To Drobo or No Drobo

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="208"] Drobo! (Photo credit: pixelthing)[/caption]

There is a discussion of the question of whether to go with a Drobo or some other type of external storage over at the Macrumors forum. The discussion deals with the question of whether the Drobo is reliable enough and what sort of speed you can expect when running a Drobo. As with most discussions about the Drobo, there are a range of opinions. One writer states that Drobo tends to be

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Synology DS214se Reviewed

Smallnetbuilder has reviewed the Synology DS214se two drive NAS. This is Synology's entrant in the small and inexpensive NAS category. Even though it runs only $160 or less, though, this NAS still features the full suite of the Diskstation Manager software. Synology does consider this a single purpose NAS, given its low CPU power and limited RAM, so it would probably be best not to try running too many applications on the NAS while trying to maintain high file throughput.

Speed was measured

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New NAS - Terra Master F2-NAS 2

Terra Master is a name new (to me at least) to NAS manufacturing. There is a comprehensive review of the new Terra Master NAS over at http://us.hardware.info.

The F2-NAS 2 is a two drive bring your own disks enclosure with a striking design. The case has a handle on the top for easy transportation. The TerraMaster F2-NAS 2 runs on a Marvell 6282 1.6 GHz ARM processor and has 512 MB RAM and 512 MB flash memory making it fit in the more affordable NAS market.

Performance of this new NAS

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FreeNAS Restore Default Configuration Using SSH

Here is a tip teaching how to restore FreeNAS to the default configuration using SSH in case you lose access to the web based interface:

cp /data/factory-v1.db /data/freenas-v1.db && reboot
This will overwrite your current configuration with the default configuration stored in /data/freenas-v1.db and immediately reboot.
This can come handy if you have to reset a machine without using the web interface (because maybe you can’t access that) and without having to plug in a

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Another Quick Review of the Synology DS214se

There is a review of the new Synology DS214se over at micromart.co.uk. The reviewer does a quick run-through of the 2 drive NAS boxes specifications and capabilities. He concludes that performance is good but not great. And he worries that the lower power processor and RAM necessary for Synology to keep the price so low will cause problems for people who try to use the software that powers the NAS to do multiple jobs at once:
What concerns me is that it can be relatively easy to overload the

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ZFS File System for NAS

A discussion of the ZFS file system choices for building your own NAS is over at the overclockers.com.au forum.

One post lists the major choices available to implement ZFS at home, emphasizing BSD over Linux choices:
A list of ZFS platforms:
FreeNAS - complete features (BSD)
NAS4Free - better interface (BSD)
ZFSguru - easiest solution (BSD)
Solaris - for the nerds not wanting to jump a sinking ship
Nexenta - for the lovers of proprietary software
Linux - for the casual and

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Selecting the Best Hard Drive for a Network Attached Storage (NAS)

There is a nice article over at custompcreview.com discussing options for choosing hard drives for use in a NAS. Over the past few years, the major manufacturers have made this a simpler task by releasing drives specifically designed for use in a NAS such as the new drives from Seagate and the Western Digital Red drives.

The article deals with the issues associated with running hard drives in a NAS:
Another point of failure is the drives themselves. Many users (myself included) opt for

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