Netgear Stora

Tim

Tim

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Got a new Netgear Stora today along with my 80gb SSD hard drive to replace my C:\ that would no longer boot. ; The data was intact, but the MBR appears to have been hit with a virus or rootkit or something that rendered it nearly FUBAR. ;

The Stora has two 1TB drive bays (1TB comes with the unit, the other bay is for you to fill) and is pre-configured in a RAID 1 array. ; Basically what this means is that when you pop a second drive into the unit, it will automatically clone the existing drive onto the new one, giving you two identical drives. ; This provides for data redundancy and as long as both drives don't crash at the exact same time, you will survive a drive crash by removing the dead drive and popping in a new one which will rebuild the array.

The unit also sets up with the giganet connection into your router, thus making it its own mini-server, allowing you to share your files across your home network and even across the internet. ; You could be in WDW and hit the web and check your photos from back home if you want- you can also stream videos, music, etc. to wherever you are.

I have not set the unit up as of yet but it promises to be simple... ; I plan on writing a full review article once I have a chance to mess with this a bit. ;

For more information, check out the guys at B&H[nb]No, they did not put me up to this[/nb]

 
I have something very similar with a 2TB MyBook World (accessible over the internet). ; If this one is anything like mine, you will enjoy having it.
 
i am hoping so, red. ; right now, i ; have a buffalo drivestation with (2) 1tb drives in a RAID 1 but it is not networked. ; now to figure out what to put on each one... ; i am thinking RAWS on the Buffalo, finished pics and audio, etc. on the Stora?
 
Looks like a heck of a nice NAS unit. B&H has the 1TB version for $204, which is not bad at all, considering that a 1TB drive alone is about $100.

I'm curious about something, though - when your storage requirements, and capacity, go up that high, how do you backup your data? How do you do off-site backups, which are the most important type of backup there is? I've been puzzling over this, because I have a large collection of pics and music that's not backed up off-site, only on-site, and I'd like to back up my stuff a little better in case one of my neighbors decides to burn the building to the ground for chuckles.
 
First thing that comes to mind is a safe deposit box at the bank. ; Should be about 50 or so a year.
 
Tim, your drive that went bellyup wouldn't happen to have been a Western Digital? ; Mine did exactly what you described on Twitter and the internet told me that the Western Digitals from that class (Caviar) were notorious for doing that. ; Not a virus, not a rootkit, just crappy hardware.

I still haven't had time to recover my tower from that. ; The new HD is still sitting on the shelf :)

As far as storage goes, I was about to pull the trigger on a NETGEAR ReadyNAS but, my budget can no longer justify it. ; It had a lot of good ratings by people who work with Network Attached Storage
 
yes, ray, WD Caviar Black, 1TB.... ; apparently the MBR and track 0 just crashed and burned.
still under warranty so they will send me a new one.
 
That is a great deal actually. ; To drop another ~$70 and get 2 TB of storage isn't bad at all. ; Thanks for the post Tim, and I am looking forward to your review so I can look at getting one of my own.
 
I've got the WD MyBook World RAID1 unit, similar to this too. ; Twin 1TBs, hot swappable, networkable.

As for backup processes for external, I also have 2 external drives that I keep offsite - backup once a month or two, then keep elsewhere. ; That way I've always got everything on my C drive, mirrored twice on the MyBook, and stored on the externals in other locations - 5 copies in total.
 
I just called netgear and was told that the Max drive capacity is 2tb per bay. ; The site listed on the box reflects the size of the drive that ; comes with the unit. ; You need to use western digital or seagate drives ; which will get reformatted once you place them in the unit. ;

(from my htc incredible)
 
setup was painless. ; haven't dumped anything on it yet because i haven't gotten the second drive to set up the mirror. ;
 
i'll sort of 2nd the painless part, i was in bestbuy, just looking at blurays,(still waiting for the extended lotr to hit blu) and there was a net stora, not much more that online plus shipping would be, so i picked up another 1t drive, and after a little set up stumble, it's now up and running, it's where i will now be putting all my originals, as of 1/1. i import them via lightroom, converting to dng while importing, the raid auto configures as soon as you plug the 2nd drive in, set to auto raid, you have to go into a preference drill down to change this, it just takes a while, in my case as long as 1 hour, i can't be certain, my patience timed out, so i had to go to the kitchen and shoot up some tim's . but when i eventually crashed and came back it was all steady green lights, amber is bad, means get on down to the local store and get a replacement drive. so far no complaints, well other than every once in a while you have to sign in again. i think periods of inactivity make it shut down. i don't plan on doing the server thing, if i understood what i was doing more, i would probably just have gotten something that hooks up via usb as a straight up raid data storage, but that would have meant another powered hub, i currently have 2 daisy chained but only 1 open port left, and that would have meant another power strip, and i'm not sure how much i'm, maxing out the power grid to this room
 
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