Recommendations for networked storage?

[andrewducker]

I want to upgrade my storage at home.  At the moment I have 850Gig of storage sitting in the corner of the room, with a lot of video, music, documents, etc. on it.  But it's running out of space, and I need to buy something bigger.

Requirements:
1) At least 2TB to start with.
2) Some degree of resilience - my current system is RAID5 - so I can lose one of the four hard drives in it without losing any data.
3) Networked.
4) SMB (Windows Folder Sharing).
5) Requires no admin.  I do not want to created my own networked file server - I want something I can plug into the power and network and forget about.
6) Preferably upgradeable.
7) UPNP would be nice.

The Drobo looks lovely - but is horribly expensive when you include the Droboshare for network access.  Anyone got any suggested alternatives?

Comments

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

850? The mind boggles. And RAID5? Are you that concerned about data loss?

Maybe I'm just blasé; I suppose I do have quite a collection of photos on my iMac now, but until recently, few things I couldn't replace or rather, would be unduly concerned to lose. Code is in the cloud and financial stuff I print if it's important.

[andrewducker]

RAID5 is the most efficient RAID - with a four drive solution you only lose 25% of your space. And I could lose everything on there without crying too much, but I'd rather not if I can avoid it.

[zz]

by far the component that fails most often for me is hard disks, so it's worth it in reduced hassle alone.

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

My suggested alternative:

Deleting stuff.

[andrewducker]

I'll delete some stuff, but a lot of it stuff that I would quite like to watch again at some point. And it's smaller storing video there than it is as DVDs.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Drobo looks to do exactly what you want. If Droboshare is too expensive, can you find a cheap/small/second-hand box that'll do the job instead? If you were a Mac guy I'd suggest getting a Drobo box, and an Airport Express to do the NAS bit. Apple Airports have USB 2.0 and can take external hard disks or arrays like Drobo and make 'em accessible to the network over wifi or ethernet ... using AFP, not SMB, unfortunately. There must be an SMB equivalent? SheevaPlug?

Update: I think you may want a PogoPlug (US $129, a productized/commercialized derivative of Marvell's SheevaPlug if I understand it correctly). Hell, I may want one of these too!

[andrewducker]

Oooh, that looks nifty. I'll take a look into it tonight. Thanks!

[nojay.livejournal.com]

That faint sound you hear off in the distance is the Monastery laughing their heads off at your second bullet point. I'll copy-and-paste it just to rub it in:

2) Some degree of resilience - my current system is RAID5 - so I can lose one of the four hard drives in it without losing any data.

What happens if the RAID controller goes wonky and scribbles over all four of the disks at the same time? What happens if you lose a disk and the system doesn't let you know it's died? What happens if you lose a second disk? What happens if the box's PSU fries and dies taking all four disks with it? What happens if there's a burglary and someone half-inches the RAID5 box? How fireproof is it?

What you want is a backup system, preferably offsite for (at least) the life-and-death data. You can use Dropbox or the cloud or any the many "free" storage options like 4Shared or Mediafire, presuming your internet connection is up to the task and the amount of essential data is limited to a few tens of Gb. USB sticks mailed to puzzled elderly relatives two hundred miles away will work, or meeting your mate at the pub every Saturday to swap a 500Gb external hard drive will do the trick as well.

RAID has its place in a must-work no-down-time 24/7 operation, but in that case they will be hot-swappable drives with much more expensive support architecture and RAID controllers that can send emails, schedule engineer visits and place purchase orders for replacement drives on a next-day basis. Home RAID is best used to speed up disk accesses but a network storage system tends to limit out on the network connection speed, not the HD access speed.

[andrewducker]

I know all of this. And the "must have" data is all in DropBox already. But I've lost HDs a lot more often than I've lost controllers, and RAID solves that problem. My current solution is RAID5, and has already saved all of my media once...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

USB sticks mailed to puzzled elderly relatives two hundred miles away will work, or meeting your mate at the pub every Saturday to swap a 500Gb external hard drive will do the trick as well.

