Best NETWORK External Storage?

[BAD311]

I'm on a budget, no more than $150.00...

But I need a very reliable external backup solution that plugs into the network so my wireless laptop can backup to the external. I would prefer the ENTIRE hard drive of my laptop to be backed up, but I imagine that'll take hours each night... I cannot backup just My Documents or a few select folders, I need pretty much any files that have changed for that day. So a built in backup program would be great, unless I can purchase a backup program from a company?

So for the bang for the buck, what is the best possible solution? I prefer 1tb, but 500gb is OK.

Also, I need it so other computers connected to the network CANNOT access the hard drive unless they have authorization. If the NAS has a USB port, I want to prevent direct connections where people pull the info from the HD. So security is also an issue.

Thanks guys! Hope something is out there!

Also awesome forum, I've been looking for a forum like this for YEARS! (Seriously, YEARS! - Thanks Xbox Live buddies!)

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: BAD311
Best NETWORK External Storage?

I'm on a budget, no more than $150.00...

$150 isn't much for quality NAS...
Don't expect the "Best". :roll:

 

[BAD311]

$200?

 

[sonoma1993]

for the backup program, look at acronis true image.

 

[taltamir]

second copy can scan the source and destination and only copy modified files, i use it to backup an entire drive.
It is also cheap.

150$ network drive budget? you want to backup an ENTIRE internal drive... so... what... 90$ goes right out for paying for the drive itself on the network solution, that leaves 60$ for a NAS? not gonna happen. Get a USB external drive with that kind of budget.

 

[theanimala]

I bought a 1TB iomega Gig NAS drive from Dell for $130 shipped free. Reviews online are very good. Not as fast as very expensive NAS systems, but I transferring files at 12MBs without a hitch.

 

[rarebear]

Acronis takes about 30mins to make a 30gig HDD copy..
You can also have it run backups on its own..

That and a extra HDD to storing your backups is all you need..

Also if you have an extra extra HDD make thrid copy of your backup on that drive and do backup to that manually..

 

[RebateMonger]

If you have a six-year-old PC around, you can build a Windows Home Server with a 500 GB drive for about this price. $100 for the software and $60 for the hard drive. You'll need to borrow a DVD drive for the WHS software install, but you can remove it afterwards.

This'll give you daily full image backups of every PC on your network. You can restore either a single file or an entire PC exactly as it was yesterday, the day before, the week before, the month before.....

Nobody can access any of the files on the Windows Home Server unless you give them permission.

 

[pugh]

+1 too what rebate said.. i have done just what he mentioned whs does.

 

[faxon]

it's probably already been said, but for $150 you are better off just buying a stand alone external hard drive (not a NAS). i just picked up a 1TB WD My Book Essentials for $125 at frys ($25 Associate discount) before tax. these things are supposed to be a lot better than the seagate offerings, and after transfering 120GB of data to it to test it out, the thing didnt even get warm, where a buddies seagate 1TB Xtreme external drive would have overheated in the process.

just to put things in perspective, if i were going to build a NAS i would buy 4x 1.5tb Barracuda ES.2 drives and a netgear ReadyNas NV+. I still live at home, but we already own an older version of the Nas i just listed (before the company got acquired by netgear, and it has 4x1TB ES.2), and the thing works great. when we ran out of space on it with the 4x400GB drives we had inside originally, we just hotswapped them out one at a time, the Raid5 repaired itself, rinse repeat, and when all 4 disks were repaired it autoresized to the new drive size for us. it may be pricey, but when you want to reliably back up thousands of hours of HDTV recordings it is worth the price

ed: as for the idea of setting up WHS with a 500GB drive in an old rig, you would save a lot of money on the power bill if you just set your backup software to back up onto an external e-SATA or USB drive in the middle of the night. an external drive at load takes up maybe 15-20W of power, where as an older system, even idle, probably takes up 80-100W