[Paul B]

The last bit is very slow, which is why it'd be nice to have a Jungledisk plugin on the NAS so it could run 24/7 without needing the PC on making noise at night.

This could be of interest to you. Alternatively there's ReadyNAS vault but that costs a bit more than JD. The other option I've seen mentioned is somebody using rsync through SSH to do off-site backups of a NAS drive (to another NAS, done each way so each person is backed up off-site) but obviously that depends on a LOT of things.

Today after sorting out my new PC (I still can't get over how stupidly big and glowing red it is) I turned my attention to the ReadyNAS duo. Its a breeze to setup and the ReadyNAS communtiy with their multitude of add-ons has made installing things like Transmission BT client pretty simple. It doesn't yet seem like there is a proper scheduler built in (I was talking to Bubbs about this), but people have successfully used two scripts to throttle the bandwith of the NAS outside of unlimited bandwidth hours.

If anyone is thinking of buying one the DUO is almost identical in size to a 7+8's guide (slightly smaller in height). Its pretty noisy when its busy.

[Jim]

the ready nas looks like a good bet for me but I need something that can stream to ps3 without any problems.
anyone any experience?

[slackline]

the ready nas looks like a good bet for me but I need something that can stream to ps3 without any problems.
anyone any experience?

Providing your films don't need transcoding on the fly to a format the PS3 is happy with then a ReadyNAS fits the bill.  Grabbed one myself before the 31st December as thats when the free extra HD offer ended.

[slackline]

After phoning Netgear last week to enquire where my free 1Tb HD was (offer buying ReadNAS before 31st December 2010 included a second free HD) I've just been to the post office to pick up a failed delivery yesterday and walked away with not one, but two 1Tb HD's. 

Means I can have another 1Tb RAID in my desktop if I grab another identical drive (so essentially half-price). 

Either someone cocked up or they've not had as many people buying/claiming the free HD as they anticipated and they're getting rid of the stock, I'm not complaining though. 

[lagerstarfish]

ebuyer have still got a similar offer until 3rd April

[slackline]

ebuyer have still got a similar offer until 3rd April

Thats the same offer (following the link the free additional HD is claimed from Netgear)....except the closing date has been extended (got mine from ebuyer too).

Jim - Do your videos need transcoding on the fly (i.e. are they in a format that the PS3 doesn't support)?  If they don't then the ReadyNAS will stream to your PS3 without any problems (providing you've a wired connection to your PS3 if you want to watch anything thats in a decent/high resolution).

These are great little boxes, you can do tons of stuff with them as they come out of the box, but since its just a GNU/Linux install under the hood you can do lots more, I've installed PHP and set up my wiki on mine and have been writing up how to mess around with them (if anyone actually reads those pages and finds any errors or something thats not clear please do let me know, but note that I accept no responsibility for bricking your ReadyNAS if you choose to follow anything I've written!).

[stevej]

if anyone's got drives knocking around dabs are doing D-link DNS-323 NAS for £50

[underground]

the ready nas looks like a good bet for me but I need something that can stream to ps3 without any problems.
anyone any experience?

Providing your films don't need transcoding on the fly to a format the PS3 is happy with then a ReadyNAS fits the bill.  Grabbed one myself before the 31st December as thats when the free extra HD offer ended.

On the transcoding question: I've just installed the Twonky Server on my Readynas Duo and it has a whole raft of transcoding options - for Video you can select to transcode on the fly to MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV or Flash. No idea which if any of those the PS3 will play mind.

I'm already thinking this server add on is well worth the 12 quid it'd cost to upgrade from the trial version to a full license.

I'm on the latest RC version 6.0.31RC6

[Paul B]

does the transcoding work though?

I'd read that the ReadyNas duo hasn't the beef to deal with it properly 

[underground]

does the transcoding work though?

I'd read that the ReadyNas duo hasn't the beef to deal with it properly 

Fuck knows TBH Paul, good point to be pointed out, if it is the case.

I couldn't tell you which of my files are in need of it, or whether they work.

[Paul B]

I looked into it and asked about and the general consensus was that it lacked the processing power to do it well enough. I think you need an NV or something of similar power.

Try a .flac file as lots of things won't touch those.

[underground]

I looked into it and asked about and the general consensus was that it lacked the processing power to do it well enough. I think you need an NV or something of similar power.

Try a .flac file as lots of things won't touch those.

.flac files appear in the browser view of the Sony device as .mp3 files, but indeed, they report 'file is corrupted or incorrect format' when I try to play them...

