Network Hard drives

[Tan]

Hi

I need to buy a 1Tb network hard drive, I want it to be ethernet rather than USB.

Whic is a good one to buy?

Many thanks

Tan

 

[MBK]

Intel SS4000-E is good, buy the chassis and just slot in your drives (drives sold separately). I have one at home havent had any problems yet.

Kully

 

[Ted]

Buffalo terastation.
You can buy them in different sizes, rack or floor mounted, and simple to set up.

Cheap as chips too.

 

[Dryce]

I need to buy a 1Tb network hard drive, I want it to be ethernet rather than USB.

Whic is a good one to buy?

Not a simple answer to that.

I don't think any of the cheaper NAS drives are that perfect. I've tried Lacie, Maxtor, NetGear and Iomega and all of them are irritating to some degree.

My inclination is to go for the cheapest with a gigabit interface if all you're after is a single drive. If you're after something a bit more like a little server then the NetGear ReadyNAS units are available with versions that will take more than one drive so they can be expanded.

If they have USB interfaces this may look like a benefit but chances are it will require a driver to make it look like a network interface. This is due to the disk file system being under control of the network file server software in the drive. And that driver may not work well depending on your actual network setup. So don't pay extra for USB unless you really think you'll use it.

 

[vienly]

funny question as i was researching for a NAS past couple of days, i ended up buying a baffalo linkstation live from amazon for £99. its good as it has a built in printer server (2x usb slots) and ok as a network drive. gigaethernet aswell.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000N9508K/ref=nosim/accessleedsco1107-21

 

[drh1210]

I went for the cheap option, Netgear SC101 which works well under XP, its a little more of an issue with VISTA but still works. Its an okay unit in that it comes without HD leaving it for you to fill the 2 drive bays, i have 2 x 500gb drives installed ( without mirroring ) so have 1TB to play with. Transfer rate is good wired, bit less via wifi but you can happily stream with it ( winamp and WMP11 work fine even with Wifi ) Even the PS3 works ok with films on the NAS..

 

[Tan]

What are the benefits of the netgear type of system that you add the drives to over the type with a single drive?

As I am looking at a 1Tb drive, I doubt that I am going to want to upgrade it any further.

 

[clegsr]

I bought a qnap 101 with a 500GB drive this is the equivalent you have to buy the hard drive separately.

It great fanless design so nice and quite - i stream my home music off it.

It also can run bittorrents by itself so you can switch off your pc and let it run - (if you like that sort of thing)

I looked at variuos RAID solutions etc and it was all veyr complicated/slow access times and noisy so I also bought a separate plug in usb drive which I use to back up the qnap occasionally

 

[IanA2]

Have a look at this, I just put one in.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mediasmart-server/

 

[Rory]

Not a simple answer to that.

I don't think any of the cheaper NAS drives are that perfect. I've tried Lacie, Maxtor, NetGear and Iomega and all of them are irritating to some degree.

My inclination is to go for the cheapest with a gigabit interface if all you're after is a single drive. If you're after something a bit more like a little server then the NetGear ReadyNAS units are available with versions that will take more than one drive so they can be expanded.

If they have USB interfaces this may look like a benefit but chances are it will require a driver to make it look like a network interface. This is due to the disk file system being under control of the network file server software in the drive. And that driver may not work well depending on your actual network setup. So don't pay extra for USB unless you really think you'll use it.

Agree with that after an issue with a Netgear NetCenter. It worked fine, powering up when required and powering down when inactive, until we had a power cut one night and the power reconnected and failed a couple of times. This caused the drive to start to boot and then crash and messed up its file system and rendered it unrecoverable. This seems to be the bogey with these drives - they use unusual file systems.

Netgear did replce it (even though it was sealed and I'd opened it up) but it took them 6 weeks and in the meantime I bought a DLink DNS-313 enclosure which has 1Gb ethernet and a 500GB SATA drive to go in it (it will take 1TB drive). It will also function as a USB drive too. So far that's working fine and the firmware was recently upgraded so it does the power up and down thing on its own. There's also software on the DLink website to eneable the drive to be read when removed from the enclosure.

I would stress though, not to move your entire music or vital picture library on to it and delete them elsewhere. I use it as a backup only, or simply as a handy way of moving files from one machine to another.

 

[Tan]

My main reason for wanting to buy one of these drives is to transfer all of my photos to it, so far I have them spread across 3 laptops at my house and 1 desktop at my parents.

 

[IanA2]

My main reason for wanting to buy one of these drives is to transfer all of my photos to it, so far I have them spread across 3 laptops at my house and 1 desktop at my parents.

Then deffo look at the SmartMedia Server, you can access and upload photo's from anywhere.

 

[Tan]

Then deffo look at the SmartMedia Server, you can access and upload photo's from anywhere.

That does look good but it is far more than I was looking at spending. I was looking at nearer the £100 - £150 mark.

 

[Rory]

My main reason for wanting to buy one of these drives is to transfer all of my photos to it, so far I have them spread across 3 laptops at my house and 1 desktop at my parents.

Well just to reiterate what I said earlier, if they're important to you then make sure you have another copy of them somewhere else. These drives are OK for backup, but that assumes that you've still got the original available too.