Help Me Design A Home NAS System?

jyl · jyl's Garage

I need a new backup solution, which can eventually double as central media storage.

My current backup system is an old LaCie Firewire drive, upgraded to 160GB. It's not worth upgrading the drive again.

Here is what I have in mind.
(1) The new Apple Airport Extreme, with 802.11n and a USB port where you can plug in an external drive, which becomes a shared drive for all networked Macs (and PCs, I guess).
(2) An enclosure that will hold 4+ hard drives, with a RAID controller and a USB interface. Basically, a home NAS box.

I figure I can initially stock it with two 500GB drives in mirrored configuration, for 0.5TB of storage (a 500GB Seagate Barracuda is only $99 now). Later, when the 750GB drives get cheaper (currently still $300), I can upgrade to four 750GB drives at a higher RAID level, and get 1.5TB of storage. That's a lot.

We use all Macs at home, but I bring my work PC (IBM Thinkpad) home too. I am reasonable PC-savvy, but now hate futzing with PCs so the easiest-to-use setup and OS would be ideal.

Does this sound feasible, wise, etc? Can anyone point me to a suitable enclosure and vendor? Is there a pothole I haven't thought of?

Drew001 · 05-05-2007, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jyl
Does this sound feasible, wise, etc? Can anyone point me to a suitable enclosure and vendor? Is there a pothole I haven't thought of?

The Airport Extreme Base Station is a great device, but there are cheaper solutions.
Like you though, I'm going with the AEBS because of how well it works with OS X (zero config, auto-mounts Airport Disks, access your files from anywhere using Wide Area Bonjour).
Also, when Leopard (OS X 10.5) is released Time Machine should integrate very well with the AEBS.

Regarding enclosures, Weibetech has some great (but expensive) ones.
Otherwise, check out Cooldrives has tons of enclosures.

HardDrive · 05-05-2007, 10:44 PM

Here is an excellent place to start:

http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,1738,677853,00.asp

HardDrive · 05-05-2007, 10:46 PM

Wow. Looks very cool

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1981738,00.asp

Halm · 05-06-2007, 03:59 AM

I have seen ads on Buy.Com for these type devices for a while now and thought they looked pretty cool. But it has been 5-6 years since I looked at a NAS. How do these new devices handle security?

id10t · 05-06-2007, 04:22 AM

Any old computer with a couple free pci slots, some pci ide controllers, some drives, and some Linux magic with samba (windows file sharing support)

Joeaksa · 05-06-2007, 04:30 AM

Frys had a 1 Terrabite setup on sale last weekend. Almost pulled the plug as I would really like to have that kind of storage.

Oh well, maybe next month but some of the new storage systems really look nice. Like you am using external USB drives (one 400 gig, one 250) and then copying everything to an old computer on the network.

Joeaksa · 05-06-2007, 05:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by id10t
Any old computer with a couple free pci slots, some pci ide controllers, some drives, and some Linux magic with samba (windows file sharing support)

Silly question as I do not know anything about Linux. What will Linux on a server/storage computer do that makes you recommend it over W/OS? Or does it have to do with the lack of virus issues with Linux?

Have been thinking about jumping into the Linux world for a while and time has not allowed it. Now am getting ready to head overseas for a month and thinking about taking a spare laptop hard drive with me and installing Linux on it so I can get to know it during down times.

Moses · 05-06-2007, 05:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by HardDrive
Wow. Looks very cool

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1981738,00.asp

Amazing. Great price, too. If you are using Airport, you won't need wireless storage. You just connect the drives to the Airport. I keep my Iomega peripheral drive hooked directly to my Mac because I like the high transfer speeds. When the Airport has truly functional 802.11n speeds I won't need a wired connection anymore.

Paul_Heery · Paul_Heery's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by Joeaksa
Silly question as I do not know anything about Linux. What will Linux on a server/storage computer do that makes you recommend it over W/OS? Or does it have to do with the lack of virus issues with Linux?

Let me jump in and provide my input regarding this question.

I tend to use Linux where I can since it is:
1. Secure
2. Performs well on less powerful hardware
3. Supported
4. Free

The issue of security seems to go hand-in-hand with your question regarding viruses as well. Running under a limited account pretty much avoids the problems that Windows users experience with viruses and spyware since most of the time they are running with admin (root) privileges. Also, I just read recently that in a typical Windows users setup approximately 17 to 25% of the overall processing power of the machine is consumed by anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. YMMV.

If you want to play with Linux, download and burn a Ubuntu live CD. That will let you boot from CD directly into Linux.

Joeaksa · 05-06-2007, 06:31 AM

Paul,

Thanks much. Will give it a try.

Agree with your comments on anti-virus software. I was using Norton then finally uninstalled all of it and started using AVG again. Norton was doing a very good job of slowing my system down just to secure the system. AVG does the same thing and does not bog down like Norton.

Joe

jyl · jyl's Garage

The AEBS's drive-sharing feature involves plugging an external drive into the AEBS' USB port. However, looking at the more capable home storage systems (4+ drives, various RAID levels, etc), I'm not finding that USB connectivity is a common feature, rather they seem to be Ethernet or SCIS or Firewire (some have a USB port for an external drive, though). I'll keep looking.

I know I could network the storage system to the AEBS' Ethernet port. I'm just trying to keep this at a "for dummies" level and use what Apple's provided, as much as possible. Also, IIRC, the AEBS doesn't have particularly fast Ethernet, I think it's not GigE.

Edit: For example, here's one, nice and cheap ($189 for the enclosure)
http://www.cooldrives.com/qudrusb20rad.html
Takes 4 drives, USB, RAID - but seems to be only RAID 0 or 1

id10t · 05-06-2007, 05:20 PM

Joe - for Linux, you save the horsepower. Any computer with 32mb or more of ram and the ability to take your storage device - a pci sata or ide card in this case, so low end P2 with 64mb of ram - can run Linux and samba (adn a few other things) well enough to serve a small house setup. Also, no license issues - Windows XP as a host will stop at 5 connections if you use simple file sharing, and the license stops you at 10 connections. Anything more will require a Server license and $$.

Linux can use software level raid. This means that should your controller card die, you simply reconnect the disks so they have the same device id, and you can instantly recreate your raid array. HW raid, while nice, is dependant on the card that is hosting it....

And you can run other services - local caching DNS service (my ISPs dns server takes forever to look anything up and doesn't cache anything either), firewalling off a wireless setup from your wired network, allowing remote connections in via secured and encrypted access with SSH, sharing your high (or modem) speed 'net connect, etc.

Try it out - live cd, it doesn't touch the hard drive - http://www.ubuntu.com

kjb · kjb's Garage

I bought a 1 TB Buffalo TeraServer about a year ago. I paid less for the box than the cost of the disks at the time. I run it in RAID-5 mode and have about 700 GB of storage available. It's not a perfect product, but for the price I'm very happy.

/ Johan