Comment SNAP NAS (Score 1) 649
This summer, I finally tired of fighting a constant maintenance, recover, and backup battle with seven different PC's in the family (my notebook, a print server, a LINUX test box, plus wife and kid's machines). It's worse than keeping a small corporate network up and running (where there is no gaming or downloaded "free" software). And we have some real $ tied up in the wifes audio books and the IPOD downloads. So I overhauled our network and backup process.
For backup, I installed a SNAP 2200 800 MB network attached storage device ($1,600, yes expensive but my time is worth it) configured as RAID 1. I'm partitioning each PC into operating system and data drives, then ghosting the operating partition. The data on each machine is backed up incrimentally and automatically to the SNAP server with the SNAP supplied software.
System works OK, Snap appliance is a little noisy (fans) but I put it in a large fireproof box in the crawl space so I don't hear it. File transfer rates are nothing to write home about. But I've got the peace of mind that the data is much more secure against theft, hard drive crashes, most house fires, etc. AND it's not just one more PC to administer, as it is a self contained appliance running a stripped down LINUX kernal. The capacity should hold us for a few years, then I'll probably expand with an additional NAS appliance.
For backup, I installed a SNAP 2200 800 MB network attached storage device ($1,600, yes expensive but my time is worth it) configured as RAID 1. I'm partitioning each PC into operating system and data drives, then ghosting the operating partition. The data on each machine is backed up incrimentally and automatically to the SNAP server with the SNAP supplied software.
System works OK, Snap appliance is a little noisy (fans) but I put it in a large fireproof box in the crawl space so I don't hear it. File transfer rates are nothing to write home about. But I've got the peace of mind that the data is much more secure against theft, hard drive crashes, most house fires, etc. AND it's not just one more PC to administer, as it is a self contained appliance running a stripped down LINUX kernal. The capacity should hold us for a few years, then I'll probably expand with an additional NAS appliance.
