ok, by the information your giving you do not want a nas (network... attached storage, I.E. Ethernet) but a multi drive external drive unit, there are three major things, one you can get a robo-drive, its a 4 drive 3.5 inch drive unit that can use various different raid like storage methods including ones that include striping so that if a drive goes out in the unit you can plug in a replacement drive and rebuild the lost drive from data in the stripes. the nice thing about the robo-drive (available from various vendors, tiger direct is one of them, although there out here in California not that far from me so I could go get one directly) is that it doesn't matter the size of the drive, if you have to old HD's of the G-bite variety, and you buy 2 new t-bite drives and run out of cash, it will take them all and integrate them into your super external drive
if later you get a sale and get 2 more T-bite drives, you can literally pull out a drive and rebuild it on a new drive with the striping and the robo-drive is a normally USB attached unit, you have to buy a modular adapter to use it as a NAS unit. a second thing to think on is I know there are two HD external drive units for 2.5 in drives, and there may be units which handle three or more available (been a while since I really looked). so you could make a nice sized portable drive with those. 3. as far as brands, I'd stay with the biggies, or companies like Sabrent (which I know make quality cases I use them for my hand made drives), for raid units, I would stay with the better known units, and/or talk to the folks at newegg.com about them, I have little experience with them and its been years so I'm totally out of date on the topic. one thing I have learned, the most expensive are generally good, the middle priced one's will have a few good and a few not so good companies, but there not going to get a decent rep if there selling Junkers, and low end is just that. something is making them that much less expensive, what might it be? HTH, inthane -----Original Message----- From: Blind-Computing [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shadow Systems Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2013 9:50 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Blind-Computing] Network Attached Storage & RAID. Hello Everyone. I am currently researching my options for purchasing a Network Attached Storage ("NAS") box, and have some questions involving them. My Primary question is, are there any Manufacturers, Brands, Models, etc that I should stay away from? That I should place in higher contention than the others? Why, and please cite all relevant sources so that I can continue researching along those provided avenues. A secondary, but not unrelated question, is which Redundant Array of Independant Disks ("RAID") controllers (again, Manufacturer, Brand, Models, etc) should I avoid or gravitate towards? And again, please cite all relevant sources so I can continue researching. Are there any Blind Accessable Software RAID programs out there? If so, which ones work & which ones deserve to be stomped into a wood chipper & turned into mulch with extreme prejudice? I'm going to be using the NAS with my laptop, so installing a physical RAID controller card isn't an option, and I'd prefer if the box had either a USB or E-SATA connection to the laptop. (WiFi doesn't like me & tends to scramble itself due to my magnetic personality. *Chortle*) Another reason to prefer the physical connection is that I'm not fond of having to File Transfer Protocol ("FTP") my own files across my sluggish network to my NAS box. It would take too long to FTP multiple TeraBytes of data to the NAS, when I could just plug in the USB or E-SATA cable from the NAS to my laptop, and move them via Windows File Explorer like I would any other files. Since I'm connected via Cable Modem (no Wireless), the RJ45 jack of the laptop is already in use, so I can't connect it that way. Thank you for the help, and any assistance is appreciated. -ShadowSystems For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
