Networked External Storage

[Johnny Townmouse]

Having experienced massive, unexpected hard drive failures in the past 4 years, backing up my work is one of my top priorities. At the moment I am using a Toshiba 1TB external hard drive that I bought a couple of years ago mainly to store music that I could not live without.

Recently I have considered getting not just larger storage, but a HD that can network so that I can get instant synchronising, and the material gets further backed up online in the event of both of my PC and external HD imploding. I also want to be able to access music and other media files, such as downloaded films and TV, on my Samsung Smart TV, which is in a different room to my PC, but is networked via a dongle.

Is this the way things are going, or am I trying to shove different devices together in an awkward way?

Is this how you back up your shizzles?

[Uncle TechTip]

In a nutshell, yes. Though it's just a hard disk in a caddy, occasionally connected via USB and backed up with a script. Networked is nice but could also be overkill.

Consider this, however - which of your data is actually valuable? Think about time-cost of replacement. Your photos, documents, and self-produced music are of course priceless and should be backed up. But rips of commercial content? It might cost you some time to collect again, but consider if it's worth the time for you to spend backing it up and buying more storage further down the line. That's the approach I took. I know I'll never watch the majority of content I've downloaded.

[misterfridge]

I've just got a Synology NAS. It's taken bloody ages to dump all of my media stuff on it but it seems to be working fine and has freed up a shed load of space on my HDD. My aim is to hook it up to my my hacked Apple TV to stream media through PLEX to my TV. I've not had chance to do that yet but fingers crossed it'll work out.

I think there's a PLEX app too so you can basically stream any of your media on the go from your mobile devices. You've got your own cloud storage basically without paying anyone for the privilege.

I don't really have any idea what I'm talking about, I'm slowly getting to grips with it all but I've been reliably informed 'it's the future'.

[doppelkorn]

I ended up looking at NASs when I was looking for a backup HDD the other day. In the end I thought it was overkill since I don't have any need to stream media to different devices in my home.

If I did though I'd be all over one. My mate (who works in IT) has had one for a few years and loves it.

[biggytitbo]

Do you need a NAS anymore? Most routers let you plug in any usb drive these days, which is a lot more flexible.

[Wilbur]

I tend to install Homeservers for customers who require this.  Homeserver is being discontinued but still available for £40. Rather annoyingly the £100 cashback on these which made them an absolute steal has just finished http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-microserver-100-cashback-658553-421.

[Zetetic]

The N40L also runs Illumos-distros fine I've found. (And presumbly FreeBSD.)