[Discuss] Home backup disks: USB vs NAS

[Chuck Anderson]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 11:09:11PM -0400, Doug wrote:
> If one wants the ethernet port, the device becomes a Network Attached
> Storage (NAS). I have 100base-T Ethernet in the house, along with
> 802.11n. Those should provide 100mbps connections to a NAS.

It should be pretty cheap to upgrade go 1 Gbps networking.

> If you had the choice between a USB backup or NAS at home, which would
> you prefer? Should I even worry about the speed differences for this one
> kind of task?

I just set up a FreeNAS box (based on FreeBSD) which does ZFS, RAID,
Samba, AFP+Time Machine, FTP/HTTP, NFS, Firefly DAAP (iTunes) server,
Squeeze Server (addon), and FUPPES UPNP server (although I haven't got
that working with my Blu-Ray player yet).  It all installs to a USB
stick, leaving the hard drives free for your data.  Best of all, I
build it out of spare parts so it cost me nothing.

Another alternative I looked at was Netgear ReadyNAS, which has many
of the same features, is based on Linux, and is open for tinkering.
Logitech even supports ReadyNAS with an official build of their
Squeeze Server software.