{"id":409,"date":"2011-05-24T10:12:25","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T10:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timbrison.wordpress.com\/?p=409"},"modified":"2014-02-01T09:02:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T09:02:51","slug":"amazing-new-nas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/05\/amazing-new-nas\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazing New NAS!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NAS\"<\/a>Yep, networked attached storage (NAS) sure is riding the cusp of the wave right now, with more and more folk jumping on the bandwagon.<\/p>\n

But…\u00a3400 barely buys you something to house 4 hard disks.<\/p>\n

Want to know how to do this on the cheap?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, here is my super cheap NAS that can take 6 hard disks and do much more than your typical NAS box.<\/p>\n

First things first – if you have some spare hardware or an old PC lying arround then great – you might not have to buy anything!<\/p>\n

Here is the scenario – an old PC can be configured to be a NAS device. Attach it to a gigabit network and that’s that. All done!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just setup some Windows or Linux shares and away you go – most folk really don’t need RAID or Drobo type systems – which add a layer of complexity that simply isn’t required.<\/p>\n

For example, if you don’t need multi multi terabyte storage, and most of us really do not – then a modern motherboard will run 4 to 6 hard disks…now that 2TB disks are less than \u00a360, 8TB will set you back a paltry \u00a3240. Do you really need 8TB? No, thought not – good even cheaper!<\/p>\n

What most folk do not understand, because manufacturers don’t want you to know<\/strong><\/em>, is that if RAID systems fail, you could lose all your data in one hit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This includes Drobo and similar systems – yes, they will cover you if a hard disk fails, but if the RAID hardware itself fails, your going to have real fun recovering anything. You can’t just plug the hard disks into another machine – you have to recover the original RAID array.<\/p>\n

And recovery is not going to be cheap.<\/p>\n

So, the simple solution is to use a PC on your network, dedicated as the NAS box and share everything from there. Even better, buy a brand new bare bones PC for \u00a3150, and two 2TB hard disks for less than \u00a3120. (These are not recommendations, just examples – you can buy your hardware from anywhere – I am not affiliated with Novatec in any way.)<\/p>\n

For \u00a3270 you now have 4TB of disk space you can share across the network!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Try getting a 4TB Drobo for that!<\/p>\n

Better still, use the motherboard RAID to mirror<\/strong><\/em> two hard disks, so that when one fails you won’t lose the lot.<\/p>\n

And there’s more – with this system, if the motherboard fails and you can’t even switch the PC on, just remove the hard disks and connect them to any<\/strong><\/em> other PC and whoa, you can see all your data!<\/p>\n

So, you only bought a single hard disk? No problem, the case will take many more.<\/p>\n

You want to stream music and video over the internet – no worries, there are free apps to do this on both Linux and Windows systems. (e.g. VLC will do this).<\/p>\n

So there you have it, a no nonsense NAS system that is expandable, reliable and future proof. What more could you want?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yep, networked attached storage (NAS) sure is riding the cusp of the wave right now, with more and more folk jumping on the bandwagon. But…\u00a3400 barely buys you something to house 4 hard disks. Want to know how to do this on the cheap?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-tech","tag-nas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}