Storage

[andyION]

I was wondering what you guys and gals have been using for storage. I have a 100s of gigs of work and personal stuff that I need to keep on a secure drive. Right now it is spread over my desktop, laptop and on one external drive. I want to keep it safe and be able to access it if one computer goes down. I was thinking of picking up a large external drive, but I don't know how reliable they are. So I was wondering what you guys and gals use and if you had any reconmendations.

[juneau]

I was wondering what you guys and gals have been using for storage. I have a 100s of gigs of work and personal stuff that I need to keep on a secure drive. Right now it is spread over my desktop, laptop and on one external drive. I want to keep it safe and be able to access it if one computer goes down. I was thinking of picking up a large external drive, but I don't know how reliable they are. So I was wondering what you guys and gals use and if you had any reconmendations.

I actually read into this a while ago on OcUK and there was a resounding conclusion. External backup drives are good. However prebuilt external drives ala Seagate Free Agent, WD My Book are not that great and are prone to dying a lot quicker due to the enclosures being designed when it comes to heat. There is a great alternative though. Just build your own! HDD enclosures do not suffer from these issues and the drives will live just as long as if it were internal.

Akasa Integral and Icy Box are two of the best. Or take a look at the Sharkoon QuickPort Pro.



Or...... you could build your own NAS.

[mapes]

Whatever you do encrypt the damn thing if it's a portable solution

[andyION]

What encryption software do you recommend mapes?

[Apache Warrior]

What encryption software do you recommend mapes?

Mapes probably wrote his own.
Apache

[andyION]

I guess I thought this was going to be a simple thing to accomplish. I guess I better read up on a few things... I have never even heard of a NAS! Too many acroynms....

[mapes]

I've heard good things about true crypt. I would really only encrypt it if it's a portable media type device.

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

I haven't really used drive encryption due to the fact that I don't really use portable media.

[mapes]

BTW NAS is Network Attached Storage. It's generally a device similar to an appliance. Usually they have a web GUI. In reality it generally a linux OS thats been hacked to be small and to provide Samba (CIFS/Windows) and NFS (Unix/Mac) file services over a network.

[WalkinTarget]

My storage solution:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...r/default.mspx

1tb (2 500gb drives) with plans to add another 1tb of storage and have that mirror the initial 1tb of space. I've used it at least 4 times in the past year to completely recover drives that I've either replaced or changed to larger capacity drives.

[mapes]

My storage solution:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...r/default.mspx

1tb (2 500gb drives) with plans to add another 1tb of storage and have that mirror the initial 1tb of space. I've used it at least 4 times in the past year to completely recover drives that I've either replaced or changed to larger capacity drives.

Lol I just run two 100GB IDE drives in a software (linux) raid1. I've got 50GB of music and 20GB of pictures. I'll guess I'll upgrade to bigger drives but, I'm concerned about power consumption. As it is on my gaming machine I can re install everything from scratch and not worry about it

[WalkinTarget]

on my gaming machine I can re install everything from scratch and not worry about it

Try explaining to your wife how her PC is now toast and you aren't going to be able to retrieve her Quicken data or the digital camera pictures she'd been storing on the drive for 2+ years. I consider it an investment in my sanity to keep my data safe and my wife happy.

[mapes]

Try explaining to your wife how her PC is now toast and you aren't going to be able to retrieve her Quicken data or the digital camera pictures she'd been storing on the drive for 2+ years. I consider it an investment in my sanity to keep my data safe and my wife happy.

The linux raid is shared via samba and nfs for access anywhere and its a raid1. So it's protected and available everywhere