How do I add simple Networked Attached Storage?

[nutty_gnome]

So I am with a very small company. We are not technologically advanced; we haven't needed such things. Our desktops are wired through the walls to a router which in turn goes to our cable modem out to the net. We are not networked together. It works great as is.

We now have a project where we need to have a common, central folder of pdf files that any of the desktops can access as if it was stored on a local drive.

Is there a very simple way, without repurposing a PC as a server, to attach a device to the router that allows us to access the file folder of pdfs? I need about a 100 gig or so of space.

Your thoughts are appreciated, Thanks N_G

 

[duboman]

Why not use Google drive or drop box and be able to share whatever files/folders you need?

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Check the router for an available USB port. Many have this for a NAS drive.

 

[Fionnbharr]

Speaking as a Network Security specialist, here -- this is the sort of thing I do for a living.....

If the office is as small as it seems (under 20 people, I'm assuming?), your best bet and most cost-effective thing is a 'cloud' storage service.

Dropbox is probably your best bet. (http://www.dropbox.com)

If you're not already using Google's Gmail service, you might consider using them for company e-mail, and use their free "Office software" service -- it also has the ability to share documents (including PDF's) with others.

Box.net is also an option. Zoho (zoho.com) is also in the same market as Google's offering with e-mail, shared storage, and office apps, too.

Hope this Helps.

-Fionn

 

[Tin4]

So I am with a very small company. We are not technologically advanced; we haven't needed such things. Our desktops are wired through the walls to a router which in turn goes to our cable modem out to the net. We are not networked together. It works great as is.

We now have a project where we need to have a common, central folder of pdf files that any of the desktops can access as if it was stored on a local drive.

Is there a very simple way, without repurposing a PC as a server, to attach a device to the router that allows us to access the file folder of pdfs? I need about a 100 gig or so of space.

Your thoughts are appreciated, Thanks N_G

I personally use Drop Box for this very purpose. It allows you to share work.

https://www.dropbox.com/

 

[nutty_gnome]

Thank you for the suggestions. The office is small, only 4 desktops. Since I've posted my question I've been looking at cloud services. It does seem they would be useful. I'll keep looking. Thanks for the suggestions. N_G

 

[Tin4]

What are your goals? If it's just to share work space in real time I've not found a better option than drop box.

 

[IslandLizard]

1. You can store those files you want to share on one of the machines, in a folder and share that folder with the local network.

As long as that computer is on, every machine on the network has access to that folder. To make life easier, that folder can be mapped as a network drive on each machine, and assigned a drive letter.

Since all machines are on the same router/switch, they form a network.

2. As mentioned before a NAS drive is another simple option, and very similar to 1. Problem is the drive's USB connection can be a bottleneck.

3. Nothing wrong with using cloud storage, except it isn't free for larger storage amounts (quota differ among providers) and only works when the internet is on. In that light having a local storage backup/alternative is not a luxury.

 

[ericbw]

Thank you for the suggestions. The office is small, only 4 desktops. Since I've posted my question I've been looking at cloud services. It does seem they would be useful. I'll keep looking. Thanks for the suggestions. N_G

Two suggestions.

For our small office, I set up a cloud server through Egnyte. It allows you to map a drive on each computer, and it has a great feature called Personal Local Cloud, which means I can sync certain files on my computers with the cloud. I have the same files available on my laptop and desktop at the office. Plus I can access the server through the web OR an app.

Essentially, I have all of my files available on any device, and the sync feature means I am working with local files usually (much faster).

I think it costs less that $50/month for 5 users with plenty of storage. It's a perfect solution for us because we work remotely.

Oh, and I set up extranets to share files with employees who don't need access to everything.

At home, I got a Western Digital My Cloud. Still seeing how it works, and it was less than $150.

For business, I really suggest Egnyte.

Office 365 has some possibilities, too.

 

[ChuckO]

I took an old PC that wasn't the fastest, installed a couple of large hard drives and got it to boot up from a USB flash drive. The flash drive has OpenMediaVault software to run the system. It took me a couple of hours to read the documentation and get it set up, but since I had all of the hardware left over from upgrades, it was free. Best thing is that it keeps my files off the cloud and private to my local network. Haven't set up redundancy yet, but will as I find more left over hardware.

The older PC isn't all that fast, but it's fast enough to keep up with my network's speed for communication with 4-5 PC's. As long as I keep a good backup policy going I don't have a problem with using inexpensive drives.

 

[nutty_gnome]

We already use individual dropbox accounts among the people who need to share the files... So I didn't want to add another dropbox account to the mix. SpiderOak, which is very much like dropbox, seems like it will do what I want and the cost is reasonable. While NAS seems like a nice thing, I really do want to have a cloud back up of this stuff so I am leaning towards that. Thanks again for the advice.

 

[balrog]

2. As mentioned before a NAS drive is another simple option, and very similar to 1. Problem is the drive's USB connection can be a bottleneck.

