Running out of storage for your files? Have an old pc just collecting dust?
After reading an article on PCMech about Network Attached Storage or
NAS, I
decided to tell you how to make a reliable system to backup your computer or
network computers and it will not cost as much as your house.
What is Network Attached Storage - NAS? And what will it do for me?
What is it? NAS, file storage, or Network Appliance, is a very basic computer
with large capacity hard drives. It also has 'redundancy' - that is the hard
drives have a fault tolerance that if a drive fails you don't lose your data.
This is called RAID (see this page for explanation on RAID Arrays)
One of the NAS systems I am familiar with is
Network Appliance this is a high-end system that the storage capacity starts at
3 tera bytes, they also cost $25,000 or more each.
What if you want to have a Tetra byte of
storage for your home or small business, do you have $25k to spend? No? Well
there is a way to get this type of storage with out the cost.
If your data is of high value then this
solution may not be the right solution for you, but if you want to have a place
to keep your backups, your sound and video files then this is cheaper than say
the online solutions like Carbonite.
A old computer, a raid array controller, and
the hard drives that make up your raid array.
I upgraded the drives in my server last month
and paid $260 for two 500 gig SATA drives. So I have a Tera byte of storage. It
is not how ever a RAID Array, it is two drives that I use all the storage, To
make it a RAID of one Tera byte I would need one more 500 gig drive and the
array controller.
What you will need to make the NAS:
A computer - P III or P4 that is reliable,
256 meg of ram, network card, CD
3 drives (minimum - using a RAID array you
need 3 drives, all the same size, add up the three drives capacity, subtract
one for the parity and you have the size of the volume that will be use able.
Using my upgrade, I need one more 500 gig drive, 3x500 = 1500 subtract the
parity drive and I have 1 Tera byte of storage with redundancy).
A RAID Array controller (it can be eitherIDE or SATA - I recommend SATA)
Two network cards of the same make that can
be teamed or bridged.
The Operating System.
How to make the NAS:
Clean up your old computer (dust / dirt) and
the hard drives that you don't want to use. You may want to upgrade the network
cards to the maximum your network can handle. You may also want to upgrade the
processor and memory - not necessary.
Install your RAID Array
controller and you
hard drives. Some PC RAID Array cards need to
be setup when you first start your computer. Such as with the HighPoint
controller, you pick the drives you want for your array and the type of array. I
suggest if you can afford it you use a RAID 5 Array for you drives (see this
page for an explanation of RAID Types) because if one fails you will be able to
recover your data with a replacement drive.
Your Operating System can be Linux, Windows,
or if you have the experience DOS. I suggest that you use Windows XP. Why?
Because most people are familiar with
XP, it is stable, and MS will be supporting it until 2014.
Note: All Windows Client
Operating Systems will only allow for ten (10) consecutive connections at one
time. If you need more than ten then I would suggest you move to a
Server Operating System.
Once you have your OS installed your next task
is to setup the network. If you have two identical network cards in your
computer you can either 'Team' them or use Microsoft's Network Bridge. this will
double the network speed of the computer. You will not see the '200MBS' but you
will see a dramatic increase in your through put for the computer, this would be
the same for any computer on your network. This how ever will not work if you
only have two computers and want to use a crossover cable to connect them
together.
Next you need to
setup the volume
that will hold your files, how you setup the array volume or make it multiple
volumes depends
on your situation. You may want to separate applications from video and sound
files, or have a separate volume for computer drive images, or like me one for
just games.
When you have all this done your last
consideration is security. You should harden your NAS the same way a server is
hardened. Also you should consider turning off services not normally used such
as COM+, DCOM (see this page for a list of
services you can turn off).
Now you are ready to back up your computer(s)
to the NAS. You can use any backup software to do the deed, such as Windows XP
Backup, or you can do it manually. You can do a search for programs that will do
a scheduled backup, this is one I am testing at this time: Cobian Backup
To go a step further you may want to use a
tape backup to back up your valuable data for redundancy.
This site contains a lot of information. As
with any publication not all information is available due to space, time, or
subject constraints.
If you have a question that you did not find the answer
on this web site you a can
ask your question here and we will endeavor to get you the most up to date
answer possible!
