Network Attached Storage Drive?

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiode /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just put together a cart on NewEgg with a gigabit switch, NSLU2, 250GB external WD drive, and a couple 5ft CAT5E cables for around $150 cheaper than putting together a complete home-grown NAS. Apparently, people have been doing some pretty impressive things with these little boxes! My original functionality desire was simply a server for streaming my Apple Lossless music files, but now that I'm reading about it, I would like to do more! Apache, FTP, LAMP, the possibilities are endless! Would the quality of my music be limited in any way though? USB 2.0 isn't the limiting factor, it's the fact that the NSLU2 uses a 100MB ethernet interfact rather than gigabit. Is that fast enough to stream a lossless format?

USB2 isn't a real limitation for most home applications. It still exceeds the throughput you can get through wireless (both 802.11g and n). You can definitely stream a lossless format that way. You just need about 1200-1500kbits/sec to stream lossless.

I think the NSLU2 is a great idea actually. Fun project, not expensive.

Just remember to use sftp rather than ftp if you're going to expose your machine to the wide Internet, for security reasons. Lock down SSL v.1, do all the basic security precautions. I'm sure most howto guides online tell you how to do this.

 

[Herbal]

I use a NSLU2 and 250Gb USB hard drive as my backup solution.

Have even watched movies off it via my wireless connection with no problems at all.

Runs Samba, Polipo web proxy and a basic webserver. The only issues I have with it is when transferring large files over it...there's no CPU power left (have hacked it to increase CPU speed as well) to run the other things so web surfing suffers at that time.

 

[Xiode]

Would Unslung or OpenSlug be the best option? I think I'm going to go ahead and order the NSLU2, external HDD, and switch

Also, would it be possible to stream directly to my stereo, basically functioning as a big iPod? I saw a guy write up a tutorial on how to do this, but he used a USB sound card in the second USB slot. Wouldn't that kill the sound quality?

 

[Cyrilix]

error401...your computer setup was around $250. If you add in a decent RAID card, it's around $200-300 more... so don't forget. All in all, it isn't significantly cheaper. You get the flexibility (I never argued against that), but to many, that flexibility is not important, which is when I would advise a NAS. For me, it certainly isn't. I want a box with HDs that I can drop files to with RAID. That's it.

You do mention a few things that I haven't considered, which is if your model is no longer supported or if your NAS box majorly ****s up and everything goes haywire. Well, I guess all you can do is read reviews and make sure that you're buying a more or less reliable NAS. That's one problem you can't really solve. If the state of the NAS industry today is that all of its products are crappy, then I surrender the point to you...but I don't think that's quite the case.

Now, the benefit of a NAS which to me is important is size. Remember, an integrated solution is always smaller. That's one of the benefits. You can probably build your own MP3 player (with some hassle) with a lithium ion battery connected to a laptop mobo, a processor, and some parts, but they have mp3 players because they are integrated solutions for... just listening to music (although some mp3 players have many more features).

All in all, I just ask that people consider what is important to them. Do you really need the added feature set that a PC would entail you? We often buy into things that we don't need just because it's a nice catchy extra feature to have, so think twice before you make the decision, whether it be a PC or NAS.

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyrilix /img/forum/go_quote.gif error401...your computer setup was around $250. If you add in a decent RAID card, it's around $200-300 more... so don't forget. All in all, it isn't significantly cheaper. You get the flexibility (I never argued against that), but to many, that flexibility is not important, which is when I would advise a NAS. For me, it certainly isn't. I want a box with HDs that I can drop files to with RAID. That's it. You do mention a few things that I haven't considered, which is if your model is no longer supported or if your NAS box majorly ****s up and everything goes haywire. Well, I guess all you can do is read reviews and make sure that you're buying a more or less reliable NAS. That's one problem you can't really solve. If the state of the NAS industry today is that all of its products are crappy, then I surrender the point to you...but I don't think that's quite the case. Now, the benefit of a NAS which to me is important is size. Remember, an integrated solution is always smaller. That's one of the benefits. You can probably build your own MP3 player (with some hassle) with a lithium ion battery connected to a laptop mobo, a processor, and some parts, but they have mp3 players because they are integrated solutions for... just listening to music (although some mp3 players have many more features). All in all, I just ask that people consider what is important to them. Do you really need the added feature set that a PC would entail you? We often buy into things that we don't need just because it's a nice catchy extra feature to have, so think twice before you make the decision, whether it be a PC or NAS.

You're definitely thinking along the right lines. It depends what your needs are. The OP seems to be thinking about a) expanding in the future and b) using the box for other server-like tasks, needs which a dedicated NAS doesn't really serve very well. Also, I'm pretty certain that these NAS units are doing RAID in software rather than hardware, and if you're dedicating a box to be a NAS I don't really see a problem with that. The main disadvantage of software RAID is that it hurts performance of other apps that are running simultaneously - with a dedicated box this doesn't matter. So it's a wash I'd say, you get 4 SATA ports on the mobo which is probably enough for most people, otherwise you can pick up some $25-50 cheapie SATA controller cards for more disks. IMO a good RAID card is a waste of money except in critical server machines.

The NSLU2 is definitely an interesting idea if you're just looking for a cheap way to NAS. It's small, low-power, and you can connect a few disks to it and put them on the network easily. You'll probably get very poor performance out of any type of RAID on it, and the 100Mbit network is a bit of a limitation. Keep in mind, though, that disk performance isn't all that important if all you're doing is streaming lossless music from it. We're talking about 1500kbit/s maximum for that, which even the cheapest of setups should be able to sustain easily. The 100mbit LAN will max out at around 10MB/s for example when you're copying your collection to it at first, but if you can live with that and would like to save the money it's a good choice.

You can probably convince the NSLU2 to do other things, but this will likely kill performance for its primary purpose as a NAS. Again, if that doesn't bother you, it's a good way to save money. You probably also won't be able to do too much on it since it has very limited RAM and flash memory. I'd recommend if you go with the NSLU2 to just use it as a NAS and run your web etc. stuff from your desktop machine or dedicate a WRT54GL or some similar embedded machine to serving that stuff.

 

[Xiode]

Do you think there'd be any way that I could stream the music straight from the HDD -> NSLU2 to a USB Emu 0404, and then to my headphones?