[Jim]

any new or recent quality methods to backup?
now I've got my SSD to run OS off and have 2x 1TB drives, 1 for all my files and shit and 1 for back up.
Should I RAID them? if so how?
or should I use a back up program and which one?
Running Windows 9 but you already knew that....

[Johnny Brown]

I wouldn't run a straight RAID 1 as any problems just get duplicated.

I just run one as the drive and one as a backup, with backup software (Syncback) set up so I can easily backup the drive when required. Usually do it every couple of weeks or before/ after any major changes. That might seem a bit lax, but anything shorter term I'm usually saving to Dropbox anyhow, so I've got instant back-up to cloud and access to previous versions if neccessary.

[Paul B]

I use the software that came with the NAS (NTI Shadow) to backup, this then contains a raid array. Dropbox is used as an off site backup for my most precious files (read thesis). Win 7 had a pretty useful backup system built in.

[slackline]

If you do opt for RAID don't bother using the BIOS to set it up as BIOS RAID is generally considered to be pretty pants.  Instead use software RAID for your OS.

Logical Volume Management (LVM) over RAID is brilliant.  I had 2 x1TB in a RAID and have added another 2 x 1TB as an additional RAID.  LVM means the two appear as one and I can expand partitions and the filesystem within each on the fly as space is needed for my music/video/picture partitions.

GNU/Linux I'm afraid, I'm expect its possible under M$ though.

I wouldn't run a straight RAID 1 as any problems just get duplicated.

Never heard of this could you elaborate or point to sources (quick search hasn't revealed anything).

I can envisage how errors in the filesystem that the RAID is formatted with may well be duplicated because after all you configure the two disks to be formatted as one filesystem but not how errors in individual sectors of a drive might be as thats a physical attribute and its not possible to "force" a sector thats damaged on one disk to be damaged on the second (thats what RAID1 aims to protect against, physical failure of a drive, at least thats my understanding).

[Paul B]

Isn't adam meaning "errors" as in his errors.

I.e. if you only have two drives, and they're in a RAID array then an accidental delete is duplicated and all you're protecting against is HD failure?

[dave]

Thats the nub of it. RAID will protect you from a hardware failure, but doesn't does fuck all for human error or any kind of software fuckup/virus that might screw your files up.

[Paul B]

That depends, if you setup your backup software as "contribute" then you can remove one of those, the problem then raises its ugly head when your RAID array fills ups.

Still, virus etc. is a major concern. I've also got a system image on another HDD but I'm not ridiculously good at keeping it up to date.

[slackline]

Perhaps my misunderstanding then.

RAID1 does exactly what its designed to do, protect against hardware failure.

Human error is usually the cause of most datal loss fuck-ups anyway, and theres no way of ensuring against those other than common sense and knowing/understanding what you're doing (usually helped by taking your time to think about what your doing before hitting 'Return', particularly when its something major).

One option that I don't think has been mentioned in this thread is that you could just go with Apple and pay them to make things "just work^TM" in their iCloud, but for many that will involve switching OS's and for most that will also mean buying a new computer(s)/phone/tablet/"next big thing"*

* Although its perfectly possible to install OSX on a PC since Apple switched to Intel processors via the OSx86 project, but then thats probably more work than most could be arsed doing when opting for a "just works^TM" solution.

[mr__j5]

Still, virus etc. is a major concern. I've also got a system image on another HDD but I'm not ridiculously good at keeping it up to date.

Don't you have windows backup configured to automatically do this each week ?

[Jim]

well I'm still no closer to having a proper back up apart from copying files over manually.
Can't decide between RAID and johnny's method, both have pro's and con's
might have to flip a coin although I'm tending towards RAID as when its set up I don't have to do anything.
Quick question, with RAID is the backup drive hidden?

[Johnny Brown]

I'm not sure what you mean by hidden? Do you mean how many icons appear?

I thought a properly configured RAID1 set-up runs the two drives as a single entity, giving the possibility of faster read times as different sectors can be read on the two discs at the same time. So presumably just one icon?

[stevej]

Raid 1 is all done at hardware level (sort of) so you see one logical volume i.e. One drive icon, one drive letter etc. it acts as one drive as far as you as a user are concerned unless one drive fails in which case it warns you, you replace bad drive, everything gets copied across and everything works again

[Jim]

Yes, I meant how many icons appear. I only want it to show 1.
Is RAID1 what I am after then for windows 7 and does it have to be configured in the bios or is there a good software alternative (for win7 Slackers!) or would it be best to buy a dedicated RAID card?
This is going to be longterm so I don't mind spending a few dollars
Cheers Y'all