OT: Question for all of you network drive geeks out there...

[picky]

Verna and I are in need of an affordable solution under $550. We wish to connect an NAS type network drive to our Ethernet router: Preferably, one that has at least 2 Terabytes of capacity and preferably a RAID 0/1 configuration for the protection of redundancy it offers. Our primary focus is to store and share photographs and uncompressed videos among the networked computers we have on our LAN and maintain the ability to download them from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection and a web browser.

We've already done a lot of research of different brand and model drives. But we'd like to hear from those of you who are familiar with these types of drives and especially if you have hands-on experience with setting them up and using them. There are quite a few of them now offered but many of them have irritating quirks such as difficult configuration, very slow performance or overheating to mention a few. There are two that we have looked at more closely and we plan to make our decision to purchase in mid-January, so we are not pressed for time. The drive's footprint (physical size) is not an issue because this drive will be housed in our home's data closet.

Currently in the running:

Western Digital My Book World Drive II, 2TB (Model: WDG2NC20000) - Retails: $399, Best online price: $299 with Free Shipping - Easy configuration. Said to be slow. No fan.

Western Digital ShareSpace Network Storage System, 2TB (4TB capacity) (Model: WDA4NC20000N) - Retails: $699, Best online price: $519 with Free Shipping. - Simple configuration. Said to be under featured for price. Has a great fan and runs quiet. User upgradeable to 4 TB. Uses Greenpower Drives that consume 33% less power. Expensive for 2 TB.

Looked at but decided against:

Maxtor Central Axis NAS Server 1TB Retails: $319.99. Fast but only 1 TB. Not RAID configured. Many reviewers claim it runs too hot to hold. No fan.

LaCie 2big Network (2-disk RAID), 2TB Retails: $469.99 We came very close to ordering this drive, as it has great performance and features. We nixed it when it was discovered through reading user's comments that it has a security flaw: You cannot change the drive's factory default admin password! Oops! Anyone who owns one knows that password and could gain access as an administrator. Not good!

Buffalo LinkStation Pro Duo, 2TB Retails: $499. Read that the configuration is quite difficult and the performance is slow.

Verna and I appreciate any help you can offer us. Thanks! -Glenn & Verna

[seti]

As long as you keep your local network secure you shouln'd have to worry about the La Cie. I just read the manual and you can change admin password but not the admin account name. I have owned many LaCei Firewire Drives. They have been very robust.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10953

Download the manual and search password. Hell I might order a couple of these for work and let you know how it goes.

[Guest " "]

These central solutions are not soup yet.

Main problem is that they are not redundant and do not provide archiving. Your better off with 2 a

Smaller units and using a utility to manage replcation as well as archives.

[seti]

These central solutions are not soup yet.
Main problem is that they are not redundant and do not provide archiving. Your better off with 2 a
Smaller units and using a utility to manage replcation as well as archives.

If you wanted to be extra safe you could buy a 2TB which does mirroring. Then you could compress the archive once a week or month to another 2TB or 4TB unit. That larger unit does up to RAID 5 and 7TB. If I bought one I would have a spare drive just in case one fails. You do not want to be looking for a harddrive at the last minute. I have a large NAS right now and I have two drives on stanby in case one fails.

[Jay481985]

Picky just remember that most of those fans will go bad. If the fans are less than 80 mm also they are basically blowing nearly nothing. Right now I am running a external hard drive with esata and running two 1.5 terabyte hard drives without raid though (the box can hold up to 5 hard drives). I replaced the fan with a variable speed vantec fan that adjusts with temperatures, even with two hard drives when i was moving files into them activated the fan to go to near full speed.

[picky]

I will have to revisit the LaCie drive manual once more. I own 2 LaCies currently which I use for video capture and editing; a 600 GB and a 1 TB that are USB 2.0/Firewire 400/800 compliant and so far the only issue I've had with either is the power supply cord on the 1 TB unit needed replacement, and LaCie express shipped me a new power supply within two days at no cost to me. So, I do have confidence in their drives,

Some of the units I have reviewed and listed do have archiving abilities and are dedundant RAIDs. I do agree that a more costly solution in the $1,000+ range would be more robust, however, since I do not have a business case for this purchase (its for personal use), I cannot justify the expense right now. Just setting up a couple of managed drives isn't an option for us because I do not want to commit a PC to managed drive duty.Several of our PCs are laptops and used wirelessly, and our main, HP dual-processor workstation is strickly for video and photo editing and it gets disconnected from the network and power supply lines when not in use to protect it from lightening strikes and such. The drives I have listed are self-managed/self-contained in that they do not require a PC to interact on the network or internet.

I'll have to check more closely into the fan-thing. Jay brought up some interesting points as did everyone else. Thanks for all of the information thus far, guys.

[flatgrass]

I have one of these.

Have configured it both with and without RAID 1.

Decided to keep it as two separate volumes.

Here is a wiki that has additional information and tips.

