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John Rumm John Rumm is offline
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Default Netbook, back again

On 17/07/2019 10:46, T i m wrote:
On Wed, 17 Jul 2019 01:51:20 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 15/07/2019 20:13, T i m wrote:
On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 17:51:46 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

snip

Can't say I was that impressed with the Baffalo NAS I saw.

In this case 'beggars can't be choosers' John. ;-)


I have wasted enough time working with not quite good enough kit to be
quite a choosy beggar!


Understood. The thing is, I understand these TeraStations (4 bay) were
quite expensive when new (over £1000) and I'm not sure I could justify
such a thing for home use. The thought being I would therefore have a
business grade NAS that might (in itself) be more reliable than a
consumer grade NAS?


I don't know if the 4 bay ones are any better - but the thing that
really let down the 2 bay ones I have seen is the software. It might be
they have improved in the last couple of years.

(also the price when new is not an overall indication of comparative
quality - you could buy a new QNAP 453A for ~£360 now)

If you want
"simple and works" Netgear readynas are good.

Ok. I have seen them on eBay. (Just trying not to go there again),
could it have been a D-Link NAS that required (forced) you to create
an online account and the NAS was linked to it or might that be an
option on most of them for remote access?


You can join them to their ready cloud setup if you want remote access
and don't want to roll your own via VPN etc. However you can set them up
the old fashioned way just pointing a browser at the built in web
interface.


Thanks for that John, as long as their is an option. As it happens,
for daughter, the ability to access work photos that she may have been
processing at home, from work (or anywhere) might actually be useful
to her.


The whole "personal cloud" thing is something they push these days.

I was looking at this base model:
https://www.netgear.com/home/product...#tab-techspecs

Would their be any reason it wouldn't be as reliable as say a Synology
DS218j (my other consideration)?


I have a dozen or more of that class of machine installed in various
client's offices. Some have been running now 24/7 for 8 years. They all
have WD "Red" drives. In that time we have had zero failures, and I have
only needed to do a forced restart perhaps a couple of times between
them. So based on that limited sample size, I would rate the reliability
as very good.

(Note that although they are superficially similar, the internal
architecture of them has evolved quite substantially over the years. The
early ones were SPARC based, then later ARM, and some Intel ATOM).

I have installed a DS218j for a mate and whilst I eventually got it
running (just as a basic NAS (a faulty drive didn't help)), I can't
say it was particularly intuitive or logical (apps and utilities all
over the place with no real clues as to what you needed for what).

By comparison, the TeraStation was very straightforward (but
potentially less flexible etc). I think I quite like the old Menu way
of doing things (rather than GUI apps), much quicker to explore and
use (if well designed). System Storage Drives RAID Create /
Delete etc.


I think they have all suffered the same "progress" to an extent. They
started with very simple GUIs which were basically hierarchical lists of
tasks, and have got more elaborate with time. My current QNAP has a full
blown windowing GUI running inside a browser window.

One thing the above tech spec isn't clear about is the standby power
consumption and how you wake it from standby? It mentions the WOL
power consumption but would that mean you would have to send it a WOL
packet to regain access to the shares?


You can schedule power on times. Normally they will wake when something
tries to access them though.

I've just had a quick Google and it looks like the RN10200 (empty
chassis) is around £250 (V the DS218j at £155) so that's probably
decided that. ;-)


They do seem to have gone up market price wise - the entry level 2 bay
units were around £100 to start with.

Would you know if the Synology box is as easy to access remotely John
(I believe I can via their 'QuickConnect' facility)?


Not tried TBH - the last 2 bay Synology I played with seemed easy enough
to use locally - but that was before cloudy was big!


--
Cheers,

John.

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