[conspire] external storage recommendation

[paulz at ieee.org]

Yes, simple external USB drives are the EASY button. 

Several TB flashdrives will cost much less. They don’t take up desk space, don’tconsume power when not in use, and don’t have proprietary software. What’s not to like?

The boxes sold aslow cost NAS are apparently targeted at people/families who mostlyuse their cell phones. 
BTW, CentralComputers does not have any flash drives in stock. They do havelarger form factor drives, but those seem to feature Seagate or WDproprietary software.Thanks everyone for getting me refocused.
I like thebicycle analogy. I know from my own experience that a $1000 bike ismuch better than a $200 bike. And a $4000 bike is even better. Butif you don’t do much bike riding you won’t get the benefit of themore expensive models.

What really getsmy ire is seeing a family riding and the parents don’t havehelmets. They think they can’t have an accident. The adults don’tconsider what might happen if there is a careless car and they areunable to support the children.


    On Saturday, September 25, 2021, 10:46:25 PM PDT, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  
 
 Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Either way, I need to go shopping for some sort of box with at least
> 2 bays for drives and a power supply and a processor board and drives
> and maybe Wi-Fi and ...  Often buying the pieces separately costs
> more than buying a thing all put together.  In my case, I'm more
> interested in the Easy Button since I have enough other electronics
> projects where no ready made box exists.  

As usual, the _first_ question you need to address, before "What do
I buy?" is "What problem am I trying to solve, and why?"

As I mentioned earlier, the simple solution -- and cheaper, and easier
-- to your "How do I do backup of my 1/2 terabyte memory stick, without
getting a different laptop?" is:  buy a pair of large-ish
USB2-connectable external hard drives, and rsync to them both,
alternating.

That has the advantage of being actual _backup_.  For reasons also
mentioned, a NAS isn't actually backup.

There certainly are off-the-shelf NAS units that are _claimed_ to not
entirely suck.  QNAP, Synology, iXsystems, Drobo....

Looking over a sampling of QNAP and Synology units at NewEgg leaves me a
bit underwhelmed, but at a quick glance they don't look dreadful.

The problem you face, as someone seeking to just buy a quick-and-easy
home-office-grade NAS without having to pick and choose what goes into
it, is that it's a category that suffers Moen's Law of Bicycles to a
considerable degree.
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#moenslaw-bicycles
Which is to say, most of the products are pretty dreadful because far
too many buyers settle for junk and cannot distinguish non-junk when
it's offered.


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