Can anyone recommend a network hard drive.
 

Hi,

I'm after a networked external hard drive as a remote backup for my Vista laptop and my Win2K laptop. Can anyone recommend one. I've seen

Western Digital (pcworld)
Maxtor (Maplin)
Buffalo (Amazon)

I dont want anything complicated, 250GB <£150.

FAT32 is fine. Easy setup and reliabilty are important.

we are getting alot of western digital ones returned
some are having trouble setting it up and blame them faulty

Personally I use a Freecom media player. it has CAT5 connectivity and works well with XP/ Vista.
You can also schedule backups to this via networking, so overall for £149 and 320Gb, it seems what you are after. I got mine from PC World, but you can get them elsewhere, Maplins etc

Not many NAS available for 150 quid, but you may find one on ebay.

Do you have it on all the time or do you turn it on and off. Any problems with losing connection or slow download. On a practical level how easy is it to use.
What i want is something to do scheduled backups wirelessly in the background while i use my laptop, nothing more than that.

Its on when backups are needed or when synching music. Its simple to use, and you can play back all media files on your tv too as it has a built in media player codec. the schedule depends on your pc not on the backup device, it will only save to this. Setup is ok, although fiddly with vista, but you are using XP/2000 so this should be ok.
the connection was more reliable with hard wired rather than wireless, but it does work. It has a remote control so is a doddle to use. While backing up you will still lag especially wirelessly.

1TB Network Hard Drive
Price inc VAT £149.99

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/product/500/OW/306727.jpg

Western Digital My Book World Edition at PC World - Buy cheap Network External Hard Drives - Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB Network Hard Drive

or buy a NAS disk enclosure, which can be had for about £30 for single drive or buy one with 2,3,4+ available drive slots, then buy whatever capacity hard drive(s) you require

I've readthat these can have slow upload speeds and poor support from the maker.

I looked at some NAS boxes a while back and settled for some QNAP boxes. They are more expensive that you are looking at but worth it.

Darren

IIRC there was a lot of talk about these things NOT allowing you to copy, edit or move data off it once you've put it on - WD trying to do their bit against piracy...

Loads of NAS Enclosures.. all I woudl say is keep them cool.. I have had 2 Freecom NAS drives of late and I wouild say they get very very hot!!

Search results for nas in NAS - Network Attached Storage from Equanet
Thats Enclosures etc.

Freecom Network Drive 500GB LAN & USB-2 29013 from Equanet
Thats a 500gb Freecom NAS drive for £86
Freecom Network Drive 250GB LAN & USB-2 29011 from Equanet
Same thing just 250gb and £63

I would get a enclosure then get whatever disk you want...

Sumvision 3.5" NAS USB2.0 IDE & SATA Hard Drive Enclosure - Retail Upto 750GB Drive - Ebuyer
Cheap Enclosure...

Netgear SC101 Network Storage Central - Ebuyer
Netgear storge central whatever that is :)

Ian

urg, stay away from the Netgear Sc101

Seconded !

Nothing like that on mine, i have two of the same in the link, they are just blank drives.

Just in case you may be confused by all this, here is another alternative.
How about building a low spec PC, can be done within budget, then use it as a file server. HDD are cheap as chips these days. Least you can make a perfect image of your laptop, then save it on the PC. Plus you wont have the communication worries/flaws of some NAS HDD.
You could then remote desktop to it,update it, add your files etc. I think this would give you much more than just a NAS. If you dont want to build, you could buy a Dell small form factor base unit, which are super quiet. These come with P4 processors and are so cheap at the moment.

Just another thought.

Can you stream media from these things? I would love to have a network HDD with a bunch of movies that I can stream to the 360 (rather than use my PC).

Steve

I have a spare old pc. Would i leave windows on it, that means everytime i use it i'd have to boot it up etc, or is there some cheap (or free) server software.

Boxr, I have a QNAP NAS and I use it to stream movies/music/photos to my Xbox 360. works great even with HD stuff.. It has twonky media built in.

On top of that, it runs linux, is an ftp /http/itunes server, can acess over the net, SSH etc.

Even has a torrent client built in, meaning It will download torrents without even your computer switched on..

I really rate it..

QNAP boxes are great and do loads more than just acting as a NAS box.

Darren

I have the WD My World Book one, bought via PC World. It has no copy protection on it whatsoever. I have copied files to/from without any hassles.

The only point I'd make is that the majority of NAS boxes have very slow processors on them (200/400Mhz) and this limits the bandwidth on the network card.

The WD has a gigabit connection, but that doesn't mean it will give you anywhere near that theoretical transfer speed.