I use two NAS at home (many photos and I like the fact that there are two, mirrored hard drives in each device) like this with either two 1TB or 2TB HD in each. They are plugged into a router with a network cable. No USB. So I'm confused about the USB bottleneck you mention.

 

[mdbrewer1]

I use two NAS at home (many photos and I like the fact that there are two, mirrored hard drives in each device) like this with either two 1TB or 2TB HD in each. They are plugged into a router with a network cable. No USB. So I'm confused about the USB bottleneck you mention.

There are routers that have built-in USB ports that you can plug a hard drive into, which then acts as NAS. I've used them in the past and the speeds can be quite slow, even with the USB 3.0 drive I had. It may vary depending on the router, but if someone is working with lots of files or large files or both, I'd recommend trying a different method if possible.

 

[suckmyale]

There are other questions to think about, in regards to your original requirements.

Are they large PDFs or small PDFs?
Are you just viewing these PDFs? or are your users changing/modifying them?

Reason for the above questions.
There might be some limits/performance issues if your users are trying to constantly download/upload 300MB PDF files to dropbox/google. (that is a common size of PDF files for us, so we use local SAN storage)

How important is this data?
How much time do YOU have to support this device?

Reason for the above questions.
All hardware will fail!!!! If you are putting a hard drive on a computer or on your router, eventually that hard drive is going to fail. If could be within the warranty, it could be 8 years from now. Sometimes it is predictive, most times it is not.
There are better ways to mitigate losing data (mirrored drives, striped drives), backup of the data. Most of that is included in "Cloud based solutions" but you are dependent on your Internet connection.

 

[IslandLizard]

I use two NAS at home (many photos and I like the fact that there are two, mirrored hard drives in each device) like this with either two 1TB or 2TB HD in each. They are plugged into a router with a network cable. No USB. So I'm confused about the USB bottleneck you mention.

Most simple consumer-type NAS systems don't have an ethernet connection and rely on USB. Most routers that have USB connectivity use USB2 not 3 although that won't make much of a difference since the drive's throughput is usually the limiting factor.
Yeah, a mirrored ethernet NAS is like a small file server with redundancy, definitely a better solution.

 

[BreezyBrew]

Uhhh, mash tun?

 

[IslandLizard]

Uhhh, mash tun?

NAS tun!

 

[passedpawn]

Dropbox is a great solution here and does give you off-site backup automatically. 100G is not much storage so a dropbox acct won't cost much.

I have 2 dedicated ethernet RAID5 NAS on my home network - I'm very familiar with them. They worked great for file storage and serving media, but the throughput was not as fast as I wanted (especially writing to them). For PDFs and such, you'd be quite happy with that. I paid more than $500 for the empty NAS, then another several hundred for the drives. These boxes quickly filled up and became anchors. They are still connected but off; I'm not sure what to use them for now.

I now have a 10TB RAID5 NAS in my home PC. Turns out that a PC makes, by far, the best NAS. I thought about using a dedicated PC (I've got an assortment of decommissioned boxes), but since my huge main work PC is always on, it was easier to just add a bunch of drives in there. Then, just turn on file sharing in windows and select folders on the NAS and share them with everyone. Lots of options for sharing.

For backup, I use Crashplan (free version) to automatically back up work stuff every night (including email). I back up to a USB drive that is connected to the PC. Obviously, I can't back up the entire 10TB, but most of that is movies and doesn't need to be backed up.

 

[balrog]

Most simple consumer-type NAS systems don't have an ethernet connection and rely on USB

I see. I guess my problem was interpereting NAS as "Network Addressed Storage" with RJ45, rather than external USB hard drive. I've been out of the buying market for a while in computer equipment as I took up this marvelous new brewing obsession, and didn't realize they'd started marketing USB HD as NAS. Just shows the trouble you get into when you set aside a computer hobby for a brewing one for a year!

 

[IslandLizard]

I see. I guess my problem was interpereting NAS as "Network Addressed Storage" with RJ45, rather than external USB hard drive. I've been out of the buying market for a while in computer equipment as I took up this marvelous new brewing obsession, and didn't realize they'd started marketing USB HD as NAS. Just shows the trouble you get into when you set aside a computer hobby for a brewing one for a year!

You're not wrong, a proper NAS should be RJ45 based, plugged into a network as a stand-alone (attached) device. I think all the NAS devices have RJ45 and many also have a USB port, perhaps for quick plug-in accessory drives. Not even sure if and how you get network file access when connected through the USB port.

 

[passedpawn]

You're not wrong, a proper NAS should be RJ45 based, plugged into a network as a stand-alone (attached) device. I think all the NAS devices have RJ45 and many also have a USB port, perhaps for quick plug-in accessory drives. Not even sure if and how you get network file access when connected through the USB port.

Both of my ethernet NAS's have USB ports. These are for connecting peripherals, not for connection to a PC. The USB ports allow a printer to be attached, not sure why. There's also a back-up feature that allows you to back up the NAS contents to the USB drive. Anyway, I've never used the USB ports for anything. I'm not 100% sure of what I just wrote, it's sorta what I remember though.