had my Ximeta, I didn't try the recovery TI7
CD on it. My guess is that it wouldn't work across the 'net, due to
the driver issues, but that would need to be tested. However, it also
has a USB2 port, and I've had very good luck with True Image and USB
backup hardware.

Sure, having to hook it up locally defeats part of the purpose of
network storage, but it is another option. I'm waiting for the next
good sale, and will buy another for more testing, but I'm all XP these
days.
 
Neil said:
During the short period I had my Ximeta, I didn't try the recovery TI7
CD on it. My guess is that it wouldn't work across the 'net, due to
the driver issues, but that would need to be tested. However, it also
has a USB2 port, and I've had very good luck with True Image and USB
backup hardware.
Click to expand...

Yes it has a USB port, but do you know for sure that it uses a standard
USB Mass Storage driver? (The former definitely does not imply the latter)


-WD
 
dg said:
Can anybody recommend a product that can allow IDE hard drives to be
accessed over a IP network? I know I could just use a PC with windows
installed, but I would REALLY like to find a device that is small and more
hardware based rather than a PC that relies on the OS being stable every
day.

ANY tips appreciated!
--Dan
Click to expand...
I looked at a few NAS drives a few months ago and finally settled on the
Buffalo Linkstation. (www.buffalotech.com) It not only has the drive
(120, 160, or 250GB)in a little case, but it has two USB connectors. In
some places in the documentation I read the USB connectors are for one
external drive and one printer, and they can't be changed. Other places
indicate maybe two drives could be attached. The USB drive(s) can be
used for additional storage -OR- can be used for a continuous backup
(one or the other).

They also say you can set the drive to turn off at a predetermined time
and restart at another time. That feature doesn't work in the current
firmware.

The only one that I remember that you could change out the drives was
the Linksys version (EFG-80). They seemed pretty pricey when I looked at
them. I notice they also now have a controller that links the network to
a USB drive (NSLU2) that runs from $75.00 on up. If you already have
the drive, this would probably be the cheapest way to go.

The best price I found a few months ago for my Buffalo was Page
computers. It looks a little higher now and I haven't done any
comparisons since I got mine, so they may not be the cheapest. Page
was very fast on getting the drive to me. They promised 5 business
days, but got it to me in 3 and this is in New Mexico!

John
 
Another neat little box:

Linksys NSLU2, a very nicely done Samba (CIFS) server with a
Linux kernel inside. A fellow has been hacking and added NFS support,
though I haven't seen the details posted
yet.

Just got one, works great, allows up to two external USB disks or 1
disk and 1 USB Flash memory card attach. Even includes a built in
backup capability.

Cheers de Mark @ 7tronics

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.
 
Yes it has a USB port, but do you know for sure that it uses a standard
USB Mass Storage driver? (The former definitely does not imply the latter)


-WD
Click to expand...

Will,
I have one that I use just for stoage and overflow. If I remember
correctlty if you go the USB2 route rather than the NDAS route it does
not require a driver. XP takes care of it.
 
Another neat little box:

Linksys NSLU2, a very nicely done Samba (CIFS) server with a
Linux kernel inside. A fellow has been hacking and added NFS support,
though I haven't seen the details posted
yet.

Just got one, works great, allows up to two external USB disks or 1
disk and 1 USB Flash memory card attach. Even includes a built in
backup capability.

Cheers de Mark @ 7tronics

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.
Click to expand...

I almost bought this. Until I found out the external drives have to
be formatted in a non-Windows format. I'd like to be able to
disconnect the drives if necessary and connect them straight to a
Windows box.
 
I don't like Ximeta's NetDisk because it doesn't have an internal cooling fan which may cause the HDD to overheat. Also, as far as I know, you can only use FAT32 which is a very unreliable and limited file system, unlike NTFS.
 
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