Multiple Backup Strategies - Including Crashplan

David Gewirtz has an interesting post over at ZDnet about the importance of multiple backup strategies. Specifically, the post is "How CrashPlan cloud backup saved my bacon." The author lost a number of files and folders on a network share but was able to recover them from his Crashplan account. He has multiple layers of backup but needed to use Crashplan because he did not discover the documents were missing until after his primary backup was overwritten:
Anyway, although the

Multiple Backup Strategies - Including Crashplan

Another Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive Review

Techgage has provided a review of the new Western Digital Red NAS hard drives. These drives are specifically designed and configured for use in Small Business and home NAS servers. One of the features of the Red hard drives is a change in error control so that the NAS RAID configuration handles error correction and has disabled automatic head parking while still retaining excellent (low) power consumption:
Red drives have an error recovery time set to a very low value, allowing

Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive Review

Amahi 7 Coming in November

The Amahi Wiki has a new entry announcing that the new version of Amahi (the Linux-based NAS operating system) should be released in November. Amahi 7 will, suprisingly, be based on Fedora and not Ubuntu. Amahi suggests that this is not to suggest that Amahi is retreating from Ubuntu back to Fedora but rather:
Based on Fedora 17 (or 18), because ruby 1.9 and RoR 3.x are in by default in it.

We're not "abandoning" Ubuntu or "going back" to Fedora. We will attempt to support both. However,

Amahi 7 Coming in November

NAS Project Powered by Unraid

Sam9s has posted a two-part series describing his project to build a powerful NAS running the Unraid NAS operating system. The first part, posted last year, describes the hardware and a detailed account of his thought process which led him to go with Unraid as the NAS OS.

The second part, posted just recently, describes setting up FTP (sFTP) and VPN connectivity to his Unraid NAS. Specifically, he covers:
In this part 2 of the project we will discuss a few quintessential features of a NAS,

NAS Project Powered by Unraid

Why You Should Choose Amahi Home Server After Windows Home Server?

Teknoise.com has a post about why Amahi should be a good choice if you are searching for an alternative to Windows Home Server or Windows Home Server 2011 after Microsoft's announcement that there would be no new Windows Home Server operating system releases.

Amahi is a Linux based home server software solution which gives it some advantages and some disadvantages:
Amahi is an open-source, free and Linux-based home server equipped with Ubuntu and Fedora versions. It is

Why You Should Choose Amahi Home Server After Windows Home Server?

Synology DiskStation DS712+ Review

Testfreaks has reviewed the Synology DS712+, the most powerful two bay NAS in the Synology line. This NAS also has the distinction of supporting Synology's 5 bay expansion box, allowing for up to 7 drives.

As with all Synology NAS servers, the diskstation manager software supports a full range of server features:
For the business user the Synology DiskStation DS712+ offers iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) support and being Virtualization Ready for use with

Synology DiskStation DS712+ Review

Synology DiskStation DS712+ Review

Testfreaks has reviewed the Synology DS712+, the most powerful two bay NAS in the Synology line. This NAS also has the distinction of supporting Synology's 5 bay expansion box, allowing for up to 7 drives.

As with all Synology NAS servers, the diskstation manager software supports a full range of server features:
For the business user the Synology DiskStation DS712+ offers iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) support and being Virtualization Ready for use with

Synology DiskStation DS712+ Review

Getting Started With a NAS

If you are thinking about buying or have just bought a NAS server for your home or small business, sometimes knowing what steps to take to get your NAS world off to the right start is a bit difficult - the choices seem overwhelming and the information is often written for people who have a great deal of experience in the realm of information technology. To fill the gap needed for newcomers, Synology has a series of guides including the one called "Getting Started."

I've mentioned before that

Getting Started With a NAS

Thecus N2800 Review

Bit-tech.net has provided a four page comprehensive review of the Thecus N2800 NAS server. As the review says, the Thecus NAS interface is no match for the Synology interface, but it has improved significantly in recent years and is certainly functional for everyday NAS type tasks. Transfer speeds for NAS servers are also approaching the theoretical limits:
With transfer speeds approaching the Gigabit per second barrier (125MB/sec), there will soon be little more on offer in

Read more ...

Synology DS412+ versus QNAP TS-469 Pro

Akihabaranews.com has a new comparsion of the Synology DS412+ and the QNAP TS-469 Pro. Both are four bay NAS servers with comprehensive feature sets and fast performance. They each are powered by a Intel® Atom™ 2.13GHz Dual-core Processor and 1 GB of DDR3 RAM. Given the similarities in specifications, it is unsurprising that overall the performance of the two NAS servers is pretty similar:




Synology DiskStation DS412+
Copy from NAS in MB/sec AVG – PEAK
Write to

Synology DS412+ versus QNAP TS-469 Pro

Synology DS412+ Review – Speed Test

I found a speed test of the DS412+ - network performance and overall speed over at shadowandy.net. The tests use the free NAS Performance Tester. Two tests were performed:


the first one using a 4000MB file; and
the second one using a 2000MB file

For both tests, a network share on DS412+ is mapped as S:.

In the 4000MB file test, the Synology DS412+ managed to achieve an average of 110.33 MB/s write and 106.48MB/s read.

....

While for the 2000MB file test, the

Synology DS412+ Review – Speed Test

Installing MinimServer on a Synology NAS

The MinimServer site has a short walk through teaching how to install MinimServer on a Synology NAS. The install uses the normal Synology package manager for the install so there is absolutely no hacking of your Synology necessary to get the benefits of running MinimServer.

