NAS HD Enclosure

[Anathor21]

I've been searching for an inexpensive home NAS solution... I recently came across the following device: Argosy HD363N

(You can see it for sale with specs here: http://www.dealsonic.com/arhd3idetorj.html).

Two questions:

1) Anyone have any experience with this device specifically and thus have any recommendations for or against it?

2) Anyone have any recommendations of similiar products that I should look at before spending $65 on this one?

Thanks.

 

[Handruin]

Your link didn't go to the page so I couldn't look it up. I just saw a price drop on a netgear NAS unit where "bring your own hard drives" applies. I might lok into this more for myself later. The price isn't too high, but the reviews on buy.com are mixed.

 

[Corvair]

Link fixed...


Argosy HD363N / HD-363N 3.5" IDE To RJ45 Network NAS Aluminum External Hard Disk Drive Enclosure - RETAIL

US$59.99


http://www.dealsonic.com/arhd3idetorj.html

 

[Mercutio]

Fat32 and its filesize limits are ugly, ugly, ugly. I'd pass on that basis alone.

 

[Bozo]

Why by a NAS? Why set up an old computer with Linux and some large hard drive in it. After setup, remove the monitor and keyboard and service it with VNC.
Even a 486 machine should work.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Anathor21]

Thanks for fixing link... seems that when I put the ). at end of the sentence the auto link creation included those two characters in the link...arg. next time I'll be sure and put a space between the end of the link and the next character.

As to "why buy a NAS?" vs "set up old computer" question - Well, really there are two reasons.

The main one is power consumption - I'd like to keep this as a 7/24 unit and go with least amount of overhead possible, thus looking to minimize the power burned by it. Even and old 486 machine will likely burn more power than a simple NAS box - and generate more heat etc.

The second reason is space and simplicity of deployment. I'd like to put this solution in place in my "wire closet" - the corner of my basement where I have all my network gear (not actually enclosed so not really a closet, but whatever). Limited space and I want to keep it clean and tidy there. Going with a full solution in a box in theory should simplify the management - I want to set it up, and then forget about it essentially. An old computer (I have considered utilizing old systems I have, including old notebooks actually) is far more likely to fail, and at the worst possible time of course, than a simpler and newer solution. At least that is my theory.

I'm open to suggestions of course, thus my posting here

Thanks for responses!

 

[Mercutio]

A big problem I have with low-end NAS hardware. I haven't found any hardware yet that will remember its power state after an outage. I hate that. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

 

[Anathor21]

Downside on that Netgear unit - (?)

Seems that it requires it's own special driver software to be loaded on the host - thus it only supports W2K and XP. Not sure what impact that may have on performance or functionality (their marketing folks spin it as being better of course). It does rather put me off though in terms of being able to easily mount a share hosted by this device on a host - I don't like the idea of always having to install their SW on each host. I suppose once mounted perhaps I could then use windows file shareing to create a share, but don't know....

 

[Handruin]

I didn't look that far into the netgear...that seems to be a major no-go for me if it requires drivers to use. NAS should not need any type of driver or OS to be managed IMHO. What would be nice is if that unit could be hacked to add something like freeNAS or Damn Small Linux + samba...then it's be a nice little unit.

 

[Mercutio]

Neatgear used to make a Home Router that supported 2 USB drives via standard windows file sharing. It sucked as an AP, but it's not a bad file server.

 

[GIANT]

As to "why buy a NAS?" vs "set up old computer" question - Well, really there are two reasons...

Your two reasons are quite valid: A computer running 24/7 -- especially an old computer -- is a major power hog and a candidate for failure (if it has a lot of run-time). However, in some situations, such a setup may not be that bad -- especially if its a commercial/industrial environment where lots of electricity is consumed. The likelihood of hardware failure would then be your largest concern.

A small computer based on a Sempron 2500 processor, using a chassis with enough drive bays, an adequate power supply, and Gb Ethernet could be the basis for a nice little storage server. The investment in the storage server will give you a piece of hardware that you can configure, administer, and upgrade over many a period of many years.

Also, you *really* need a small UPS for whatever you end up getting (home-built storage server or NAS box).

 

[Mercutio]

This is the router I mentioned earlier.

Wireless range on the stupid thing is about 10 feet, but it's always nice to have more switch ports and I've plugged 32MB thumb drives as well as 250GB hard disks into them.

 

[Anathor21]

Hey - I like that storage router idea there Mercutio - certainly looks inexpensive if it works well (I already have a couple USB external boxes with IDE drives...).

Can you share more about your experience with this solution? i.e. what did you do with it and were there any gotchas that I should consider or did it just work?

re: UPS on the system - I agree fully. I pretty much have all my electronics on backup power throughout the house. Should hear it when the power goes off... another reason for wanting a lower-power consumption solution here, I don't want to put a larger UPS in that location

 

[Mercutio]

I have one in my office that I plug USB drives in to from time to time. I have a couple spare ones that I bought to be APs (they're lousy for that!), where the storage component was an incidental add-on.

They work with drives formatted with NTFS, ext2 and FAT32, which is pretty much everything I might choose to plug in. There's a firmware update that allows for support of multiple drives via a USB hub. Supposedly, there are disk enclosures that they do not work with, but the ADS high-speed enclosure I have plugged in to mine seems to work just fine, as have thumb drives up to 2GB.

Setup is pretty much brain-dead if you've ever set up a home router.

I will say that I have to reset the stupid thing fairly often (a couple times a week, maybe?). That would be a problem for me if it were something more than 12 inches from my keyboard.

 

[Anathor21]

Hmm... ok - so you have to reset it a couple times a week. If your experience is typical I can't imagine how they ever sold them... then again, I don't see this in their current product lineup.. hmmm...

For my purposes I only would use it for the storage gateway - the access point side I'd disable (I'd hope that's possible) and I"d use the physical port to connect into my network. However, given my plans to put it in my basement, I don't think even a weekly reset is going to make me very happy.

I'll have to research more to see if your experience is typical or not.

One more question - the specs say that NTFS is "read only" is that consistent with your experience or was there an update that allowed for read/write to NTFS volumes?

 

[Handruin]

Now this Vantec NexStar LX NAS solution looks interesting to me... Newegg has it for around $70. It says it does FTP and SMB, so I hope it doesn't require any special drives. A possible negative is that you have to format the drive as FAT32. I can't find if there are any other file size limitations (except for the 4GB of fat 32)... It seems to be a nice way to use a normal USB external enclosure and then to give it TCP/IP access...