Ethernet Portable hard drive

carderne said:
I just ordered a Netgear SC101 + 160GB ATA hard drive from Sybaritic. I'll let you know how it is when I get it.
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Dude.. I would recommend you cancel your order for the SC101.. The toaster is just a bunch of crap.. I had one for 9months with 2x 250GB drives.. About 3 weeks ago all data was lost.. Both drives showed 0GB space.. All device firmware is defective. Go and google a bit on the sc101.. There is some guides on how to try and restore the partitions and recover the data but its on pure luck that you would revive any data. Allot of people got rid of it. Its junk.. Also, restoring data is the worst.. Its software raid and not hardware. Rather build a small machine with a hardware raid card. Thats what im doing now.. Raid card with 4x 250GB drives.. Allot easier to restore the raid and to recover data.. The SC101 uses some weird file format which there is no recovery tool for and can't be viewed under windows, unless you keep it in single drive setup.

So rather build a proper small raid file server.. GET RID OF THE NETGEAR SC101

Also, look at OpenFiler.com, i would recommend this one over FreeNAS.

Opensource FTW!!

I have all the following on Virtual Machines.
*OpenFiler
*FreeNAS
*pfSense
*RouterOS

Building my home network on opensource. Just need my RouterBoard.
Working on my MediaCenter machine.
 
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Rocket-Boy said:
Very nice system but probably overkill for what I need.
Most of the sites used zip drives to backup datasets, but you cant get them anymore.
We have been using cd-r for a while but its not super reliable, so an 80GB hard disk would be a good call IMO to use....
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You want a Zip-100 parallel port zip drive? :D

Can let you have it as it's just sitting around doing nothing.
 
D@rk_4ngel said:
Dude.. I would recommend you cancel your order for the SC101.. The toaster is just a bunch of crap.. I had one for 9months with 2x 250GB drives.. About 3 weeks ago all data was lost.. Both drives showed 0GB space.. All device firmware is defective. Go and google a bit on the sc101.. There is some guides on how to try and restore the partitions and recover the data but its on pure luck that you would revive any data. Allot of people got rid of it. Its junk.. Also, restoring data is the worst.. Its software raid and not hardware. Rather build a small machine with a hardware raid card. Thats what im doing now.. Raid card with 4x 250GB drives.. Allot easier to restore the raid and to recover data.. The SC101 uses some weird file format which there is no recovery tool for and can't be viewed under windows, unless you keep it in single drive setup.

So rather build a proper small raid file server.. GET RID OF THE NETGEAR SC101

Also, look at OpenFiler.com, i would recommend this one over FreeNAS.
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Software RAID does not perform well.

Hardware RAID is the best - as it offloads the load on the CPU.

To illustrate - I played around with SME Server v7.3 (which also got software RAID) and installed this on an HP ML350 G3 (with a RAID array). This hardware RAID was set up with 4 drives (3 used, 1 hotspare) and it performs extremely well. Once I started SME server up on this server, with two identical partitions, it started a software mirror - and that took ages. Aborted the mirroring when it was 3% after an hour or so.

(Also, a long while ago I set up a Novell 3.12 file server with two hard drives and mirroring - and it was slower than a similarly configured Novell 3.12 server with only one hard drive).

So, if you do need a RAID solution, look for something that can do hardware RAID as this will offer you the best performance.

Motherboards which offer their own integrated RAID chipset will have a definite advantage over motherboards who don't.
 
RAID is easy to design, I can do a controller for that in VHDL, which we can synthesize to an FPGA.

Maybe if you all band together and tell me what you want exactly in terms on NAS it could yield interesting results.
 
One thing i am looking for in a OpenFiler, FreeNAS opensource type application is one that supports hardware raid and also can mount a map drive to a machine that connects to it from a client application and you can schedule backups with. Almost like the Netgear SC101 application. Basically NAS setup.

There is a few applications out there but i havent got a chance to test it yet. Once my file server is up and running i will test the applications and opensource NAS/SAN setup.
 
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Turiko said:
RAID is easy to design, I can do a controller for that in VHDL, which we can synthesize to an FPGA.

Maybe if you all band together and tell me what you want exactly in terms on NAS it could yield interesting results.
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Ok - it must be able to do hotspare

so you can have 3 hdd's plus one hot spare (you will see only one logical drive)

do hardware RAID

use freeNAS as the OS

and have ethernet port

:D
 
Also look at NASLite. Very very small NAS application. You can run it from a stiffie disk or USB. But you have to pay for it.. :(
 
The_Librarian said:
Ok - it must be able to do hotspare

so you can have 3 hdd's plus one hot spare (you will see only one logical drive)

do hardware RAID

use freeNAS as the OS

and have ethernet port

:D
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I can meet all these specs except one- the OS. For reasons of performance I would use my own RTOS for this application.
 
I agree with everything that has been said about the Netgear SC101. It is horrible. The software is terrible and buggy. It isn't actually a NAS, but a SAN, which means you have to install their horrible drivers and program onto every computer that wants to access it.

I set i up at my dad's office, and even setting it up for only 6 computers was a nightmare, with many re-installations since then. It is used as a backup, so if it fails it isn't the end of the world - unless it fails simultaneously with one of the computers.

When we upgrade our family computer, I'll turn the old one into a FreeNAS server.
 
Turiko said:
So we have two different products and they're both crappy :(

I think it is time to do a better job of it.
Click to expand...

Proudly South African this time :D

I'm sure there'll be a market for this kind of thing, especially with SME's who can't afford top of the range servers just to ensure data protection.
 
The_Librarian said:
@ turiko - the HDD interfaces - what shall we use?

IDE?
SCSI?
SATA?

also what size HDD's? 3.5" or 2.5"?
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I actually wanted to propose something more radical for this device....

USB 2.0 interface

why you say? Because that will allow for more flexibility... IDE, SATA, and flash disks... basically any USB device can be plugged into your NAS.

It will also reduce the size of the NAS device.
 
The_Librarian said:
Proudly South African this time :D

I'm sure there'll be a market for this kind of thing, especially with SME's who can't afford top of the range servers just to ensure data protection.
Click to expand...

I agree :)

Another forumite and myself are toying with the idea after we've had a technical look at the Mybook and it's shortcomings.

IDE is simple, and easy but fast becoming obsolete so we will defnitely go SATA.
As for the USB2.0, it's already on my list ;)
 
I think SATA is a must, but you can definitely add USB2.0/Firewire800/e-SATA as extras. I would definitely be interested in this if it was fairly cheap.

I would recommend the 3.5" form factor, as it's cheaper and more widely available, but perhaps it wouldn't be too hard to have some plan to fit 2.5" drives in as well.

A web interface is a must, as installing any software on computers is troublesome.

What options would you include for multiple drives (how many?) and RAID? (that isn't a worry for me, but it would be attractive to most I think).

Would it be an entirely hardware solution? i.e. No OS is stored on the hard drives or anything like that?
 
Yes, entirely hardware solution with code running out of the processor's flash.
Web interface will be there yes.
 
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