FS: 4TB Drobo + Droboshare NAS system

[Libra Monkee]

It's upgrade time so that means I've got stuff to get rid of. This time around it's a Drobo and Droboshare network adapter with 4x1TB drives. After redundancy that gives you about 2.7TB to store data on. I figured I'd give you all first dibs and see if anybody's willing to give me $350 for everything.

Pictures to come.

[complacent]

whatcha upgrading to?

ikea rack mount solution?

[Libra Monkee]

LOL naw I'm getting a Synology DS411j NAS. It's kinda like the Drobo but a lot more feature laden.

[Sabre]

Why not roll your own? FreeNAS works great!

[Libra Monkee]

^^^^ I thought about that before I got the Drobo and there are a couple of reasons.

1. First and foremost; BSD scares the out of me.
2. It's nice to be able to hot swap drives if necessary.
3. Synology can do RAID 6
4. There are Android and iTunes apps for administration and remote picture, music, and file access.
5. Builtin support for DLNA and UPnP so I can stream direct to my AppleTV and PS3 without needing a computer to act as an intermediary.
6. A FreeNAS box would also require a working desktop with a RAID card, neither of which I currently have.
7. This takes a lot less time to set up.
8. Builtin itunes server (that works better than firefly), torrent downloader, music server, photo gallery, backup, webcam surveillance applications.
9. And I figure this will be a lot lower maintenance plus if something breaks I have someone else to blame.
10. Just to round things off: Multiple user accounts with access rights. So I can share my pictures or documents with people without them seeing EVERYTHING that's on the NAS.

[complacent]

^^^^ I thought about that before I got the Drobo and there are a couple of reasons.

1. First and foremost; BSD scares the out of me.
2. It's nice to be able to hot swap drives if necessary.
3. Synology can do RAID 6
4. There are Android and iTunes apps for administration and remote picture, music, and file access.
5. Builtin support for DLNA and UPnP so I can stream direct to my AppleTV and PS3 without needing a computer to act as an intermediary.
6. A FreeNAS box would also require a working desktop with a RAID card, neither of which I currently have.
7. This takes a lot less time to set up.
8. Builtin itunes server (that works better than firefly), torrent downloader, music server, photo gallery, backup, webcam surveillance applications.
9. And I figure this will be a lot lower maintenance plus if something breaks I have someone else to blame.
10. Just to round things off: Multiple user accounts with access rights. So I can share my pictures or documents with people without them seeing EVERYTHING that's on the NAS.

i was in the middle of typing up something similar. minus number one of course (ports fucking kills it)

i know the drobo also allows for mixed media in "their raid-ish" solution... pretty cool for people that don't have the wherewithal to buy multiple copies of a disk to store when they go tango uniform.

[Libra Monkee]

^^^ Oh yeah! Synology can do that too. Different drives of different sizes. Also, (something else I wasn't sure of until I reread the website) on the fly RAID migration. So I can start with two drives at RAID 1, add more drives, then migrate up to RAID 5 at anytime without losing data.

[Sabre]

^^^^ I thought about that before I got the Drobo and there are a couple of reasons.

1. First and foremost; BSD scares the out of me. It's a bootable CD with an installer... trust me, not "normal" BSD, haha
2. It's nice to be able to hot swap drives if necessary. Depends on your controller... most dedicated cards can do this
3. Synology can do RAID 6 You're running RAID 6 at home?!?! It can do the normal 0,1,0+1,1+0,3,5
4. There are Android and iTunes apps for administration and remote picture, music, and file access.It has Firefly and FUPPES built in
5. Builtin support for DLNA and UPnP so I can stream direct to my AppleTV and PS3 without needing a computer to act as an intermediary.FUPPES and PS3 Media server is installable
6. A FreeNAS box would also require a working desktop with a RAID card, neither of which I currently have.For the money you are paying for the Synology, you could build one
7. This takes a lot less time to set up. LOL, you got me there. With a little help, it can be done in under 4 hours, from building hardware to installing/configuring OS
8. Builtin itunes server (that works better than firefly), torrent downloader, music server, photo gallery, backup, webcam surveillance applications.Itunes server, Torrent downloader, music server, photo gallery, and backup check. Surveillance... negative
9. And I figure this will be a lot lower maintenance plus if something breaks I have someone else to blame.Bad part is, without them you can't fix it.
10. Just to round things off: Multiple user accounts with access rights. So I can share my pictures or documents with people without them seeing EVERYTHING that's on the NAS.You can do the same thing on FreeNAS

I'm not saying building your own is for everyone, but you're technically minded and I figured it would be fun for you LOL, then again, I'm a little sadistic in what I think is fun sometimes... FreeNAS != FreeBSD. While it's based on it, everything is done through a web gui.

[Libra Monkee]

LOL

Yeah within 4 hours of being out of the box this thing was configured, formatted, RAIDed, and ready for my data. Now I just need to get this port forwarding figured out.