Storage

[Rob Seastrom]

Dave Skolnick <dskolnick at gmail.com> writes:

> I don't buy storage often so I'd appreciate some counsel.
>
> Two things:
>
> My external USB drive failed. It's a 2TB Samsung HD204UI in an
> enclosure I use to backup my laptop AND for my iTunes library. Good
> news: the drive is fine - it was the SATA to USB board in the
> enclosure that failed. I need a new SATA to USB enclosure. Extra
> credit if I can run it directly off 12VDC (11.5 - 14.6), otherwise
> 117VAC is fine.

Don't buy an external drive enclosure - get a "drive toaster", like this:

http://amzn.com/B001A4HAFS

Then you can buy naked drives to use with it (they fit better in the
safe deposit box too).  Saves money on each transaction.

12 volts 2 amps on a barrel connector on the back.

Andre just recommended CrashPlan.  It can back up to hard drives as
well as the cloud.  Works great.  Recommended.

> Longer term I'd like to move those functions to a USB or Ethernet RAID
> drive (probably RAID-5) somewhere between 2 and 5 TB. Again, 12VDC
> operation is preferred but 117VAC is okay.

How important is plug-and-chug vs. building it yourself to you?  How
good are you with Unix?  I am super happy with a SmartOS (illumos
under the hood, which is son-of-OpenSolaris) based NAS that I put
together myself last fall in an HP N40L chassis.  Best of all it has
ZFS which is a nice guard against silent data corruption.

[root at a0-b3-cc-e8-95-9a ~]# zpool list
NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  EXPANDSZ    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
zones  5.44T  3.34T  2.09T         -    61%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
[root at a0-b3-cc-e8-95-9a ~]# 

-r