Home Network Attached Storage

[Droppingin]

Anyone here have knowledge about products for NAS, network attached storage?

I want to add the capability to my home network and my research says it is a wild and wooly world out there.

In case you so not know it is wireless external hd storage that works over your lag or home network.

I have a new iMac, MacBook Pro, and my wife uses a Windows laptop. I got tired of cables and going back and forth hooking up mobile drives.

Products that look promising are Netgear, Iomega, Synology, LG, myDitto, Seagate, and Buffalo.

Prices range from $100 to $300 depending on disk installed or diskless.

Thanks

[gatorfansrule]

I've had a Buffalo Terastation for years now and the only problem I've had is hard drives dying, but mine is setup in RAID-5 so I just pop a new drive in and it recreates the drive with no data loss.

[Droppingin]

Thanks for posting.

I purchased a LG N2R1D with a built-in DVD rewriter and installed two 1TB WD Black Caviar dh's. Set Raid 1.

Thus far, it has been somewhat of a challenge to set up but am starting to get the hang of it. The language is new to me and I was afraid to do my normal "figure it out as I go" method; I thought it could be put in a state of irreversibility. In other words, I did not want to screw it up.

So I called LG support and once they told me the only way to fail badly was to forget the main password. If lost or forgotten, I have to reformat and lose everything.

I reading as much as I can on the web because the LG documentation is not very good. It has 160 pages and confusing as ever. I have written technical doc's before and my worst effort was better than this. Thank god the phone support is very good.

Thus far, I got my laptop and desktop talking to it and backing up stuff.

The next setup is accessing remotely over the net. For some reason it keeps rejecting my domain name.

[cc1ark]

I built my own NAS rather than doing a COTS solution... Intel Atom based, Ubuntu (Linux) Server OS. I kept it simple and just did a RAID 1 w/ two 1TB drives and put the OS onto a 4GB thumb drive so I didn't have to worry about partitioning the storage drives and it'll be easier to port in the future when i out grow my current setup.
I also have the PS3 talking to the NAS so any music or movies or photos slide shows or any other (legal) torrent files I have on there can be watched on the TV... it's my own personal cloud :)
I'll admit, there's more setup involved than in buying a ready made solution, but I bought all the components including the case for less than $150 from NewEgg (this was before the supply chain for HDs out of Thailand got pinched and prices shot back up)

As an FYI, there's a great app call FileBrowser for the iPod/Pad (not sure about other platforms) that will let you interface with the NAS from your device.

[Droppingin]

Good on you cc1ark! This means you have much more networking expertise than I. Of course, before researching and purchasing my box, I was limited to setting up home networks using menu driven settings and got good at the trial and error approach.

The LG cost $159 for the box and purchased the two 1TB WD hd's at $145 each.

Thus far, setting up most features are complete with two left to conquer, iTunes/DLNA and remote access from the road or the other side of my modem. The iTunes issue should not be too challenging but not all that necessary; I can still manually backup all the music files and still use the iMac over the LAN. Then again, remote access will be seldom needed also; but these features are there and I want them to work anyway!

According to the web-interface settings, provided by LG, the remote access is working but have yet to leave the house to test it. I assume from reading countless and various forums, there will be problems. I know, bad attitude.

Most likely will have to buy one independently or go to Comcast to upgrade my modem because the current supplied unit has been superseded a couple of times. Port-forwarding seems to be the main hurdle.

I am beginning to develop buyer's remorse for the LG unit and envying the Qnap, Netgear, and Synology products. But, at the same time, forums indicate these have many issues too.

One thing I do not have is the ability to communicate with the modem itself and discovering its setup and port assignments.

I have learned much over the past week and found my network skills in this area abysmal. What happened is I got lazy and complacent after 18 years of pc's and about 5 years ago went to Apple products. For my requirements they never cause problems. When I used all the major pc manufactured machines, they always needed fixes and actually enjoyed opening the enclosures and attacking the issue.

Got a little rambling here...

[cc1ark]

Actually, I have very limited networking experience, believe it or not. I have a lot of time on my hands and I'm quite frugal (many others would call me cheap :happy: ) and I'm constantly on Google. I suppose if someone calculated the number of hours I spent on research and set up and then put a dollar amount on my time, I paid WAY more than you did for your setup.

I know the capability is there to set up remote access, but to be honest, I've not even tried. Some day.

Good luck with the rest of your setup!