San network storage controller?

[Andrew_Culture]

My desktop pc has packed up and won't be replaced as we use mobile devices and I have a work laptop.

But I also have 6 usb external drives full of photos and music that I still want to be able to access.

So is there a reasonably priced bit of network usb storage controller (san?) kit I could get? Or will something like the Raspberry PI solve this problem when it becomes available?

 

[Davidc]

Why not buy a secondhand laptop or computer on ebay? They're cheap and always plenty of them there.

It's usually NAS or USB, although some units have both connections, and there are plenty around. You still need something with a screen to view photos and something to play out the music through.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

All the music is also on the ipod that's rigged up to the stereo. Eventually we'll get an ipod to view the images on, although 80% of the photos are archives that never get looked at.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Space (or lack of it) is also an issue.

 

[jamin100]

Get a hp microserver. They are around £130 after cashback (£110)

They can hold 5 hard drives easy and have USB ports.

There quite small. I have one tucked in a cupboard running without a monitor, mouse or keyboard

 

[ian turner]

7 days ago the OP couldn't afford a replacement harddrive for the defunct desktop which would be about £50. Go buy the replacement harddrive instead and consider in the future buying a NAS to copy all the usb drives onto and a similar sized usb drive for a backup. Or just install freenas on the rebuilt desktop and use it as a central server.The multiple USB drives without backup (I'm guessing here) drastically increase the chances of a harddrive failure.
How could a raspberry pi with two usb connectors be a solution ? It's somewhat fragile and you'd have a pile of power bricks.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I've sold my scanner so I have £50 in the budget. I've just run diagnostics and all is well bar the hard drive and I've just seen the desktop (a stacked Dell XPS 8100) going for £450 on eBay so I'm tempted to try and sell it sans hard drive.

I bought this machine when I was freelance and it doesn't get any use, so if I can convert it to cash while it's still worth something then great.
I like the sound of the HP microserver.

I have six hard drives, which is in affect three drives and three clones.

Thanks for your help all.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Get a hp microserver. They are around £130 after cashback (£110)

They can hold 5 hard drives easy and have USB ports.

There quite small. I have one tucked in a cupboard running without a monitor, mouse or keyboard

I can't figure out if the HP MicroServer comes with an OS or not?

I looked at a Belkin usb network thing that only cost £30 but appeared not to work without installing software on all machines, which makes it useless!

 

[ian turner]

microsoft sbs essentials 2011 pre installed apparrently.
As the belkin usb hub lacks the nas server element then you would need local drivers.
There are usb nas adapters but about as expensive as a cheap nas drive anyway and not widely available.
Consider the netgear ready nas duo as well as the hp may be overkill

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Wow, SBS must have massively come down in price since my MCSE type days (over a decade ago).

 

[ian turner]

Hmm doesn't ship with an operating system apparently according to here . I'd go with a basic multi drive NAS unit as it seems to be overkill unless you plan to setup a full blown media server and even then nas drives come with stuff for that

 

[jamin100]

No no os is shipped with it, but there are plenty of Linux os's such as freenas, open media vault etc that will utilise your disks and give you smb shares etc.

Alternatively, windows home server 2011 is around £40

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Thanks again you lot. In the short term I'm going to connect the drives to my work laptop when I need to get at files and when that gets old I'll revisit the situation.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

This has been on my mind again.

I flogged the failed pc for enough cash to buy an ipad but no longer have a work laptop.

My neighbour lends us his netbook when we need to access photos or other data stuck on these six USB drives. I'm reluctant to buy a netbook as we would never use it.

BUT I still want to be able to access our music and photos using the iPad and the software on our Samsung bluray / telly. So I'm back to considering the Raspberry Pi as a means of connecting our stack of USB drives to our home network.

Unless anyone has any better ideas...

 

[Mr Haematocrit]

Get a western digital mybook, its a small NAS device you plug into your router, however it runs Linux and there is a community which has evolved to hacking it and increasing functionality.... you can easily configure it so you can attach additional USB devices to it. As it runs Linux you can use it as a web server, print server, file server, media server, backup server, bit torrent server and so much more.
You can see what its capable off at the following URL.... great little flexible devices

http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/hacks-and-howto