My WD unit gives 5.5Mb/sec maximum. I spoke to WD and it's a limit on the hardware. Doesn't coz me any great problems now it's full, but copying around 600Gig of data took 14hrs on a gigabit network.

It's fine streaming music and video via itunes or Media Centre, but copying files to/from is dreadful. If you want to add to itunes from music stored on it then this is painfully slow too.

The Qnap boxes are about £200 more expensive (once you factor in the extra cost of the unit + disk drives), but are twice as fast (around 10-11Mb/sec). Don't expect USB2 transfer speeds even with those.

I've heard the new Zyxel NAS devices are even faster (up to 15.5Mb/sec) and one can be had for around £160 without drives.

If you want something cheap and don't mind it being slow copying files to it, then the WD one is great value.

If you want something much faster but are willing to spend and extra £100 or so, then I'd go for the Zyxel - ZyXEL Digital Home: Performance Routers, PowerLine HomePlug, Multimedia Players & Network Storage Technology | Products

Summary of WD

pros
very quiet
easy to use
less power consumption than a PC running NAS software
works well when streaming to Media Centre/Media Player

cons
very slow network file copy (5.5Mb/sec max)
very sluggish with iTunes (related to above)



Stefan

I want it mainly for backing up my laptop. The idea is a daily scheduled backup running in the background. I see your point re speed, but most days there's little to add so wouldnt it be fairly quick. I could do the initial backup via USB then add or subtract files daily wirelessly.

Buffalo Technology - Products - LinkStation™
...Pro 500Gb version with 1Gb/s wired link from main computer in house and 54Mb/s wireless connection from laptop

...and...

2BrightSparks | SyncBackSE | Features
...probably the only bit of freeware software that I've upgraded to the proper version with my own real money. It's really excellent....

Martin, the 250gb version is £130 from Amazon, within my budget. Could you give me a rundown of pro's and cons regarding the wireless use of it.

1. Do you have it on all the time.
2. Do you have to "boot it up" or does it start prettymuch as soon as you turn it on.
3.Any problems connecting to it
4.What transfer rate are you getting, i have a wirelss G router.
5. Why did you buy one over wired HD, just for the laptop?

thanks
Paul.

hi Paul,

Yes, once you've dumped most of the data onto the device any small changes on your laptop should be quick to copy. Just judge what sort of sizes you expect and then it's a simple calculation to work out how long they'll take to copy each evening.

All these NAS devices suffer from the same speed issues. Once you go up above £200 (without any drives), the speed only increases to around the 8-9Mb/sec mark.

100Mb LAN = 12Mb/sec max
1Gigabit LAN = 125Mb/sec max

So when you compare external network boxes none of them ever give true wire-speed performance - unless you spend megabucks.

Stef

Paul

It's part of the MartinM home network which is mostly wired at 1Gb/s but with wireless for the roving laptops.

1. Do you have it on all the time.

Good point...no, it's a bit noisy to have on all the time. I don't think it ever spins down the disk - that could be seen as a Big Disadvantage but it doesn't worry me as:
- it's in the comms cupboard (aka the airing cupboard) with the switches, ADSL modem etc ;)
- I turn it on when I want to do a backup and (usually remember to) turn it off when I've finished

2. Do you have to "boot it up" or does it start pretty much as soon as you turn it on.

About 30 seconds IIRC

3.Any problems connecting to it

Nope

4.What transfer rate are you getting, i have a wirelss G router.

Don't know. Satisfyingly quick over the 1Gb/s wired connections, by with 54g wireless for the laptop you're talking 20x slower - which is too slow for major backups so the wire goes in the back of the laptop (which is also 1Gb/s) then it's back to satisfyingly good

5. Why did you buy one over wired HD, just for the laptop?

Didn't - it does all the computers in the house, plus my work laptop....

Martin / Ozzy, thanks for the great replies. Very informative.

The WD one from PC World uses a single 1TB drive (model).

It has a very low power consumption compared to other SATA drives on the market.

If the Buffalo gives you the claimed 35Mb/sec transfer rates, then that would get my vote.

Other manufacturers won't advertise actual data transfer rates coz it looks so bad compared to the marketing of "gigabit" connections. For that Buffalo get a big thumbs up.

One feature that seems to be missing on most of them is "spin down" of the disk when it is not being accessed. They all seem to be on all the time. Is that a problem.

Only a problem if you're worried about power consumption. I wouldn't worry about it reducing the life expectancy of the drive.

If you're a bit of a techie, there's some hacks on the net for enabling spind-down features on Linux-based NAS boxes.

Thanks, i'm not a techie, not by a long shot. :D

Martin, last question i promise, can you turn it on and off via your pc or do you have to do it manually.
(i've checked the download manual but it doesn't say)

cheers
Paul.