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A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

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Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#61

Post by tpz »

sjs wrote: post #60
ttol wrote: post #31

What you're looking for is Windows Home Server. It's amazing. Stores all the media you need, plus has streaming capabilities over the net. Able to expand perpetually -- no need to reformat or anything like that. I have it running with 10TB of space. It has a great front-end UI, and as close to zeroconf as you can get with this type of service. See exampel screenshot: http://ivivo.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/windowsho…

I can't seem to find info on whether WHS's filesystem checks for corruption or not. One thing ZFS has going for it is detecting corruption, and when you're storing 10TB of your most precious media to a single machine you really need to trust the filesystem. Do you know if it verifies data integrity? I have heard about WHS from a few people now and it seems like the best solution. I don't even have a Windows machine s…

In the current version of WHS (I can't speak for the upcoming "Vail" release) you can think about its redundancy in terms of file-level software RAID 1 without integrity checking.

Pros and cons abound in that setup, of course, but setting aside the lack of integrity checking ala ZFS for a moment, I have personally taken advantage of the file-level software RAID 1 portion when my first WHS server encountered an internal hardware issue and I had to pull its drives (normal NTFS drives full of the files) and bring them online in a replacement WHS server. Each drive was brought online out of the storage pool, its files copied into the pool volumes, and finally the drive was added to the storage pool. It requires an extra drive already in the pool to pull this off, but given that it worked very well, far better than some of the horror stories I've heard about people trying to transplant RAID 5 and 6 setups when other NAS solutions have failed at the server level. A part of me of course wishes for a ZFS-style WHS, and perhaps MSFT will get there some day, but in the meantime I can certainly see how WHS's design decisions were reached.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#62

Post by stcredzero »

I think all of this guy's requirements would be satisfied by something like a Mac Mini with two additions:

    - The ability to mirror the Mac Mini in the cloud
    - Something like an Airport Express with an HDMI output
Simply leave the Mac Mini on all the time. It becomes the stand alone device, satisfying point 1. You can use the iLife suite and a few other programs (mostly free) to satisfy point 2. It has a remote and has been satisfying all the other points except 4 and 9. The Airport Express+HDMI thing would satisfy point 4. (And Apple TV already does this, but it costs too much to get just for that function.) Being able to mirror it in the cloud would give you point 9. (It's only a matter of time before we see a Time Machine back-end in the cloud.)

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#63

Post by jbooth »

asnyder wrote: post #40
uptown wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Part of their problem is absolutely a branding thing.

Yep, the problem with their brand is that it's not Google or Apple. If Apple or Google were to release a clone of Opera tomorrow it would have significant higher usage stats and buzz. Lets face it, as much as we would like to believe we judge technology based on it's merits, the truth of the matter is we're just in High School 2.0 and what really matters is that we're hanging out with the cool kids. In this case Oper…

True, but if Opera was better enough, it'd surpass them. The fact is, it's a web browser, and Google can put enough engineers on it to build a better JS engine just because they feel like it. There's not really any room for a killer idea, or at least I can't see any.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#64

Post by sprout »

edanm wrote: post #27

I just upgraded my Dropbox account to 50Gb, and for me, it covers a lot of needs. I keep all my important files in there (my mp3 collection, projects, documents, etc.). I have Dropbox set up on 3 machines (main machine, family computer and my laptop), so I get automatic syncing of all these files, plus backups of all the files on 3 computers, plus access to all these files in the cloud. As far as I'm concerned, it's…

What I would really like is some metadata baked into the filesystem layer that allows you to specify backup levels, which vary how often, whether or not, and where things are backed up.

So something like:

1 - always back up to primary backup locations in full. 2 - back up to primary backup locations if it's not too much trouble (some sort of configurable threshold for space) 3 - like 2, but a lower threshold 4 - only back up to secondary backup 5 - do not back up.

I know that there's a lot of configuration that would have to go into this, but I think as data becomes a bigger part of our lives, we need to have a more intentional attitude towards how we store our data, and not just 'let the computer back it up.' Until movies are as easy to store as text is currently, there will always be tradeoffs that we will want to think about.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#65

Post by aik »

kenjackson wrote: post #8

There's also Windows Home Server, which does everything you're looking for I believe. Here's a list of features from the wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server ):

Do you have to pay for WHS, or is it only available through various companies when buying a server?

