NAS Advice Needed.

[Negeva]

This has to be the correct place to post this - storage section didn't seem right.


Anyhow situation is as follows;

Four computers all running XP Pro, all connected to the same router - one via wireless. Need to add a central storage device for all machines to access the data at any one time.

Thus, was thinking of adding a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. The data is mission critical so backup is essential. So, possibly a NAS with RAID1 (Mirror) is needed.

Just want some advice about the best way of having all the machines 'see' and use the data, especially the wireless machine. And the backup solution. Would it be best to just buy something like a Bufflo pre-built box or make one out of something like the Netgear hdd enclosures?

Any advice welcome. thanks.

[Force Flow]

The only RAID really worth having is RAID 5. This means if a drive goes bad, your data is still there. With mirroring...it's 50-50 whether or not the bad data is mirrored over to the other drive (which I've seen happen first-hand a number of times on servers).

Basically, there are three routes to go for a NAS-like device. You can get a USB/Firewire drive enclosure (or even take that up a notch with some of Sans Digital's enclosures...I think there's a few ethernet devices). You can buy a pre-built NAS, which will easily be $800-$1000 (the upside is that you don't have to worry about building it. The downside is that if a drive fails, you're only covered for a year). Third is actually building a computer tower and sharing the drive (it's best to use a seperate O/S drive here). This solution usually gets you better coverage in terms of warranties.

If this is for a business, a rackmount server might be an option as well.

[mairving]

Originally Posted by Force Flow The only RAID really worth having is RAID 5. This means if a drive goes bad, your data is still there. With mirroring...it's 50-50 whether or not the bad data is mirrored over to the other drive (which I've seen happen first-hand a number of times on servers).

Preach on brother.

A file server doesn't need to be a beefy machine since it just serves files. RAID 5 while expensive is worth it. If all that you need is for file serving you might even look for a used one. It will be pretty pricey buying a new one.

[Force Flow]

To give a ballpark figure, I built a 1.2TB RAID 5 server for about $1400 last summer.

[Negeva]

Thanks for the advice. This is for a friends small business; 4 four machine and he wants a central file store which all machines can access.

So something like this: http://www.rlsupplies.co.uk/products....asp?id=240784

Would be a better option compared to a Bufflo Store Station that only has Mirrored raid?

[Force Flow]

If you're just going with mirrored drives, you may as well go with a Dell business desktop, rather than a no-name brand.