MinimServer describes itself as:
MinimServer is a new UPnP AV music server with a number of innovative features that make it easier to organize and explore your music collection. If you have a network

Installing MinimServer on a Synology NAS

Advanced FreeNAS Server Configurations

PCWorld has published a guide to advanced FreeNAS server configurations. This article is something of a follow-on to their earlier article about how to turn an old PC into a modern server. In the new article, they take that old PC and teach it some new tricks with some advanced FreeNAS tips.

Among those advanced tips is how to configure FreeNAS with multiple user accounts:
You could easily throw open your new server to everyone in the office, but you probably don’t want to give the folks

Advanced FreeNAS Server Configurations

Western Digital Red NAS Drives - Worth the Price Difference?

Over at Itproportal.com they ran an interesting test of 5 WD Red "NAS" drives versus the original configuration of Samsung and Seagate drives in a Synology 1812+ NAS. This is an interesting test because the author substituted the five WD Red drives for the original drives and ran some tests. The speed test shows a decent improvement in speed:
The original hard disks hit a write speed of 83MB/s, and a read speed of 71MB/s. The WD Red drives mustered a write speed of 107MB/s, and a

Western Digital Red NAS Drives - Worth the Price Difference

Synology DiskStation DS1812+ Review

I've taken another look at the recent review of the Synology DS1812+ NAS server over at PCMAG.Com. The Synology DS1812+ is an 8 drive NAS device that supports adding a 10 drive expansion bay to go up to 18 hard drives. Each drive can be a 4 TB (or smaller model), so the possible storage on the drive is in the range of 72 TB - this is big storage indeed!

The device runs the standard Synology Disk Station Manager software which is now up to version 4. This software is quite

Synology DiskStation DS1812+ Review

Windows Home Server 2011 - Install a WordPress Blog

For those still running the Microsoft NAS software, Windows Home Server 2011, there is a post up over at Wegotserved covering a step by step of how to install Wordpress and run a blog off of your home server. This is actually, part 20 of a series of articles on Wegotserved about how to setup and use Windows Home Server 2011.

The article starts out by explaining how to install Microsoft Web Platform Installer to make the Wordpress install easier:
To make life easier for us

Windows Home Server 2011 - Install a WordPress Blog

Thecus N5550 5-Bay NAS Review

Over at eTechnix I found a review of the relativlely new Thecus 5-bay N5550 NAS. This is a comprehensive review (19 pages!) with many screen shots and tests. The NAS is typical of Thecus in that it is very powerful, especially when measured against cost. Thus, Thecus NAS servers usually provide very good value for your money.

This Thecus NAS is powered by an Intel Atom CPU and has USB 3.0 ports (besides have the above-mentioned 5-bays available for internal hard drives.)

Thecus N5550 5-Bay NAS Review

QNAP TS-412 - Entry Level Four Bay NAS Reviewed

I found a recent review of the QNAP TS-412 NAS server over at Uk.hardware.info. The review finds that this NAS is an affordable server from QNAP that runs all the same software with all the same options as the more pricey QNAP NAS servers. However, it comes at a much more affordable price - and for that lower price you have to make some compromises:
The chassis is typical QNAP, and that's a compliment, for the most part. Contrary to the expensive models this version is a little

QNAP TS-412 - Entry Level Four Bay NAS Reviewed

Building a Plex/UnRAID Based Whole House Media Solution

I found a very nice beginning of a series of posts about using Unraid and Plex as a media server/media player combination. The post goes into great detail about the hardware and software the post author is using to create a NAS and front end to server DVD's and Blu Rays as well as DVR'd recordings.

The author describes his goal:
This thread is a work in progress description of my migration from a Meedio based HTPC to a Plex/UnRAID based whole house media solution.

Building a Media

Building a Plex/UnRAID based whole house media solution

Western Digital Red Drives for NAS Devices Reviewed

Tomshardware has done their usual thorough job of reviewing the new Western Digital "Red" drives which are specifically marketed to be good for small business and home NAS servers. Toms reviewed both the 2GB and the 3 GB models. Toms explains the need for drives that are more robust than typical desktop drives:

In order to achieve more robust reliability in a multi-drive array, you really need to look at purpose-built nearline hard drives. They're optimized, both at the

Western Digital Red Drives for NAS Devices Reviewed

Building a Windows 8 Home Server

Wegotserved's series on building a Windows 8 Home Server has been completed through part 6, "Installing Windows 8". Other parts have included a long multi-page post with many screen shots showing how to physically build a computer that will work as your Windows 8 Home Server (part 4 of the series) and configuring the bios of your new machine (part 5 of the series.)

In part 6 of the series, they walk us through how to install Windows using the Microsoft USB tool that allows

Building a Windows 8 Home Server

Building a Windows 8 Home Server: Home Server Hardware

As promised, I am updating the status of the Wegotserved series on building a Windows 8 Home Server. Part one of my post is here. Wegotserved is providing a series of articles about using Windows 8 as a replacement for the end-of-life Windows Home Server (WHS) product. Microsoft has announced that there will be no follow on to WHS and WHS 2011 - thus the need to explore other options if you want a reasonably priced Windows based home server.

In this article, Wegotserved explores hardware

Building a Windows 8 Home Server: Home Server Hardware