Sep 7, 2010
A NAS To Own – Solution to a problem
A week after downgrading(suprise!) my Westnet ADSL plan to a cheaper plan(around $10 cheaper), I found my media storage space slowly but surely filling up. Although I downgraded, the current plan has more download quota than the previous one; a massive 400GB monthly allowance.
Add to the fact that I seriously need to move around 3 odd Terabytes of medias in dvd-r discs before mold(NOOO!!!) takes over. I do keep my dvd-r’s with dessicants to keep the molds away however, eventually they will get corrupted by a combination of heat, wear and tear and also moisture. I am also planning to backup all my boxed PC games.
Currently, I have three 1TB and one 1.5TB hard disks that holds all of my medias. All of them are connected through my computer using external enclosures. Add around 250GB of dedicated internal hard disk space in my computer, the total hard disk space comes to around 4.7TB. An old Dell 620GX with 80GB hard disk space,serves as a makeshift network share running FreeNas for me to share stuff to my housemates.
Hard disk prices are coming down ever so quickly. A quick check on UMart’s and GoComp’s website shows 2TB Western Digital Green drives for roughly $136-138 mark. Ideally for my situation, buying four of these should suffice my storage needs for quite some time. The matter now is; building a computer as a dedicated NAS or go for commercial home network NAS from QNAP, Thecus or Synology.
Time to investigate the options and compare the benefits for a long term solution.