My 500Gb drive is currently doing a big backup and will then be put into my storage unit. (when I say "my 500Gb drive", I have three identical ones, Toshiba units bought on ebay, for about £25-£35 each. Officially "not working" but what happens on that model is that the drive slips so that the connector on the circuit board isn't in contact with the drive. Open it up, push it together, and viola!)

For downloaded media, I figure most of it I can download again if I really want it ... it's the photos, live recordings, emails and documents that I already keep backups of offsite.

I have all my music on a 750Gb drive (and the overflow on part of a general 1Tb drive) and half of my video files on a 300Gb drive. It would be lovely to have them all available on a single drive that was accessible from anywhere in the house (or remotely) and was fairly resilient, so I agree entirely with the OPs requirements, including the "at least 2Tb". So I'm hoping that something cheaper than a Drobo shows up!

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Ebuyer are advertising a 2Tb Hitachi SATA drive for 116 quid inc. VAT and delivery - part no. 171763. Stick that in a cheap media server/NAS box and it will store and dish up everything you want locally any time you want it. Recycle the other drives for archive and backup purposes, offsite where possible. Make sure you update stuff on a consistent basis and Bob's your uncle (unless he had the operation in which case you call him Mary). RAID is just another expensive way for stuff to go wrong.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Oh, so tempting ...

I have too many drives right now ... on the shelf next to the PC are:
3x Toshiba 500Gb (one empty, one backing up another drive)
2x Toshiba 320Gb (one photo backup, one MP3 backup of some MP3s from M-Z)
1x WD Elements 1Tb (general backup drive for laptops, desktop, all the MP3 compilation albums (200Gb), overflow TV drive, fonts and other files)
1x Maxtor 750Gb (my main MP3 drive)
1x Buffalo 300Gb (my main TV drive)
1x WD MyBook 250Gb (empty)
1x Freecom 250Gb (photo backup)

In my bag and drawer are portable drives:
1x Seagate Go 500Gb (copy of convention docs, personal docs, photos, new music, latest TV shows etc. for having with me wherever I am)
1x Iomega 250Gb (backup of work machines)
1x Medion (I think) 250Gb - went flaky at Chester eastercon so not used for anything precious)
(my policy for portable drives is that they must *never* carry the only copy of any file, as they are more likely to be broken or stolen).

and in my box of parts are
1x 1Tb SATA (unused, to go in new machine, when I get one)
1x 400Gb PATA (unused, to upgrade seven year old home machine)
and a bunch of smaller ones (used)

And my main PC is seven years old ... so I think upgrading the PC first would be a better use of money!

[dreema.livejournal.com]

just personal opinion, but if you value your data, don't store it on a maxtor. I've had more of those go in recent years than all the other brands added together.

[broin.livejournal.com]

This isn't what you're looking for:

http://komplettie.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/iomega-launches-smart-nas/

But it's still quite nice.

[andrewducker]

Oooooh. It's not what I want for the storage - but it may very well be a much cheaper way to get a hard drive box to talk to the network. Thanks!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Seagate has something similar
http://www.seagate.com/dockstar/

Three USB devices and a special dock for the fourth drive to be a Seagate Freeagent Go portable drive.

Has built-in Pogoplug (see earlier message) but you have to pay an annual fee after the first year (pogoplug's own device has a lifetime licence)

[zz]

5) Requires no admin. I do not want to created my own networked file server - I want something I can plug into the power and network and forget about.

does not compute.

7) UPNP would be nice.

why? what's it do in this scenario? i tend to steer clear of this newfangled letting devices decide things for themselves nonsense and so have no idea. :)

[andrewducker]

5) Is because I spend a lot of time with computers as it is. While I like tinkering, I have things I'd rather be tinkering with than OSes.

7) Is because I have a music player which will stream music from a UPNP server. A hard drive that's also a UPNP server can be used to stream music to all sorts of things throughoyut the flat.