nobb
01-17-2009, 05:55 PM
I'm running out of space on the 120gb drive on my laptop. I have a 500gb external drive which I turn on only to make periodic backups of important files.
So Im looking maybe to get a Network Attached Storage unit to use as another backup source, but also to serve files between the 4 computers in my house. I know I can install and run programs on my external drive, but I am wondering if anyone knows if you can do that on a NAS too? The reason is I'd like to install large programs (Matlab, Warcraft, Microsoft Virtual PC etc...) on the NAS and just be able to access it wirelessly on the laptop anywhere in the house.
Right now Im looking at the Dlink DNS-323. But one thing that I dont like is that it has to format newly installed drives to some proprietary file system (non NTFS, FAT32), so if the unit fails I cant just stick the inside drive on a computer and recover the files. But I do like that you can use the DNS-323 to run bittorrent.
EDIT: I also read people having problems putting files on this NAS which are not in english. This would be a huge turn off for me since 90%+ of my music is in chinese unicode. I am wondering if other NAS units will have this problem as well (due to them using a non windows file system).
Maybe someone has some good recommendations or better experience with this? I could probably build a dedicated machine and run FreeNAS, but I dont think I could get the low power consumption as with a dedicated unit.
So Im looking maybe to get a Network Attached Storage unit to use as another backup source, but also to serve files between the 4 computers in my house. I know I can install and run programs on my external drive, but I am wondering if anyone knows if you can do that on a NAS too? The reason is I'd like to install large programs (Matlab, Warcraft, Microsoft Virtual PC etc...) on the NAS and just be able to access it wirelessly on the laptop anywhere in the house.
Right now Im looking at the Dlink DNS-323. But one thing that I dont like is that it has to format newly installed drives to some proprietary file system (non NTFS, FAT32), so if the unit fails I cant just stick the inside drive on a computer and recover the files. But I do like that you can use the DNS-323 to run bittorrent.
EDIT: I also read people having problems putting files on this NAS which are not in english. This would be a huge turn off for me since 90%+ of my music is in chinese unicode. I am wondering if other NAS units will have this problem as well (due to them using a non windows file system).
Maybe someone has some good recommendations or better experience with this? I could probably build a dedicated machine and run FreeNAS, but I dont think I could get the low power consumption as with a dedicated unit.