Benefit of NAS over regular external hard drive?

[sdsumike619]

Other than the data redundancy, what is the benefit of a NAS device over a regular external hard drive? I'm going to be backing it up off site anyways so I don't care about RAID and all that..
I should also mention that the drive or NAS device will be accessed over a local ethernet network, i.e. saving a photoshop file or encoded MP4 file from the system that created it to the other drive.. I don't have a terribly huge need for speed for such saving tasks. Just a small home network..

[lordsmurf]

I prefer to make a machine a file server, moreso than having a NAS. My oldest system is mostly a file server, although I do some basic tasks with it still, and it's in the KVM.

This costs less, too.

[sdsumike619]

I don't really want to dedicate a whole machine to it because I hide the drive when I'm gone in case of a robbery...

[edDV]

NAS has its own Ethernet connection (ip). It sits on a network and is accessable to all the computers even remotely over the internet. Each computer needs NAS software to access the drive. Transfer speed is at network speed. I have mine on a local gigabit network.

A USB2/eSATA/Firewire drive must attach to a computer. The drive can be shared to a network but the host computer must be active (e.g. correct power settings).

A NAS is more reliable and uses less power.

[jagabo]

A NAS is more reliable and uses less power.

Less power than a full computer set up to be a server. Not less power than just an external USB drive.

A NAS over gigabit ethernet is potentially faster than a USB 2.0 drive. USB 3.0 should alleviate this problem.

[lordsmurf]

I don't know about "more reliable" but it can use less power. Beware of noisy mini-fans on cheap NAS.

[wingnut2003]

if you have a old system laying around, you can make a homemade nas system. here is a link for freenas
http://freenas.org/freenas i am currently using it and it works great.

[sdsumike619]

I do actually have an old system laying around.. What kind of processing power is needed for it? Perhaps I could put it in the attic.. But then again, maybe not. I'm in Nevada and it can get pretty darn hot in the attic in the summer; probably not a good place for a system...

[edDV]

Very little processing is needed for a file server. But a computer will draw more electrical power if left on 24x7. At CA marginal power rates, a 150W (average) computer power supply would cost ~$48/mo. (720hrs x 150 x 0.45/1000) or 108 times your marginal power cost per KW-Hr. If the machine is in air conditioned space, that would roughly double due to A/C added load.

150 watts is probably more than an idling computer would draw with no monitor on but you need to calculate this out.

[sdsumike619]

I'm thinking I should just stick to my original plan and just buy a big external drive and hide it in case of a break in. I don't need it to be super fast, or accessible via the web. Just a place for storage of videos, spreadsheets, documents, etc that I sometimes need to open to work on. I think the NAS or file server is overkill..

[edDV]

I'm thinking I should just stick to my original plan and just buy a big external drive and hide it in case of a break in. I don't need it to be super fast, or accessible via the web. Just a place for storage of videos, spreadsheets, documents, etc that I sometimes need to open to work on. I think the NAS or file server is overkill..

Yes, a simple USB2 drive can be turned on when you need it. No need for 24x7 online access.

[jagabo]

My dual core Celeron E3200 Windows XP file/media server runs about 50 watts when idle (measured at the wall, three drives spun down, monitor off).

[RabidDog]

A NAS over gigabit ethernet is potentially faster than a USB 2.0 drive.

A gigabit NAS running fully optimized could be faster than a usb2 drive, but in my reading of the reviews and (other)\peoples experience, it is never as fast. A gigabit NAS should be 10x faster than a std NAS but never is.
Try reading the reviews at smallnetbuilder, average read perfomance over gigabit seems to be about 40mb/s but even the very best gets only 80mbps

[sdsumike619]

If you're in some kind of big office environment where file transfers are constantly happening, then speed is important. If it takes a minute or two to move a file, I don't care, it doesn't matter to me. I'm pretty sure now I'm going to just get a big external drive and backup to my Amazon S3.

[jagabo]

A gigabit NAS running fully optimized could be faster than a usb2 drive, but in my reading of the reviews and (other)\peoples experience, it is never as fast. A gigabit NAS should be 10x faster than a std NAS but never is.
Try reading the reviews at smallnetbuilder, average read perfomance over gigabit seems to be about 40mb/s but even the very best gets only 80mbps

40 MB/s is faster than any USB 2.0 drive. USB 2.0 drives max out at 30 MB/s. At 40 to 80 MB/s the transport is approaching the speed at which data comes off the platters.

If it takes a minute or two to move a file, I don't care, it doesn't matter to me.

What about when you are transfering a TB of data from one drive to another? That will take over 9 hours on a USB 2.0 drive.

[sdsumike619]

I won't be transferring that much all at once.. I use individual external hard drives for video projects (captures, encodes, etc) This big TB drive is just for storage of other items that I need to use from time to time. I think it will be fine..

[ps2daddy]

I bought a western digital drive to hook up to my macs and pcs and then I hacked it and setup a webserver on it so I could access my files away from home and give rights for people to only access certain folders with the twonkey media (which was preinstalled) dnla and UPnP I connect with my ps3, xbox 360 and itunes on my mac computer with ease. You can also set it up for periodic backups of your system

Most cheaper nas drives want to charge you about $20 a year for access stuff away from home via website this drive you can do the same thing for free!!!!!

This is the drive I bought
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=586

I paid $179 @ bestbuy for a 1tb drive and you can also hook up other usb drive to this one and make them available on your network (please note the mionet that they talk about is crap you should hack and accessbook to access files away from home mionet only allows you to share "certain" file types via the web and anyone you want to share with also has to get a mionet account)

This is the tutorial I used to install featurepacks and accessbook

http://highlevelbits.free.fr/

Gives me nothing but tears of Joy!!!!!!!!!!