A good solution for home backups and file/print sharing [closed]

A good solution for home backups and file/print sharing [closed]

I’m looking for a cheap and reliable solution that allows me to share files and a printer in me home network. Raid support and very low power consumption would be nice extras. Should I go with a NAS or a hand-built home server? What about the software? Is Windows Home Server worth the price (compared against freely available open source alternatives)?

Asked by: Guest | Views: 298

Total answers/comments: 3

Comments display order:

Guest [Entry]

"I use a DLink DNS-323 for this. It's a 2-drive NAS enclosure so you can buy your own hard drives. It's low power: it spins down when idle. And it has a USB port you can use as a print server. It can also act as a DHCP server if you need that for some reason. As of writing, I'm seeing it on Amazon for $128 AR.

It also has RAID but I vaguely recall reading a few odd things with it. Something like you have to reformat both drives just to enable RAID-1."

Guest [Entry]

"I would go with one of these Windows Home Server, either from HP or Fujitsu. The configuration is very easy and straightforward. The backup procedure is fast and copies whole hard disk partitions.

It's very easy to exend the data storage, because WHS has its own mechanism for keeping data redundant. I recently bought one and added two 1.5 TB ""green"" hard disk for low power consumption and was able to use them after minutes. I also tried to restore two partitions from a backup and it worked very well."

Guest [Entry]

"I have a HP MediaSmart Server, specifically the HP EX475 (replaced by the HP EX485) and really like it. It is quiet, small, and green. I like the fact that I can use it to remote desktop into any of my machine when away. It also has 4 hot swapable drive bays.

If I didn't need the remote desktop proxy feature, I might consider the HP Media Vault 2120, but it only has one drive bay."