Weekend Open Forum: What is your favorite external storage solution?

[Steve]

Not to mention the file cabinets are harder to lose, and have more likely a longer life span, than run of the mill, dashed out the door, flash memory. I've got that crap in SD cards that failed before I ever used it.

True but it took 5 years to make a copy of that server room, I think the USB bus would be faster


Also I have started more fires with paper than I have SD cards.

 

[captaincranky]

True but it took 5 years to make a copy of that server room, I think the USB bus would be faster

To the upside, that's plenty of job security...

Also I have started more fires with paper than I have SD cards.

Um, accidentally, or on purpose?

 

[Steve]

Um, accidentally, or on purpose?

Sorry I should have said I have lit plenty of fires (in a fire place of course) with paper and none with SD's

 

[Guest]

I run a FreeNAS server. AMD C60 based motherboard, with 16GB or RAM and 6x2TB drives in a ZFS RAID Z1. It does everything I need it to do. I stream movies and TV Shows to my XBMC machine and also use it for system backups around the house.

 

[lmike6453]

I can't believe that no one mentioned Bitcasa yet...can't beat INFINITE online storage space!

 

[Capaill]

I've only ever had one NAS so I'm not an expert -- a Synology DS413 with 4x2TB WD Reds in RAID 5. I can connect to it from the internet and have created user accounts for my friends to use the space. There is a huge amount of functionality there that I know very little about so it might be more useful for more experienced users. It can host a few programs such as media libraries, uMurmur, anti-virus, and lots of other things I know nothing about. The NAS and HDDs cost me about 800 euro in total.
My main problem is that downloading files from it across the internet is restricted by my ISP's upload speed (about 6 Mbps upload versus 120 Mbps download speed) which makes internet transfers painfully slow.
The HDDs go into power-saving mode when they haven't been used for 20 minutes, I have the fan mode set to quiet and have disabled all notification beeps.
It cost a bit of money and a newer 2-bay model might be just as good for my needs but I'm still happy with it. The DSM software (the same software on all models) is the big draw with the Synology models.

I also have a WD HD TV Live Media player connected to it over the router, which is very handy. But I'm sure there are better solutions these days for watching media. I have no HDDs in my PC (just SSD for the OS) so all my devices (PC, laptop, phone, tablet) can use the NAS for storage.

Edit: How come the comments can't handle the Euro symbol? Pressing AltGr 4 does the Euro symbol on my keyboard but after posting it, it just shows as "?"

 

[cliffordcooley]

Edit: How come the comments can't handle the Euro symbol?

I can't answer the question, but it's probably better if you spelled it out as not everyone (such as myself) would know what the symbol represents.

 

[mailpup]

How come the comments can't handle the Euro symbol?

I think it can: €

 

[Capaill]

Ahh, it's only visible in Forum Mode. The main website doesn't show it (for me anyway). Sorry for going waaaaay off topic.

 

[Guest]

Dreaming of the DS2413+ which is a 12bay Syslogic with the option of another 12 added.
For the time being I'm happy to backup the internet to my usb FDD! ;-)

 

[mailpup]

My storage needs are modest so I can make do with rewritable DVDs. The DVDs are really just backups and I make two copies. I have a HDD docking station and an extra HDDs of 1 and 2TB capacities but the DVDs are sufficient for my present needs.