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#66

Post by sjs »

tpz wrote: post #61
sjs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't seem to find info on whether WHS's filesystem checks for corruption or not. One thing ZFS has going for it is detecting corruption, and when you're storing 10TB of your most precious media to a single machine you really need to trust the filesystem. Do you know if it verifies data integrity? I have heard about WHS from a few people now and it seems like the best solution. I don't even have a Windows machine s…

In the current version of WHS (I can't speak for the upcoming "Vail" release) you can think about its redundancy in terms of file-level software RAID 1 without integrity checking. Pros and cons abound in that setup, of course, but setting aside the lack of integrity checking ala ZFS for a moment, I have personally taken advantage of the file-level software RAID 1 portion when my first WHS server encountered an intern…

Thanks for that info & anecdote.

I haven't experienced much data corruption but it has bitten me here and there. With terabytes on each disk these days I really wish more systems verified our data, even if they can't repair it I want to know when my disks are no longer reliable. Ah well, can't have it all. We'll get there eventually.

edit: at least we have SMART

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#67

Post by ttol »

baddox wrote: post #57
ttol wrote: post #31

What you're looking for is Windows Home Server. It's amazing. Stores all the media you need, plus has streaming capabilities over the net. Able to expand perpetually -- no need to reformat or anything like that. I have it running with 10TB of space. It has a great front-end UI, and as close to zeroconf as you can get with this type of service. See exampel screenshot: http://ivivo.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/windowsho…

I've been tempted by WHS for a while now. I have a few questions for you, since you seem pretty experienced with it. How does the file system deal with failure? What if one of my drives fails? Can I set it up to be as redundant as RAID 5 (i.e. I can lose any one drive and it's okay)? What if my motherboard or OS installation fails? Can I reinstall the operation system and have it recognize my file system (assuming I…

if OS installation fails, you can do a server reinstall and it will preserve your data. Alternatively, you can take out the disk and plug it into another PC and there will be a hidden folder to access the files called \Data.

in terms of drive failure, in my experience it's less about the drive and more about the data you have. so, for instance, if you value your Photos directory like I do, you can select that to be duplicated across multiple drives. This will make sure there are multiple copies of that folder in case of any single drive failure.

I've also got an external RAID that I've connected to my WHS. WHS sees this as one drive, while in reality it's two drives in RAID config.

I've trusted my WHS build with 10TB of very valuable data. So far so good.

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#68

Post by dan_the_welder »

FreeNAS is awesome and extensible. Out of the box it's quite functional and it's open source.

It's the backbone of my work/home network. All the Linux boxes have it mounted in the home directory, so all the machines with Rhythmbox think it's local. All the windows machines can access it easily.

There are a dozen services you can enable as your needs dictate. Setup is straightforward through a web interface. Extra bonus it runs headless on crap hardware, in my case a 433mghz Emachine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#69

Post by edanm »

sprout wrote: post #64
edanm wrote: post #27

I just upgraded my Dropbox account to 50Gb, and for me, it covers a lot of needs. I keep all my important files in there (my mp3 collection, projects, documents, etc.). I have Dropbox set up on 3 machines (main machine, family computer and my laptop), so I get automatic syncing of all these files, plus backups of all the files on 3 computers, plus access to all these files in the cloud. As far as I'm concerned, it's…

What I would really like is some metadata baked into the filesystem layer that allows you to specify backup levels, which vary how often, whether or not, and where things are backed up. So something like: 1 - always back up to primary backup locations in full. 2 - back up to primary backup locations if it's not too much trouble (some sort of configurable threshold for space) 3 - like 2, but a lower threshold 4 - only…

The beauty of Dropbox is the "it just works" feeling. You put things in a folder, it's synced to all other computers, plus the web. It really is simple in the best sense of the word.

Having said that, the latest beta does allow you to choose to only sync some of the folders. So you can, for example, install Dropbox on your work computer, and choose not to sync your mp3s to it, etc. This should solve a lot of the use cases you have.

The only thing really missing, for me, is the ability to exclude specific files/folders from the Dropbox folder (like, for example, per-computer configuration files). I assume they'll allow that at some point, but for now I have to work my way around it. Still worth it though!

Re: A startup should create this storage device. I would buy it.

#70

Post by sprout »

edanm wrote: post #69
sprout wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I would really like is some metadata baked into the filesystem layer that allows you to specify backup levels, which vary how often, whether or not, and where things are backed up. So something like: 1 - always back up to primary backup locations in full. 2 - back up to primary backup locations if it's not too much trouble (some sort of configurable threshold for space) 3 - like 2, but a lower threshold 4 - only…

The beauty of Dropbox is the "it just works" feeling. You put things in a folder, it's synced to all other computers, plus the web. It really is simple in the best sense of the word. Having said that, the latest beta does allow you to choose to only sync some of the folders. So you can, for example, install Dropbox on your work computer, and choose not to sync your mp3s to it, etc. This should solve a lot of the use…

If I tried to sync everything over my home DSL connection, software would have limited ability to make it seamless.
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