[Jay481985]

how about getting a wireless router with a usb option like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124262

although I heard that it can also not work it gives you more options. put the external drive to the router.

[Jay481985]

or take a look down this list

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=storage+link&x=0&y=0

[seti]

Picky, The 2TB LaCie are back in stock. I am ordering to for work on Friday. If you aren't in a hurry I can let you know in a week or so wha they are like.

[jamesV]

I have a side note/question to ask.

Is there any benefit to getting an internal HD and placing it into an external case or just getting the external drive to start with?

James

[seti]

I have a side note/question to ask.

Is there any benefit to getting an internal HD and placing it into an external case or just getting the external drive to start with?

James

If I am doing testing that I know could make the OS unstable I install an OS on a firewire drive and boot to that as a test enviroment.

It all depends on the speed of the drive and controller ide, scsi, sata, usb, firewire, or optical. The fastest I've ever used and booted from was a RAID 10 SAN connected via fiber optic cables but you can only go as fast as the OS

[Guest " "]

LaCie has excellent software on their web site that lets you sync drives.

I use silverkeep off their site.

Silverkeeper lets you sync the contents of 2 drives on a schedule.

The only gotcha is that you have to start out with a root directory and place anything in that one directory.

SO I have 5 machines cloned to the one directory by username...thennetworkdrive 1 gets sync'ed to network drive 2.

I like to have at least 2 complete copies of everything aside from the copy that's in use.

2 1TB firewire/usb drives work fine. The drives get connected to two of my 4 routers which have a USD connection. The drives show up as a netwrok share.

[Jay481985]

I have a side note/question to ask.

Is there any benefit to getting an internal HD and placing it into an external case or just getting the external drive to start with?

James

Well it depends. I like to stick with Seagate hard drives as they seem to have the lowest fault and they have the best waranty of 5 years versus everyone else's 3 years. Also getting an internal means you can buy a better hard drive in terms of quality (you can get a network version which usually has 1.4 million hours mean time before failure and are meant to run 24/7) or you can choose a higher speed rpm like the western digital 10000 rpm. Some externals use the cheapest of the company's line to get the best profits.

Also choosing the external case is a better way I believe. Most external drives are meant to look nice and be an external. All the original externals were rectangular, now they are compact, shapely and put as many blue leds as possible to make your room glow in the dark. Believe me I can read a book with the lights off and only use the green and blue and red leds from my electronics stuff if there wasn't a great material called electric tape. But the external cases of today seem less engineered for longevity but for total looks. Most externals are also passive cooled which is terrible for longevity of the hard drive, there should be a constant movement of air atleast so buying an external tends to give you a better type quality in terms of longevity. I would go with nothing less than 80 mm fans as with the usual 40 mm fan you need 4 of them to be the same size as the single 80 mm, just like you need 4 4 inch woofers to be the same surface area as a single 8 inch woofer. But then again if you ever looked at the fin surface area to motor size of a 40 mm to an 80 mm, even 4 40 mm might not be equal to a single 80 mm. Also, remember that the smaller the motor the faster it needs to spin which means noise, heat, and likelihood of failure.

Also externals if you transfer a lot of stuff, will be slower than using the industry standard right now of sata 3.0 other than esata.

USB 2.0 offers theoretical 480 megs but its variable so it can slow down and speed up,generally you will see 20-50 megs movement. That may sound fast and alot faster than USB 1.1 which was 11 megs but really 1 meg but if you are using a terabyte hard drive which is 931 actual gigs or about 931,000 megs its would take hours.

Firewire 400 is theoretical 400 megs per second but its actually quicker than usb 2.0. Why is that, because the transfer is sustained transfer and gives the same speed from the begining to the end. Why is that important? Well photographers and video editors use this so they can have a constant sustained speed. Wouldn't it suck if you were recording something live and the computer could not record due to usb2.0 not being able to keep up.

Firewire 800 is better but there are very few computers that take advantage of it. It was co made by sony and apple. But to be called firewire it must pay royalties to Steve Jobs. Thats why it never really took off. Sony I believe calls it ieee 1394 to avoid the royalty name but they still have to pay the use of he hardware. One thing with firewire which is really nice though is the fact that you can daisy chain the items together meaning one firewire plug can i believe hook up theoretically 100 + different firewire devices. So no going out to buy USB hubs and extenders.

ESATA, basically its the industry sata speed that is made for external, its the fastest about 4 times as fast as firewire 800 or 8 times faster than usb 2.0 and firewire 400. You will only see this usually on the most expensive or premium of the external hard drive and you also need the computer to have it too. I do not believe there is any laptop that has an esata out yet, and most budget to even medium line desktops do not have this option. You can buy a esata card but to be honest no one outside a few people really need this option. I had this option alreeady in my motherboard when I made my desktop so I brought an external hard drive case that could utilize it. Honestly, I could do fine with usb 2.0 and wished the manufacturer made it with usb 2.0 so I could transfer stuff from my laptop too. Currently I have to use my router to share the hard drives and have the laptop connect to the desktop which also allows then allows me to see the external. A complicated method for getting stuff from one hard drive to another. Also the wire is very sort, 3 feet max because the longer the distance the slower the speed.

