NAS Drive questions

[WhiteD3]

Hi guys.

At our place I have a CAT5 LAN to various devices including a wireless gateway in the kid's end of the house. As a family we run the following machines either wired or wireless:

1 vista desktop
1 Macbook pro
1 Ipad
2 Win7 laptops
1 Vista laptop
Xbox, Ipods, etc.

At the moment I back all this up manually to a portable HDD by visiting each machine and backing up. What I want to do is add a NAS drive (probably wired, not wireless) for all users to store and access their data files, and to make my backup task a one-stop job.

Question is, will these various machines be able to access this one NAS drive?

In particular, will the Ipad be able to access pdf files (recipes generally) on the NAS drive?

Cheers.

[sheerluck]

Hi guys.

At our place I have a CAT5 LAN to various devices including a wireless gateway in the kid's end of the house. As a family we run the following machines either wired or wireless:

1 vista desktop
1 Macbook pro
1 Ipad
2 Win7 laptops
1 Vista laptop
Xbox, Ipods, etc.

At the moment I back all this up manually to a portable HDD by visiting each machine and backing up. What I want to do is add a NAS drive (probably wired, not wireless) for all users to store and access their data files, and to make my backup task a one-stop job.

Question is, will these various machines be able to access this one NAS drive?

In particular, will the Ipad be able to access pdf files (recipes generally) on the NAS drive?

Cheers.

I've got no experience with iPads/iPods so can't answer that particular question, but yes, all of the others will be able to access from/back up to an NAS.

With the Xboxes, you'll need to make sure that the NAS you buy is UPNP compatible.

[sheerluck]

Giving it a little more thought, I suppose it is possible to enable a webserver on the NAS for the iPods/iPads to access......

[abaddonxi]

I don't have any problems accessing my NAS from iphone. Static IP for the NAS and browse to it with Safarti.

[sheerluck]

I don't have any problems accessing my NAS from iphone. Static IP for the NAS and browse to it with Safarti.

Aaah of course! [FishSlap]

Simple is always good!

[CU55TM Disco]

HP ProLiant N40L Micro Server!

Just bought one of these to do similar job as what your after (i think) I was looking as NAS's and by the time U buy the Unit, and then fill it with specific hard drives "know" to work with them Ur up to a fair bit of $$$

Bought the HP for $300 odd bucks and can then throw whatever drives I buy/have lying around. RAID, NIC, 4 SATA bays and 1 Optical drive.

BUY HP 658553-371 ProLiant N40L MicroServer | MegaBuy Computer Parts (http://www.megabuy.com.au/hp-658553-371-proliant-n40l-microserver-p293609.html)

[jonesy63]

Hi WhiteD3,
Another option is the Buffalo Linkstation Quad ($248 from HT) and 4x 2TB hdd.
Buffalo LinkStation Quad NAS server | ht.com.au (http://www.ht.com.au/part/Y9054-Buffalo-LinkStation-Quad-NAS-server/detail.hts)

I have this combo and it works a treat.

BTW, floods in Thailand may have caused a short term problem with hdd supply.

Cheers,
Rob

[djhampson]

An alternative thought for your iPad requirements is to use a service like SugarSync or Dropbox.

These are cloud based file storage services so you'd sync your PDFs on one of the PCs or on the NAS with SS or Dropbox and then on the iPadinstall the free apps to view the files with.

I keep the D3 service manual and PDFs up on Dropbox so I can always get to them on my iPad.

Dropbox - http://db.tt/PIzsnVu

[KFACTA]

Anyone here used FreeNAS? www.freenas.org (http://www.freenas.org)
Its fantastic!! And is a cheap way to build a NAS unit.