Protecting our data: We need a NAS
Posted by David Morton Mon, 07 May 2007 01:24:00 GMT
Over the last few months, I have been increasingly concerned that we do not have a proper backup strategy for the data on our home network. I have some very important data, such as pictures of Levi, source code and business documents, music and such. The thought of losing this data is quite chilling, and I have lived on the edge for too long.
My first thought was to see if there are appliances that would meet my needs. I needed a system that could be network attached, and have a large data capacity (over 500GB). I want a network attached NAS (Network Area Storage) because I have multiple systems that need backed up, and I don’t want to burden an existing system with that duty.
My first attempt was a Western Digital MyBook World Edition II. I won’t post a link to it here, lest I increase its pagerank. The idea was great; 1 TB of storage (or 500GB when I mirror the drive) for $438. It looked stylish and had all the features, and there’s no way I could build this for that price.
Unfortunately, it completely failed to deliver. The software was clunky and missing features, things that should be easy considering the thing runs on Linux. In fact, I found out that I could have mounted the hard drives in my own computer and activated some features and given myself complete access to the NAS. Unfortunately, the device started locking up randomly, and I was never even able to transfer a complete backup onto it.
I shipped it back to newegg and started to look for another solution. To make a long story short, I was amazed to discover I could piece together a complete system for under $800 that included: 64bit processor, 1G of RAM, and 2TB (1.5 Raid5) of storage. I’m happily testing things out now to find the best arrangement to run, but the hardware is working great!
I’ll post some pictures and talk about the construction of the box in another post.