[rescue] Question about Iomega NAS Server

[Lionel Peterson]

> From: Zach Lowry <zach at zachlowry.net>
> Date: 2004/09/14 Tue PM 12:41:06 GMT
> To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Question about Iomega NAS Server
> 
> I hate to reply to my own thread, but I'd really like to know more  
> about these beasts before I spend such a significant chunk of money on  
> one. Has anyone on the list ever used one? Are they worth having?  How  
> about compatibility? Even if I can't verify that it's upgradable, I'll  
> probably still get one because it's a pretty good deal, but if any of  
> you have any experiences with them, please let me know! :)

Zach,

I just put together a small nework storage box for our PCs, based on the Linksys NLSU2 - it allows you to put two USB 2.0 drives on a wired ethernet and serve up SMB (WinPC) filesystems. The controller is about $80 at places like buy.com, and about $100 at places like bestbuy.

I put two 250 Gig USB HDs on the box, and decided to serve them up as two seperate shares - I could have had a form of RAID, or even set up a back up schedule to copy one drive to another on a schedule.

There is some hacking activity to get command line logins, dropping in NFS daemons, etc. (google is your friend)

I've only had it up for about 14 hours, but it looks pretty good... The price was reasonable, and the drop-dead easy config. was worth any premium I paid.

My unit:

NLSU2             $ 80
250 G USB 2.0 HD  $180 x2
                  ====
Total             $440

Versus a minimal PC:

Dell 400SC        $374 (2.4 GHz Celeron, 512 Meg RAM, 40 Gig HD, CD)
Linux O/S         $  0
250 Gig HDs       $150 x2
                  ====
Total             $674

Of course, if you have a suitable PC that is idle, the price bcomes $300 (assuming your PC can handle 250 Gig HDs, most recent PC can, but very old unit may have older IDE controllers).

My solution is $140 more than a solution based on a free/surplus PC, but it was up and running within 30 minutes, sips power, and is very quiet ;^)

Lionel