Help finding a good NAS

[TobiasTheViking]

A friend of mine takes a lot of pictures.. and i do mean a LOT of pictures...

Filled a 200gb external drive in the last year or so... and because of my.. ah.. influence.. she has learned to be paranoid about data(this to me is a good thing)..

So, she asked me what we could do to make it safe(ie, no harddisk crash).

So what i'm thinking, is a NAS box with two harddisks, in raid1. But since i've never played with a NAS, i don't know exactly what i can expect from it.

But, i have made a tiny list of requirements that i would like filled.

- raid1
- automatic use of spare(pull a drive out, plug in a new one, and it mirrors to the new one without any action from the user, the old drive is stored somewhere as backup)
- use loading bays/trays(so you don't have to open it all up to pull out a harddisk. Just open the front, pull out the harddisk, put in a new one. Hot swapping. It doesn't matter if the hotswap can happen while it is on. Even though i guess that is the definition of hotswap)
- SATA(for apparant reasons)
- Ability to grow in size, automatically.. ie.. lets say the NAS has two 200gig drives.. pull one, plug in a new 500gig drive, mirror over.. pull the other 200gig drive, plug in a new 500gig drive, mirror over.. and now have 300gig free space more than before.
- Network access, not USB(i have seen NAS enclosures that only had USB.. which confuses me).. preferably samba/windows shared.

In my opinion all of that should be possible.. i just don't know if any of it is implemented.. And i really don't know which of the above i can expect from a NAS. Especially since i would like all of it to be automagical.

FreeNAS and NASLite is NOT an option... this need to be a small enclosure. Not an entire computer.

Preferred budget is about 640usd(including harddisks) or 420usd(excluding harddisks). But if that isn't doable, tell me anyways :)
Anyone who can help me with this?

Sincerely
A Barstard Commie

[six7s]

A friend of mine takes a lot of pictures.. and i do mean a LOT of pictures...

Filled a 200gb external drive in the last year or so...

My first thought:
200GB in 400 days
= Wow!
= 500MB per day
either a LOT of VERY VERY large pictures
or an !!!eleventy!!! hell of lot of pictures
My second thought:
data storage is getting cheaper and cheaper
The retail stores where I live are selling 750GB USB2.0 external harddrives for around the cost of 50 cups of coffee
My third thought:
your friend has some sort of OCD, which is another kettle of piranhas
and/or
your friend might want to

alter the default file-size on her camera
and/or
check out IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/)

and/or your friend is a professional photographer - in which case she may well find the considerable benefits of storing/backing up 3+ years worth on an an array of external drives (in, perhaps, a variety of geographic locations) outweigh the ever-decreasing costs

she has learned to be paranoid about data(this to me is a good thing)..

It's a binary world:
0 - people who have lost data
1 - people who have yet to lose data

[Pidge]

Something with Windows Home Server?

WHS does auto-magic mirroring of files in selected file shares across disks, the disks do not need to be the same size as well. You can also replace hard drives - say you have 4 x 500GB eventually, and want to go to 1TB drives - aslong as you have enough free space to maintain mirroring, you can have WHS empty one of the 500GB drive so you can replace it with a 1TB drive. Repeat until you have done three of the drives - the last 500GB drive has the OS on, so you can't replace it without resorting to disk imaging.

And Windows Home Server also backs up you Windows PCs. Restoring a machine from the backup requires booting from a CD and wainting for about 30 minutes.

Just need to find a box that will let you plug in enough HDD - HP have one, but any number of local assemblers should be able to put one together.

On the bespoke NAS, there are a number of devices from Linksys, Netgear or Dlink, plug things like Buffalo as well.

[TobiasTheViking]

Well, the drive is also used for other backups than pictures.. but the pictures are the most important things, since the pictures on the current disk is NOT a backup.

So no, she didn't fill 200gb of pictures within a year, but she filled it within a year.

In any case, what is needed is external storage of pictures(already done) and backup of external storage of pictures...

This could be done by having two external drives in the computer, but that isn't a feasible solution for her. hence.. 2+ drive NAS.

[Soapy Sam]

Toby, unless she's very methodical, I'll bet much of that 200Gb is already duplicate files.

My major problem with photos is duplicates- some named and filed, some not.

I can't help thinking what's needed is another hard drive and a regular backup program.

[Hellbound]

Hmmm.

It's a bit more involved, but my wife uses writeable DVDs as a photo backup. Each DVD holds 4.7 to 9.4GB (depending on whether they are single or dual layer) and we store them in a fireproof box. It doesn't provide the fault tolerance of a mirroring solution, but it does provide a more stable backup than hard disks. Additionally, she can easily label the DVDs by month and year, and reload only what's need if there's a problem.

Of course, form what you're describing, it sounds as if fault tolerance is more of the goal than backup?

LaCie has several external backup solutions, and I've had a fair amoutn of luck using their products in the past. They aren't NAS, but they are external RAID:http://www.lacie.com/us/products/range.htm?id=10061. Is there a reason you want NAS specificially, rather than just an exteranl (USB 2.0 or firewire) drive?

[Zax63]

Drobo (http://www.drobo.com/) is an interesting product but way expensive. It uses USB / Firewire but they have Droboshare, an add-on NAS attachment. What is nice, especially for a non-technical user, is it does all the RAID management for you. It has 4 bays but they don't all need to be filled to start with. Plug in any combination of SATA drives and it figures out a configuration and sets up the drives. If a drive fails, pull it out and pop in a new one and the unit rebuilds the RAID. To increase space just add a drive or pull an existing one and replace with a larger drive.
I've come close to buyinig one but it is about $200 over the cost of a RAID enclosure and I haven't talked myself into it yet.

[TobiasTheViking]

Toby, unless she's very methodical, I'll bet much of that 200Gb is already duplicate files.

My major problem with photos is duplicates- some named and filed, some not.

I can't help thinking what's needed is another hard drive and a regular backup program.

well, yes, it wouldn't be that big of a problem to have two usb disks hooked up to the computer and back up from one to the other... but... it would bother her to no end...

Thanks for all the replies. i think i've found something :)

[van_dutch]

I just found this but I have had experience with Buffalo Tech's TeraStation. While I found them annoying as I would much prefer to put a whole server together with some Linux goodness to do large storage, the TeraStation worked well enough and was simple to use/set up. They aren't that much either, running about $500 for 1 TB and come in different flavors of raid yummyness running a Linux flavored back end with a nice web interface for management. It works well with XP (just add it to your network places) and log in as it requests. You can set permissions for users (ie what folders can be seen read/write access etc). Overall, for a simple, cheap home setup, I think it's good. Buffalo Tech also has a LinkStation which seems more geared towards the home (I used to TeraStation in a lab at my school where we didn't yet have storage on the university's servers). I don't know all that much about it, but it is a couple hundred dollars cheaper.

[TobiasTheViking]

I just found this but I have had experience with Buffalo Tech's TeraStation. While I found them annoying as I would much prefer to put a whole server together with some Linux goodness to do large storage, the TeraStation worked well enough and was simple to use/set up. They aren't that much either, running about $500 for 1 TB and come in different flavors of raid yummyness running a Linux flavored back end with a nice web interface for management. It works well with XP (just add it to your network places) and log in as it requests. You can set permissions for users (ie what folders can be seen read/write access etc). Overall, for a simple, cheap home setup, I think it's good. Buffalo Tech also has a LinkStation which seems more geared towards the home (I used to TeraStation in a lab at my school where we didn't yet have storage on the university's servers). I don't know all that much about it, but it is a couple hundred dollars cheaper.
Agreed, personally i would do that as well(or rather, i have done that already).. But not a solution for her.