Would you buy this N.A.S.?

[Mr. Analog]

I think Thorin is starting to run out of room for stuff like another tower (which is why he's looking at enclosures). I think it's important to note that if he does go with an enclosure he'll have to still make sure that it isn't covered or put in a place that doesn't have a lot of airflow. Those things heat up real easy.

[Thorin]

1. Remember you need to purchase 2 drives at once, but you only get the space of one drive. However your risk of data loss is very low.
2. Seagate MUCH longer standard warranty unless it changed, should be 4-5 years over 1yr for the other brands.

1. I noticed there's also Email Alerts, so I'm sure I'd find out if one of the drives failed so that I can make a backup of truly important files (like pictures) before the other drive fails.
2. Seagate offers a five year warranty on their Barracuda drives.  Interestingly, the Maxtor drives have a three year warranty, but are listed on the same Seagate website.  I thought Seagate and Maxtor were competitors?!

I think Thorin is starting to run out of room for stuff like another tower

You nailed it.  I'm trying to make more space in my living room, with less ambient noise.  I'm thinking about getting two new smaller computer desks, two identical cheap-ass systems, a network storage device that will store everyone's My Documents folder so that they have all their files whichever computer they're on, and freeing up one of the two current computer desks so that it can be used for homework, drawing, working on the laptop, etc.  Unfortunately, the price has already climbed to $2,500 now, for all that

[Lazybones]

Put your file server/ workstation in the basement, and just run a single network line down there.

[Cova]

1. It's not that important to buy the drives together.  You can mix different speeds/sizes of disks in a RAID array, it's just not optimal.  And most raid controllers can only use as much space as the smallest disk in the array - so any bigger disks just waste whatever extra space they had.

2. Seagate bought Maxtor a while back.

3. And when I originally said "out the of way" - down in the basement or a utility room or something is exactly what I meant.  Whether it's a re-purposed workstation or a dedicated NAS box, there's no reason to run more than just power + ethernet to it.

[Thorin]

I know I only mentioned it in passing once, but I'm also looking to decouple my USB printer from any computers.  If I get a file server, I'd want to hook the printer to the file server.  If I hide the file server in the basement, that's no longer possible.  Of course, I could always get one of these USB-to-Ethernet printer adapters, either wired or wireless.  That would then allow me to place my file server elsewhere in the house.  So there's another idea.

Thanks for all the suggestions and feedback, by the way, guys.

[Cova]

Or you just need a long enough USB extension to reach from wherever you put the file server to the printer.  Monoprice carries USB 2 cables up to 15', as well as USB extensions up to 16'.  I'm sure a printer can deal with some packet-loss due to running a long distance - it's not like it's really making use of the high-bandwidth of USB2.

[Thorin]

Never having been to my house, you don't know how it's laid out, of course   Any place I'd hide a server takes more than 15 feet of cable to get to.  I live in a 32' wide bungalow.  All of my upstairs closets are full, so I'm not putting computers in there.  My upstairs bedrooms are full of kids.  My basement is mostly finished, except for the furnace/laundry/utility room that I would put a server in, and it's on the south side of the house (my computers upstairs are on the north side).  The router is attached to the north wall. so I'm looking at a 5' drop to the floor, a 25' run (at least) to the laundry room, and another 8' drop to the floor where the server would get put.  And that's assuming I can drill decent holes for the cables to run through, and that my loving wife is okay with a computer in the laundry room (it's already full with a *lot* of other stuff).

[Thorin]

All-in-all, I'll be a lot happier if I can keep the computer area contained to what used to be the dining area in my house.

[Tom]

You really might want to think about some form of redundancy I think I just lost another disk. a 320GB this time. Good thing I haven't lost anything, raid5 ftw.

[Thorin]

I think I just lost another disk

Umm, your earlier post said you use Seagates; do you go through them quickly, or something?  Do they not last the five years they're warranted for?  If it's less than five years old (and I'm guessing a 320GB is), do you plan on returning it under warranty?

I'm asking because my computers see daily constant use, yet in my 32 years I've only ever had one hard drive fail.  But your comment makes it sound like it happens frequently   Same with Lazy's post somewhere earlier.

[Lazybones]

All my data loss has been on the following brands:

IBM Deskstars / now Hitachi
Western digital
Maxtor

[Tom]

But your comment makes it sound like it happens frequently Huh?

Its sure seems like it. I have the worst "luck". I'm rather hard on machines, constant semi heavy use, used to run under too high temperatures, and had a couple/few bad motherboards take a few drives.

So far I've had 3-4 Seagates (I buy many more Seagates, I'm pretty sure two of them failed mainly due to the IDE card that my old mobo killed), a Maxtor, a WD, and maybe some more.

I _think_ the Seagate that just died is the one I just got (on fri?). So it should still be under the 30 day exchange warante.

I have rather bad luck. Counting the number of disks I've had go bad since I got my "first" computer back in 97, I count 6. Possibly 7.

1 6GB
1 20GB
1 40GB
2 80GB
1 320GB

and possibly a 160GB that I got used not long ago that 8 dead sectors popped up on all at once about a month after I got it (its fine now, no warnings from SMART).

Whats _really_ weird, is I didn't get any SMART warnings or errors at all. I shut the box down to steal one of the ram sticks, booted and it wouldn't boot with the drive plugged in, gets passsed the POST, but stalls just before it gets to the boot loader (ECSD or something like that). And no, its not the boot disk.

Now ask if you want to know how much hardware total I've lost

edit:

If theres anyone willing to take a trip to my place, memex and back, theres something in it for you (reasonably of course )

[Mr. Analog]

I think I'm the rarity, out of nearly 20 years of computing I've only had one HDD fail and it was backed up in a RAID so I didn't lose anything.

I guess I'm lucky...

[Cova]

I've had a lot of drives ... not quite die, but start acting very flakey.  I write "BAD" on them and stop using them, but I've always been able to pull the data off first.

[Adams]

I think my list and your list are pretty much the same.

Although I have never had an issue with Seagate... but of course that could change.
4x320GB in RAID5 is nice. but 2x320GB in RAID1 is also nice.

320GB seem to be at the right price point.