Also the last benefit to getting an internal hard drive. it can be cheaper and you can impliment raid if you buy a multibay external hard drive. Although I believe its very very overpriced, a Drobo makes raid simple and easy. Oh I forgot about that Picky, Look at a Drobo with the network attachment. its a bit pricey but it looks solid and its not as complicated as doing a raid 5 or 10.

[Jay481985]

oh here the links

http://www.drobo.com/Products/Index.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=drobo&x=0&y=0

[picky]

Gosh, you guys certainly are helpful. Thanks! In addition, I was able to find a very helpful site: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

On the site, they rate NAS Drive performance with large files and unfortunately, the LaCie 2 Big drive is so slow that it made the bottom of their list. I am still looking at the other drives you guys have suggested and at some on their performance list. This is becoming a tedious search indeed.

[seti]

The LaCie Big Disk is an older smaller model so it would be at the bottom of the list.

The LaCie 2Big has Firewire 800 which is what you want for speed. Firewire 800 is continous.

• Interface : 2 x FireWire 800 ports; 1 x FireWire 400 port; 1 x USB 2.0 port
• Interface Transfer Rates (maximum bus speed):
  • FireWire 800: up to 800Mbits/s (100MB/s)
  • FireWire 400: up to 400Mbits/s (50MB/s)
  • USB 2.0: up to 480Mbits/s (60MB/s)

[picky]

The LaCie Big Disk is an older smaller model so it would be at the bottom of the list.

The LaCie 2Big has Firewire 800 which is what you want for speed. Firewire 800 is continous.

Seti: There may be some confusion here. My other two LaCie drives are both USB2/Firewire 400/ Firewire 800, and neither of them are network drives. They are stand-alone, external hard drives have have no Ethernet connectors.

Some of the models shown in the network drive performance list I posted are more than 2 years old yet performed better than the newer LaCie drives, so age isn't necessarily a factor in all cases.

The LaCie 2Big I mentioned (Item No. 301259U) is a year-old, network-only drive that was introduced in October of 2007 and has an Ethernet connector only.

The type of drive I am after is a network-only drive that will be connected directly to the network router using only an Ethernet cable connection. Some brands of these type drives do have USB connections and some may even have firewire but an Ethernet connection is imperitive. A computer is not used (nor do I want a PC to be used) so there would be no opportunity to utilize a Firewire or USB connection. I suspect (please correct me if I am wrong) the model LaCie drive you are speaking of might not be a network drive, but rather an external hard drive and might not even have an Ethernet connector, which is not what I am after. Thanks. Please advise. -Glenn

[seti]

The LaCie Big Disk is an older smaller model so it would be at the bottom of the list.

The LaCie 2Big has Firewire 800 which is what you want for speed. Firewire 800 is continous.

Seti: There may be some confusion here. My other two LaCie drives are both USB2/Firewire 400/ Firewire 800, and neither of them are network drives. They are stand-alone, external hard drives have have no Ethernet connectors.

Some of the models shown in the network drive performance list I posted are more than 2 years old yet performed better than the newer LaCie drives, so age isn't necessarily a factor in all cases.

The LaCie 2Big I mentioned (Item No. 301259U) is a year-old, network-only drive that was introduced in October of 2007 and has an Ethernet connector only.

The type of drive I am after is a network-only drive that will be connected directly to the network router using only an Ethernet cable connection. Some brands of these type drives do have USB connections and some may even have firewire but an Ethernet connection is imperitive. A computer is not used (nor do I want a PC to be used) so there would be no opportunity to utilize a Firewire or USB connection. I suspect (please correct me if I am wrong) the model LaCie drive you are speaking of might not be a network drive, but rather an external hard drive and might not even have an Ethernet connector, which is not what I am after. Thanks. Please advise. -Glenn

I just got my two LaCei network drives in and they are pretty nice.

I use the usb2 or firewire for initial upload of content and then use the network for the rest of the time. It would also help if you had a gigabit network switch otherwise it doesn't matter wheat speed.

Email sent as well.

[Jay481985]

this seems to be within reason

http://us.zyxel.com/Products/details.aspx?PC1IndexFlag=20060802112123&CategoryGroupNo=PDCA2007088

Two drive capability, big fan, even usb i believe. Price is without drives but then again, its probably the cheapest dual drive enclosure without drives out there. I have had luck with Zyxel, when I was in the market for a wireless n router that works, I was between this and that linksys router that was more cisco based but I am glad I got the Zyzel as the rating on the Linksys is terrible with more than half giving it 3 stars or below and Linksys dropped the price 130 dollars. The Zyxel was 80 dollars with rebate, had removable antannae which I thought i needed but really don't cause the range is great.