External storage

[makoblue]

Hi all,

I'm in need of extra storage for my PC and am liking the idea of having some sort of external storage system - almost like a little server type thing - that would do the job. As you can probably tell, I don't know much about setting this kind of thing up at all. Is it generally very complicated and expensive?

Otherwise, can anybody recommend a good, large hard drive as a simpler alternative?

Thanks very much!

[clairedc]

Do you just mean external hard drives? If so...

I have a 3.5 external and a 2.5 portable one... ie it's a laptop hard drive instead of a desktop drive in the casing. The plus side is that you don't need a power cable as well as a usb, which is more convienient and tidy but usually you'll pay a little more for it, and they don't have a capacity like a desktop external drives do.

It depends what you want most, capacity/size of the actual unit/ease of connection - is it going to be moved about much etc etc?

Personally I much prefer my portable one because that one gets moved from my pc to my stereo and also to families houses when I visit either to move things from mine to theirs, or if we're having a party for my music collection!

If yours is more likely to stay in one position then a desktop may be fine for your needs.

[Funkstar]

By "a little server type thing" I take it you mean a NAS device.

They are generally easy to set up and configure, but the good ones are quite expensive.

How much storage are you thinking about?

[MSIC]

You have a few options that all perform slightly different functions:

A USB-connected external hard drive of some type will simply plug in, via USB, to your main machine and give you instant extra capacity. Many versions of Windows will also allow this to be used as some sort of backup (automatically) if this is what you want, or of course you can manually move / copy files as you want. It'll simply show up as an extra drive in your computer.
The main benefit of this approach is that its the simplest, the cheapest to buy, and probably the most energy efficient. They hold one physical hard drive each.
A 3.5" drive will certainly require an extra power connection, however almost all 2.5" drives connect with a USB cable alone (drawing the required power over the USB cable) - as such, they are viewed as much more portable, if that is important to you.

Next up would be Network Attached Storage - having just bought one of these myself, and quickly learnt what I needed to, this is a larger box than an external drive (ranging from only just bigger, to large shoe-box size), and can be thought of as a very specialised computer that is all about storing and serving files. Relatively quiet and power efficient, they can hold between 1 and up to 5 or 6 hard drives, depending on the size that you buy (eg my Synology DS410j holds 4 disks, and cost £260 plus the costs of the disks).

Up from that would be a home server, which really are proper computers (although often the operating system may be specifically tailored for file serving) - they contain regular CPUs, regular RAM etc. They are the most flexible, however will cost the most to buy, and will use power just like leaving a regular PC on 24/7.

It's worth having a thought about if you want storage to function as a backup of data (such as precious photographs), or some sort of media serving functionality (in which case you might need a device which remains on when your PC is turned off).

I should also finally point out the increasingly viable option of storage on the internet (AKA 'Cloud' storage). Many services offer a limited capacity e.g. 2GB for free, and then a small cost for 50GB per month etc. This may or may not be useful, depending on your broadband speeds, desire to access from other sites etc. There is one potential very big benefit of this which is that it is off-site storage, ie if something horrible like a house-fire occurs, your data remains safe. Just a thought.

[makoblue]

Thanks for the responses guys.

Yeah, I was thinking about something like a NAS device that is capable of holding at least a couple of hard drives, with the potential of expanding it, but I didn't think they would be that expensive just for the actual storage unit so I might have to stick with just an external hard drive.

Portability isn't something I'm really looking for. I already have a little portable Seagate Freeagent drive for that. This would be for sitting next to my computer, backing up data, storing music, movies etc and potentially serving them out to other computers/consoles in my house. Also I was thinking that it would be good for the cooling of my PC to have the hard drives outside - maybe it won't make such a big difference though?

Size-wise, I'm thinking at least a Terabyte at the moment.

Do you guys have any particular recommendations for external hard drives? It seems as though that's my main option.

[MSIC]

Remember that if you have a USB external drive, and want to stream stuff around the house, then the computer it is connected to needs to be switched on.

A NAS would sound to be more up your street...
Have a look at this option:

Western Dig 2TB NAS, Ebuyer, £185.
It's alot more affordable than mine (remember, mine was a 4bay box), whereas this is a single drive, but 2TB could be enough for you. It'll be cool, quiet, and power efficient, and you'll be able to leave it on 24/7 with little worry.

Edit: Or this looks great value, as well as having upgrade options for the future:
Netgear Stora, 2 bay (empty) for £77 at Scan.
You can then add in the ridiculously-good-value Samsung HD203WI (£85) and have a 2TB NAS system for under £165, with a further slot free for another drive if the time comes (for either extra space, or RAID redundant protection). It's certainly the option I would take in your shoes.

[makoblue]

That Netgear Stora combined with the Samsung HD seems like a pretty good deal!

I think I might go for that when the NAS box becomes available.

As far as setting this kind of thing up on a network, is it pretty simple?

[MSIC]

Once the basic principals are learnt, it's quite easy yes.
You need to ensure that you assign a static ip from your router to the NAS (sometimes this is done in the router, sometimes in the NAS), so that your other devices in the home always know where to find it.
Then in the NAS you create folders (eg video, photo, music). My particular NAS then shows me how to 'map a network drive' (right click in windows on 'My Computer' or 'Computer')
to then add these folders as though they were each individual drives... And bingo!

[makoblue]

On closer inspection, that Netgear Stora seems quite limited feature-wise as its made for very simple home use. If I'm going to go down this route, I'd rather go for something more fully featured.

I was looking at this Icy Box as a possible alternative: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Icy-B...roductFeatures

It only houses one drive, but if I got that 2TB hard drive then that would keep me going for quite a while. Do you think this would be a good purchase? Or do you know of an alternative that is less restrictive than the Netgear Stora?

Thanks!

[leonkehoe]

Do not buy the Icy Box, the enclosure has poor ventilation. I ended up drilling holes in mine after my hard disk kept overheating during sustained file transfers.

[makoblue]

Thanks for the advice.

I've been reading about various issues with the IcyBox, in particular they seem to not be compatible with Samsung hard drives.

Instead I've been looking at this: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Synol...ome-use(no-HDD)

... which seems to be pretty good. Does anyone have any experience with Synology products or have any other recommendations?

[MSIC]

Your link seems to not be working, however I can tell you that my synology is great - particularly the 'ajax' interface. Not had it long enough to comment on it's long term lifespan etc, however it gives so much data that it can be a bit confusing at first, if you are not used to that sort of thing. Eg set up email hosting, access via the web, hard drive info such as temps, various details about the setup of volumes etc. Couldn't really ask for more.
One note from my experience - if you only have a 10/100 Mb/s internal network, transferring files will swamp the bandwidth. I added a simple and cheap gigabit switch to my router and bingo, all was good.

[makoblue]

Not sure what happened to the link there. Here it is again: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Synol...me-use(no-HDD)

What exactly does a gigabit switch do and where does it go?

[leonkehoe]

A switch allows devices on your network to talk to one another. Gigabit, i.e. 1000Mbps, refers to the maximum speed at which data can be transferred across your network. If your router only has a 100Mbps switch built-in then it may be cheaper to buy a separate switch instead of replacing the router.

[MSIC]

See my review of my new gigabit switch here.
My synology review here, and i've added about my much improved transfer speeds at the bottom.