DIY NAS + Plex Server Build

I’ve been running a network attached storage (NAS) device for many years.  I’ve really enjoyed the Netgear ReadyNAS product as an  easy to use reliable appliance.  I started out with a ReadyNAS NV+ and upgraded about 5 years later to a ReadyNAS Ultra.  I’m still happy with the unit but I need to add more storage and I want to use my NAS box to also serve movies and other media.  To do that I need a lot more storage and I need more processing power.  The Plex media server that I’m going to use transcodes the movies to the target viewing platform on the fly so it’s fairly CPU intensive, a lot more than the ReadyNAS is designed for.  It’s time to build a custom NAS and media server.

Using Amazon Glacier

I’ve been wanting to test out Amazon Web Services (AWS) Glacier storage service since it was announced in August 2012.  If you’ve been reading my BLOG for a while, you’ll know that I am a little crazy when it comes to backing up my data.  The attraction of Amazon’s Glacier is low cost ($0.01/GB) and it’s high durability (11 9s).   I was waiting for some client side tools so that I could test (which I now have).  Windows based easy to use clients came out pretty quickly, FastGlacier was one of the first and has since seen a major release in the last month. I decided to give it a try and backup my family and client photos as well as music.  I think I have a strong use case for it and I’ve estimated that I can save $180+ per year by moving some of my archives to Glacier.  So, I’ll save some money while I’m having some fun.

iDrive Bulk Restore

I've been using iDrive for quite some time and I continue to recommend it to most of my home and small business clients (read my review HERE).  One thing that I didn't know was that iDrive offers what I call a bulk restore option.  When you have a complete disk failure and you need to restore all of your data, you can restore over the network but that could take a very long time if you have as much data as I have.  In addition, your network provider may get crabby about your high data usage.  In this case, iDrive also offers a "Rapid Serve" service where they Express ship your data to you on a special iDrive Portal USB hard drive. The cost is $69.95 and you can keep the hard drive.  The drive also comes with software to perform local backups with the same security and versioning features of iDrive Online backup.

Read my full review of iDrive and a couple of others to learn more.

- Chris Claborne

Backup to your USB Drive with SyncBack

Exec Summary

I don't like to depend on backup programs that create one big file and hope it works when I need it. My alternative is to use this method combined with a tool that backs up all your files to the destination with the same layout, easy, simple, more reliable. That program is SyncBack.

Backup your PC to the NET, or just backup!

Have a laptop or PC you don't back-up. If you have a USB drive for backups, do you use it? Where do you put your backups in case there is a fire? OK, most of you are probably saying you have a problem. I've helped many a friend transfer or try to recover data because of a disk crash or mistake. Millions of people loose data every year because of theft, fire, or system failures. Don't be one of them!

!Update! (2/26/2012)
Please read the updates at the end of this article.