Really hard to answer without knowing more about you and the sorroundings and your IT knowledge. Ever thought about a NAS System for example ? What about cloning/copying it to an external SSD ? You have a server near ? Or you just love the loud fan sounds ? ;D The possibilities are endless for sure.
1) Considered a NAS but too expensive on my fixed income 2) Looked at external SSDs but cost prohibits 3) Omen 16 Gaming Laptop with fans cranked to "max" at all times (closest thing I can get to the sound of actual server fans) 4) I live with my partner and her two siblings, the sister refuses to let go after both parents died as she is thinking they are coming back. As such none of the parents stuff has been gone through, sorted, etc. the closet in mine and my partner's room is full to the point of being dangerous if you open the closet door, thus my partner have to live with our things either in piles or under the bed, or neatly organized in the drawers. There as a computer desk but again it's filled with the dead parents' things so not usable which then leaves me with my laptop on the kitchen table with an ever-advancing pile of not only food and food prep things, but also my things because of course I need to set up my workstation. The brother-in-law owns a Siberian Husky (but he never acknowledges it and my partner has to get after him for it) yet the sister throws a fit at even the thought of getting rid of the dog and putting it to a better home... therefore, we prop up a baby gate in front of the kitchen to keep the dog from being too aggressive with my equipment when it gets hyper. as you can probably tell by the way I write about the dog that I am not a dog person at all. If there was space, I'd have myself and my gear behind a secure door that you need a code to get behind (thank you Schlage keypad door locks that way the only people coming in or out of that area are myself and my partner (and occasionally the brother to help myself or partner)). I know the most obvious solution is to get a better living arrangement; but given that for a crappy studio it's like almost $2,000 where I'm at and the wait list for affordable housing is YEARS long. So right now I'm budget constrained (I only make somewhere between $1,000-$3,000/Mo and my partner less than that) with rent being ~$400-and-something per person... and they keep adding on fees and stupid stuff like "oh point blank we're now going to make you have renter's insurance and we know that your address no one will cover you so you have to use our renters insurance" so yeah... that's the story :-( I REALLY wish I had a better life :-( UPDATE: Am finally going to bed after spending nearly 12 hours getting my CRM (MS Dynamics 4) working as that’s been on my back burner for months :-( so much needed sleep (ZZZZ) for me; but when I wake up I’m backing the whole thing up to cloud just in case. My systems are so fragile that even the birds chirping outside can cause the HDD to fail. I just need to get my RDS Setup and back the whole thing up… The only reason the whole thing isn’t running securely in the data center where it can be managed by my IT department is because of the high volume of changes and the ridiculous amount of time, Syncing all that would take over the WAN so I live in my “own private Idaho” when it comes to infrastructure like that. It’s a gift and a curse: Gift because I can learn and change the system to meet my needs without effecting the entire enterprise; but also curse because all the responsibility of managing it is on me and me alone with my IT department playing advisory roles in chat, by ticket, or over the phone. Through all of it, I’ve learned a lot about how my system work, Windows Server 2003, IIS, SQL 2005, Exchange server 2003, and networking. But the most important skill is how to troubleshoot, do research, and ask for help in forums and similar when I need it.
poor man NAS.....it all depends on the setup the demand for accessing files and location were it will be running.....remember you get what you pay for....cheaper doesnt always mean better.
Who don't like to waste money, energy and heat is more a smart and conscious man rather than poor. If money and quality had a direct relation we didn't have so much people fighting to connect, and keep connected, a 4000$ macbook to a stupid bluetooth mouse or to get anything other than a black screen or out of focus image on a 1500$ monitor.
you dont get it....im not talking about about wasting money....buffalo is one of the top brands in network sharing equipment....thats why i ask the OP what his budget is and how much his willing to spend for the task he needs.....yes he can go with a cheaper alternative there a few out out their he can check out....and a in my opinion investing is a good quality NAS is not a waste of money.
