So why? I keep and move a lot of data around the computers in the house. We have a PC in the family room running Windows 7 Media Center. Our entire DVD video collection and CD music collection is available from this machine. I also create a lot of large photography related files (RAW images, multi-layered processed image) that I need to keep and protect.

Up until recently I relied on individual drives on each machine to hold the data and external drives connected to the computers for multiple redundant backups. (I lost some pictures a few years ago that I really miss, so backups are a priority now.) The movie and music files on the Media Center were not protected or backed-up. A single drive failure would result in having to re-rip all my DVD’s and CD’s. Any data sharing was accomplished by sharing the drives on each computer.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I’d like to consolidate an organize the data in a more protected environment. For home networks this is most easily accomplished by installing a NAS device on the home network. I talk about the NAS a little later.

I also had been using 100Mb network switches on the network. If I was going to move gigabyte of data around the network I didn’t want to do it at 100Mb/s, or about 10MB/s, or about 100 seconds for a 1GB file. Streaming multiple HD streams to different computers was out of the question. I needed to do two thing. Find an install a NAS and speed up my network.

Speeding up the network was easy and inexpensive. I simply replaced two 100Mb/s switches new Gigabit switches. All the hardwired PC’s in the house already had Gigabit Ethernet Ports. I picked up 1 D-Link DGS-2205 5-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch and 1 D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch. Both of these switches support up to 9KB jumbo frames (important for moving large chunks of data around the network quickly). Both switches are part of D-Links new green line (they conserve power by turning off circuits when attached devices are powered down).

The 8 port switch is installed in my office between the Linksys WRT54GL Wireless-G Router(running Tomato firmware, which I highly recommend) and the rest of the internal network. The wireless router is a 100Mb/s device and would be a bottleneck on the network if any gigabit devices had to pass through it, but it does provide the wireless connection for several devices including laptops, wireless printers, and android phones, none of which would benefit from being connected to a gigabit device.

So the network topology looks like [Internet] <--> [Cable Modem] <--> [Wireless Router] <--> [8-Port Gigabit Switch]. All the computers and devices in the office are connected to the 8 port switch, as is the 5 port switch (which is physically located in a recessed panel box in the laundry room). The 5 port switch connects network cables that are wired to several other rooms, including the family room housing the Media Center PC. These D-Link switches are unmanaged, meaning they have no user interface for managing their function. They are quite simply plug-and-play devices.

It is obvious from the numbers that a gigabit network can move data 10 times faster than a 100Mb/s network, but seeing the improved performance on your own network is still quite impressive. Not only do files move so much faster, but other network activities suddenly become very snappy. One such activity, for me, is using RDP to manage the Media Center PC from the office. RDP over gigabit is almost like being on the native monitor (but don’t try to play video or games over it).

A fast network deserves a fast data management device. A gigabit network can theoretically move almost 100MB/s. I wanted a NAS device that could get as close to possible to this performance level (and still be affordable). A friend of mine setup a ReadyNAS NV+ a while back and has been very pleased with it. It isn’t overly fast topping out around 35 MB/s average read/write. He pointed me to a newer model called the ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer. Some key features on this unit:

• This unit advertises data access performance of up to 75MB/s. In practice I see in the mid-60MB/s range.
• X-RAID2 – This is Netgear’s expandable RAID-5 configuration. Each drive can be replaced with larger drives to build capacity, and additional capacity is available immediately (not requiring all drives to be of the larger size).
• Another advantage of the ReadyNAS line is the extensibility and availability of additional plugins to add functionality
• There is a very active development community built around the ReadyNAS line.
• Built in backup features.

This was the unit for me. The until is delivered without any hard drives installed. You have to bring your own drives to this party. The ReadyNAS website has an extensive list of drives that have been certified for the unit. I chose to install 4 Seagate 1.5 TB SATA Hard Drives for a total capacity of 6TB, and a functional capacity of 4.1TB in the X-RAID2 configuration (an expandable RAID-5 mode). The RAID-5 configuration provides a comforting level of protection against drive failure. If any single drive fails, it can be replaced without powering down the unit and without loosing any data. The ReadyNAS has many built-in features to alert you far in advance of most drive failures (by using the SMART features found on better hard-drives).

The extensibility of the unit was a very important factor in choosing this device. I’ve recently installed a subversion server, websvn, and the mantis bugtracker on it to aide my software development projects. Now all my source code is managed and protected as well. All of these service are also available to me when I’m away from home and protected behind an Apache authentication firewall. It’s a really nice unit. The ReadyNAS is essentially a Linux computer specializing in providing NAS functionality. For the intrepid nerd, you are granted full access to the root account on the computer (voiding your support from Netgear, of course).

The one downside of the ReadyNAS is it’s noise level. It’s not obnoxiously load, the fan is controlled and kept at a reasonable level. But it’s not really quiet, ever. It’s loud enough that I will be looking at relocating is to the laundry room (aka server closet) soon from it’s current home under my desk.

For my photography work, all photographs are downloaded from the memory cards directly to the NAS. Lightroom and Photoshop read the files directly from the NAS. The device is as fast as any typical internal hard drive so there is no performance advantage of keeping local copies of the files on my workstation.

I have two 750MB USB drives attached to the ReadyNAS that serve as redundant backup drives for my most important and irreplaceable files. These files are automatically backed up from the NAS to the USB drives once week, or on demand by simply pressing the backup button on the front panel of the unit (or via the web interface). It’s a very convenient backup solution.

So there it is…my latest solution so storing, protecting, and sharing data on the home network.

Photographed with a Canon 1D-MkII using the 70-200 f/2.8 USM IS at 200mm with the Kenko 1.4x Teleconverter. I need a longer lens for this kind of picture. These crops are 100% and barely good enough for web display. There’s no hope of getting a decent print from these.