Home/Small Office Data Storage

[Spacecadet]

What are the best options for home storage.?

Ideally I need something that takes almost zero time to set up, is small and includes some redundancy so allow for disk failures


Something like this:
Buffalo Linkstation Duo 2TB High Performance Multimedia Shared Raid Network Storage ( NAS ): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

[Pondlife]

I have an iomega storecentre that has 4gb set as a 2gb raid.

Various online reviews claim it's noisy but it isn't.

Only issue for me is using timemachine since upgrading to Lion - not that this is an issue for you I suspect.

It has loads more features than I use (media server, ftp, torrent etc)

[Durbs]

I have an Iomega Storcenter iX2 and it is awful, awful, awful, awful, awful. Dont get one of those!

Massively noisy, incredibly slow and seems to be forever saying its raid array is broken and its rebuilding it. Their customer support is appalling too. I got in touch with them saying I really wasn't happy with the thing and they just said tough, they dont make any claims about its noise or speed.

[Pondlife]

I have an Iomega Storcenter iX2 and it is awful, awful, awful, awful, awful. Dont get one of those!

Massively noisy, incredibly slow and seems to be forever saying its raid array is broken and it rebuilding it. Their customer support is appalling too. I got in touch with them saying I really wasn't happy with the thing and they just said tough, they dont make any claims about its noise or speed.

I haven't had these issues at all. I did see reviews saying it was noisy but mine just isn't IMO.

YMMV as always.

[Spacecadet]

I haven't had these issues at all. I did see reviews saying it was noisy but mine just isn't IMO.

YMMV as always.

TBF to durbs the amazon reviews seem to better reflect his experience!

But this seems to be my problem, almost all the consumer level "protected" storage devices seem to get <4 stars

[PAH]

Netgear ReadyNas Duo

or

D-Link ShareCenter DNS-320

Both offer raid 1 to protect against drive failure.

Buy two and locate at opposite ends of house, or other physical location to protect against data loss.

[craig1]

After lots of experimentation, I've finally settled on this as my backup/storage strategy:

- Ancient old Compaq tablet laptop running XP Tablet edition on the kiosk-style docking station. This acts as essentially my home server plus home security station (Motorola Homesight)
- Connected to that are two 2x1TB USB2 RAID1 boxes, one is for full system backups/Time Machine, the other is for my videos, music, docs, etc.
- The document folders are synched in various ways using Windows Live Mesh meaning I get live backups whenever I change a document anywhere I get an internet connection. The Mac client for it is remarkably robust and is probably Microsoft's best ever release, and it's free!
- The music and video folders are synched about once a month to an even older machine stuck away in my detached garage. Music folders are auto synched to mine and my wife's laptops.

Might not be ideal but it's built using a bits & pieces approach over the years. It'd be a pain to replace it properly while still getting the same functionality. I need that laptop on anyway for the SMTP server on the home security system so it made sense at the time to put first one then the other USB2 drive enclosures onto it.

[Durbs]

One bit of my backup/storage systems that DOES work well is a cheap Compaq ML115 Server fitted with cheap Crucial memory and cheap disks.

You can pick them up for around £100 and they are good rock solid reliable servers and i can also use it for VM's as well as network storage.

Doubtless, a cheap NAS box is a better bet though if you just want a storage location so all I can say is keep checking reviews, there was one home NAS box that seemed to be universally liked but cant remember its name but should hopefully show up on review checks.

[SimonMac]

Netgear ReadyNas Duo

WPS +1

[stek]

Anyone considered Livedrive? It's a few quid a month and is basically a clone of your data held for 30 days so you've got that long to recover it.

It's net based so recovery and initial backup is slow, but it's essentially rsync'ing the whole time so if your data goes pop, it's safe.

I use it, haven't had to rely on it but I know my stuff is safe in a proper data centre rather than a cheapo home commodity box just as reliable or as unreliable as my PC/Mac.

Forgot to say unlimited data...