That's starting with the wrong feet. First you should ask about his needs, then suggest something with a reasonable cost for that needs. Whatever I wrote some time ago here about a company I served that invested a lot of money in a Intel NAS (I mean a nas produced by intel, not something with an Intel CPU), that company refused my solution based on proven OPen source SW that would cost like 1/5 of what they spent. They lost all the data, they lost the whole RAID configuration because the genius at Intel used a poor firmware that didn't work well with all HDDs, and because they used a proprietary SW a proprietary filesystem, and there was no recovery SW capable of understanding what was on disks. To add insult to injuries Intel asked to ship that NAS to Ireland, at the expense of the company, then they just replied the HDDs you used are unsupported. In a nearby company who accepted my solution, we built a linux raid recycling old servers, they worked h24 for SIX years, then they were taken down by a ligtning that destroyed half the electrical power line in the building. The NAS had just the Ethernet card burnt, I replaced it and that NAS, likely is still running today. In short money helps to decide what's the better product, often, but in IT reliability and cost are often unrelated, sometimes inversely proportional.
Let’s see… 1) it needs to run 24x7x365 with very little downtime (unless for maintenance) as the information stored on it is part of my systems used to keep me alive and functioning 2) it’s getting installed in a home environment where there’s 2 roommates that don’t care about my things or my safety and only their own wants and needs (one who’s dog will destroy it because the dog is large and hyper if it is left in the open (say by the router) because they don’t care to deal with their dog unless my fiancee gets after them) and the other who still believes her dead parents are coming back so doesn't want to clean up, sort through, or get rid of any of the dead parents’ things), the one with the dog is always on their computer or the video games, the one with the hoarding issue is always on her TV or iPad. Bear in mind that hoarder girl is 40-something and Mr. Video games dude is 30-something. 3) I’m on a fixed income (sub $3000/month as I’m on disability (hell everyone here is disabled) 4) While I like (more prefer over the alternative) loud computer fans to drown out the incessant dog barking and screaming of the woman with the hoarding issues, my fiancee can easily get migraines so less noise is better given some of the compromises I know I'm going to have to make (e.g. storing it in the room with myself and fiancee given the dog). 5) it needs to be stored safely behind the locked door where myself and fiancee sleep. 6) if the woman with the hoarding issue would clean up (at least in the closet in mine and fiancee's room (or agree to let us handle it)) there would be space to put some of our things thus clearing up space for the NAS in our (mine and fiancee’s) room so it can be there safely. In summary: low cost, low noise, small form factor, can put up with not too optimum environment (space, power, networking, noise, etc.) since the infrastructure (networking, power delivery, etc.) is all consumer grade so no backup solutions if say the networking (crap ISP router) dies or the power goes out), nearly bulletproof reliability. Given all the factors cited above I need to use consumer-grade hardware at consumer-grade prices for medical-grade reasons which in the technology market all of those things put together are not achievable with a fixed income. This puts me in a bind as right now, I'm one drive failure from not only a months' long rebuild of my critical systems but losing everything (photos, videos, music, but also more important things like software, diagnostic history, my entire CRM database, etc.)... In short there is no 100% perfect solution and I'll need to make compromises in some areas I'm sure of it. Some might say that pictures, videos, and software can be lumped into the same category as music or games; but given my medical needs: my pictures, videos, CRM database, and Digital Notebooks (Powered by OneNote 2010) along with the software and virtual machines that make all those systems work _ARE_ my memory effectively. That's just one example of how I am fully integrated into my technology solutions. Ugh! this is when the whole idea of "My 'fully-integrated' or 'digital native' life is both a gift and a curse" comes to mind. Gift because I'm easier to manage; yet curse as to get the most out of all my technology systems I need _EVERYTHING_ to go "just right" and we all know life isn't that way (unless you're filthy rich (or have friends/family who are filthy rich and who are willing to help)) Where I didn't compromise is in the area of software I can understand and use with very minimal training or downtime (e.g. Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, Exchange Server 2003, SQL Server 2005, Office 2010, Axon Evidence Sync, etc.). I know for most of those I'm clearly "stuck in the past" but given several of my medical conditions (severe short-term memory loss, being on the high-support-needs end of the autism spectrum, and others just to name a few); thus change is the enemy. Sorry for the rant and the typo littered original version of this post; I had it all fixed up on my handheld and then hit the wrong button and cleared it all out so had to come in from my PC and type all the corrections and review on handheld (repeat this edit on PC then review on handheld process until I'm satisfied with it)
There is no such thing as bulletproof reliability, using a single device, no matter how much you spend on it. The good old backup 3 2 1 rule say Keep at least three (3) copies of data. Store two (2) backup copies on different storage media. Store one (1) backup copy offsite. A RAID 1 NAS is there to protect you from a HDD failure. That's all A single media doesn't protect you from #1 user errors #2 natural disasters, fires, floods, earthquakes and so on #3 not so uncommon events, like the dog or the cat that play with the cables (or piss on the HW), an angry Wife/Girlfriend/Fiancee that during a discussion aims to your stuff instead of just breaking some dishes. #4 Theft So, even if you dont want to stick literally to the 3 2 1 rule, at least buy not a expensive NAS, but TWO reasonably priced, or even cheap, possibly place them in different rooms and sync them, say, once or twice per week. More frequent syncs aren't generally a good idea (because point #1)
First off, thanks for the reminder of the 3, 2, 1 rule. Right now I'm doing the massive upload of the VMs to my paid mega drive account (I built a template VM with just about everything I could ever think of at the time and then created so-called "linked" clones of it so the actual production VMs while needing access to the template for daily operations only store the changes between the state of the template at the time of creating the linked clone and the current state of the individual VM thus once the template is up on the cloud, it's less of a pain to RAR up the linked clones about once a week or so then ship them off to the cloud). so there's the "2" and "1" portion of it (I'll copy all of those backups to a secondary HDD for now and the cloud thus 2 different media (HDDs and cloud)) and since the cloud is off-site by nature there's the "1 backup off-site" rule... just need that NAS as the last component. While even I acknowledge the fact that there is nothing that is truly "bulletproof (or nearly so)" having something that 1) comes from a brand with a known track record of reliability (not including the rare event of a unit that is DOA or a slight manufacturing defect that causes it to fail), and who stands behind their products but that can also 2) put up to the challenges of my specific use-case and environment and not fall over on itself because the wind blows the wrong way or I have brown eyes instead of green puts my mind at ease more so than a no-name unit that could fail at a moment's notice. That is what I meant by the "nearly bulletproof" requirement (I understand that even the most high-end technology systems have a finite lifespan). the reason for the lengthy post about the specific environment from which you got the quote about needing to be "nearly bulletproof" was meant to answer everyone's questions about the environment, budget, and use case. It's not the fiancee I'm worried about destroying my things (she understands the medical significance of my systems and treats them as part of my body (just like an arm or a leg)) but rather her sister (the one with the hoarding issue) who if she gets in one of her moods has been known to get physically violent along with her other issues. I know that I've got bigger problems on my hands than worrying about my HDD going out (physical safety being one of them) but I (and my systems) can only operate within the environment I am given (since a fixed income is a very large barrier to getting out of here and getting a better life). Again, thanks everyone for helping me explore solutions I beyond appreciate it.
Those "used" Buffalo devices on eBay are indeed reliable and cheap. For example "Buffalo Linkstation DUO". Easy to handle, simple interface. A simple RAID 1 system. Keep in mind its old...and used. Nothing will last forever.
If you put new HDDs on a 10 years old device you get likely something very close to a thing that lasts forever.. Aside the power supply and the fans (if any), both easily replaceable, hardly 10 years of life have can effect on a low powered SBC that runs at low temps, and that does nothing 99% of the time.