Brad Ideas - Network storage on the cheap for the home - Comments

Ding!

Ragnorok — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:56:15 -0700

- I've got a Linux box sharing 500GB right now, but it's got a 350w PS running 24x7 just for that. I'm poking about the 'net looking for NAS alternatives that will put at least two, and preferrably more, drives on the LAN with minimal power overhead.
- I like the idea of building my own, and Mashie's site is a real gem in that regard. Perhaps I'll wind up going that route, rather than using an old laptop for the sharing, which will still take a good 60w for the same task.
- Nice blog...

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Ragnorok

SATA,ATA ethernet drive

scott M — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:16:59 -0700

All this sounds good I have a couple of old external boxs and want get a ethernet - ATA/SATA controller to put in it. Where do you get it?

Power, and cost

brad — Fri, 19 May 2006 18:25:15 -0700

Well, of course I already have linux boxes. Another one is going to draw perhaps 60 watts on top of the drives, perhaps more. The hardware in drive enclosures is dirt cheap, a couple of chips. Putting multiple controllers on one little board in a box with fan is going to be cheaper, and lower power.

Each 24/7 watt is about 9 kwh, about a $1.50/year at incremental electricity rates. 60 watts is $90/year, more than the cost of the drives these days.

Why not just build a Linux box?

Phil Karn — Fri, 19 May 2006 18:08:33 -0700

Why not just take all those cheap IDE disk drives, put them in a box with a motherboard and run Linux on it? Then you can easily share it over Ethernet with all the machines in your house using standard protocols. If noise is a problem, then stash it in your garage.

Network storage on the cheap for the home

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 18:37:08 -0700

Back to the original inspiration. Wouldn't it be nice to have a 2 drive USB to IDE case with a USB hub in it for 30 bucks or so. John

engadget have something

Moz — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 17:25:49 -0700

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000733061977/
1TB for $US1200. And it has RAID5. So prices are getting better. Note the comments in there about the Buffalo Terrorstation which is cheaper with more features and kind of works after a fashion.

If you are looking for

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 07:48:20 -0700

If you are looking for network storage, then take a look at http://www.serverelements.com for the absolute lowest possible cost solutions. I have a naslite server that has been running flawlessly for over a year now. An old PC, big drives and naslite is the best solution i can think of for the money.

I'm totally with you on

smithmal — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 17:24:24 -0700

I'm totally with you on this. Check out this DIY hot swappable 4 drive box that Mashie made (UDAT1) which is RAID 5. The next project is the UDAT2 which should be gigabit NIC transfer.

http://mashie.org/forums/showthread.php?t=23

smithmal

1Tb at 1000USD, sorry not AUD ;)

Zed's Dead Baby — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 02:25:51 -0700

Currently thinking about this too, and started thinking that a RAID 5, standalone box on Gigabit that I can put in the garage... as if to answer my request Buffalo has this: http://www.buffalo-asia.com/products/product-detail.php?id=2&country=au

I know - too expensive, but it's possible... and with 4 x 250Gb drives this'll give > 500Gb of reasonably fault-tolerant storage

I know, I know too expensive, but something to shoot for. Supposedly these are almost silent too because of the large, slow spinning, fan

Those are a start

brad — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 12:42:56 -0700

But once again, somehow the 2-drive units cost more than twice the one-drive units. They could at least cost the same, they are saving on having only one power supply, one box, one (very slightly more advanced) controller, one (better) fan, one USB interface etc.

Those units are all advertised as hot swap but I'm almost certain that's a lie. They are probably warm swap -- all USB drives can be warm swap -- but hot swap requires one of the redundant RAID plans or similar.

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 12:36:58 -0700

http://www.cooldrives.com/firewire-raid-5-enclosure-mini.html

Here's a pretty slick looking Raid-5 unit with 5 drive bays, USB 2 and 1394, a 200MHz 64-bit RISC processor. Kinda pricy at $1099 but it looks well-built. You can even configure it via the front LCD panel. Sturdy handle for transport to file-sharing parties LOL

Look around that cooldrives site; they have encryption hardware, forensic hardware, some inexpensive USB multimedia devices, and tons of drive enclosure cases.

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 12:12:49 -0700

http://www.cooldrives.com

This site has some USB and Firewire multi-drive cases with their own power and cooling. Most are reasonably-priced. Some models are hot-swappable, which makes even a 2-drive case infinitely expandable (just buy extra drive caddies). This makes it easy to rotate backups off-site. I have a 2-drive case with USB 2.0. I don't keep it permantly connected, mainly using it for weekly backups and archives.

I too would like to see an inexpensive multi-drive cabinet with gigabit ethernet.

That's a start

brad — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 11:05:15 -0700

But you still have to buy 2 enclosures and this box to get going. I'm saying put it all in one box -- space for 3-4 drives, fan, and ether/usb. Those are boxes that use the usb drives.

Network Storage

Fred — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 02:29:28 -0700

Netgear WGT634U wireless router has USB 2 port.

Linksys do an ethernet to 2 x USB 2 ports.

Similar product... but not similar enough

Moz — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 23:02:04 -0700

On an unrelated search I noticed this
4 SATA case for $Oz265 (about $US200) that holds four drives and because SATA allows hot-swap you could use it exactly as you're describing with many systems (my 6 month old system has an external SATA connection on the back, for instance, and XPsp2 lets you do it).

OK, there's no smarts in the box and it uses power from the PC, but it gives you some idea of what a box to hold four drives and a fan can cost even when manufactured in tiny numbers. Sell them via a big chain and that cost would halve. Add a bit of logic (a $16 network card and a $40 SATA controller) and you get four disks appearing on your network. Right now you need a PCI backplane etc to link the cards...

You're right, it should be very do-able.

Network storage on the cheap for the home

brad — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:00:59 -0700

Corporate servers have used network storage, ranging from fileservers, to SAN for several years. Now, with USB IDE external drive cases selling for as little as $20, people are using external drives on their PC, and get pretty good response with 400 mbit USB 2 or with 1394/firewire. You can get most of the capacity of a 7200 rpm drive over USB 2.

So I want to call for the production of a cheap home external storage box. This box would have slots for 4 or 5 drives and cooling for them, ideally as big a fan as possible to keep the rpms and noise low in the desk model, and an even more powerful fan in the basement model. The desk model might have sound insulation though that’s hard to combine with good cooling.

While this box could and probably should have USB or 1394, even better would be gigabit ethernet, which is fast enough for most people’s storage needs, especially if there is a dedicated gigabit ethernet card in the PC just for talking to the storage.

This could allow for a radical redesign of PC cases of all types, with no need for the space and heat of drives. And of course these diskless PCs would be much quieter. You could put your disk cube under your desk (and thus have it be a bit quieter) but ideally you would like the basement model, to which you string cat5e cable and get a mostly silent PC.

read on…