Network Attached Storage (NAS)

macvaultmacvault
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I need a sub-$500 NAS solution for my home network and have recently been looking for the perfect solution. I need at least 200GB of usable storage space, RAID 1 is a MUST, Gigabit Ethernet and encryption would be nice, etc. Does anyone have any advice on this?



I was just going to get a reByte (www.rebyte.com) card and put it in an old machine with a couple drives. However, after looking around on the net for home-network NAS appliances and seeing the features they offer I think I'll just buy one.



Here are some useful links I found:



Broadcom BCM4780 NASoC:

http://www.broadcom.com/products/Ent...utions/BCM4780

-- Powers both the Maxtor Shared Storage (www.maxtor.com) and the SimpleTech SimpleShare (www.simpletech.com)

-- Includes features such as RAID 1/0, encryption, etc.

-- Also has USB 2 for printer sharing or to make the NAS drive function as a direct-attached-storage device.



StorLink Semiconductor:

http://www.storlinksemi.com/products-sl3316r.htm

-- RAID

-- Encryption

-- VPN

-- Modem port

-- etc.



Jungo: (working with StorLink to create reference design for OEMs)

http://www.jungo.com/openrg/referenc..._sl93316j.html



TWiki: NAS Appliances for SOHO Use under US$1000

https://rnvs.informatik.tu-chemnitz....ttachedStorage



I emailed SimpleTech and they say that their drive does do RAID 1 & 0 and also supports the encryption feature. The form factor of their enclosure does not currently hold multiple drives, thus the RAID must be done on the USB ports externally. I might get one of these and try to put the guts in a new box with two drives on the internal IDE bus.



Anyway, just wondered if anyone knows of a perfect solution.



-Macvault

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    jeff79mjeff79m Posts: 37member
    Buffalo products sells one the runs linux and linksys sells one that runs linux but only has usb2 to connect external drives (no internal drive). Both of these have linux development communities that allow additional features to be used on the devices. Check out Linksys hacking and Buffalo hacking (Kuro). I will be using one of these soon once my tax return comes.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,438member
    Ethernet Disk Mini for $299
  • Reply 3 of 8
    macvaultmacvault Posts: 323member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    Ethernet Disk Mini for $299



    This product does not claim to do RAID 1, which I require.



    Why would anyone want to store hundreds of gigabytes of valuble data on a drive with no redundancy?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,438member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Macvault

    This product does not claim to do RAID 1, which I require.



    Why would anyone want to store hundreds of gigabytes of valuble data on a drive with no redundancy?



    Buy two.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    jeff79mjeff79m Posts: 37member
    MacVault what are the benifits of RAID for a small NAS in my home vs. just having two drives one backing up to the other? Right now I had planned on just having to drives and I am intrigued by your need to have RAID1 (also what is the difference between RAID1 and RAID0). The linksys system I referenced can have RAID enabled on it also. Thanks.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    dmzdmz Posts: 5,775member
    grab an oldish mac, a 100 dollar SATA card, and a copy of Yellow dog linux, install, turn on samba.



    Done.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,438member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jeff79m

    MacVault what are the benifits of RAID for a small NAS in my home vs. just having two drives one backing up to the other? Right now I had planned on just having to drives and I am intrigued by your need to have RAID1 (also what is the difference between RAID1 and RAID0). The linksys system I referenced can have RAID enabled on it also. Thanks.



    http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html



    There are number of different RAID levels:



    Level 0 -- Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disk drives) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance. If one drive fails then all data in the array is lost.



    Level 1 -- Mirroring and Duplexing: Provides disk mirroring. Level 1 provides twice the read transaction rate of single disks and the same write transaction rate as single disks.



    Level 2 -- Error-Correcting Coding: Not a typical implementation and rarely used, Level 2 stripes data at the bit level rather than the block level.



    Level 3 -- Bit-Interleaved Parity: Provides byte-level striping with a dedicated parity disk. Level 3, which cannot service simultaneous multiple requests, also is rarely used.



    Level 4 -- Dedicated Parity Drive: A commonly used implementation of RAID, Level 4 provides block-level striping (like Level 0) with a parity disk. If a data disk fails, the parity data is used to create a replacement disk. A disadvantage to Level 4 is that the parity disk can create write bottlenecks.



    Level 5 -- Block Interleaved Distributed Parity: Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance. Level 5 is one of the most popular implementations of RAID.



    Level 6 -- Independent Data Disks with Double Parity: Provides block-level striping with parity data distributed across all disks.



    Level 0+1 ? A Mirror of Stripes: Not one of the original RAID levels, two RAID 0 stripes are created, and a RAID 1 mirror is created over them. Used for both replicating and sharing data among disks.



    Level 10 ? A Stripe of Mirrors: Not one of the original RAID levels, multiple RAID 1 mirrors are created, and a RAID 0 stripe is created over these.



    Level 7: A trademark of Storage Computer Corporation that adds caching to Levels 3 or 4.



    RAID S: EMC Corporation's proprietary striped pairty RAID system used in its Symmetrix storage systems
  • Reply 8 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,438member
    BTW RAID1 is the most inefficient. There is neither the speed advantage of RAID 0(striping data across two drives)



    nor the efficieny of RAID 5, which distributes parity information across all drives thus you have the protection but you don't have to write everything twice saving storage space.



    http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html
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