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In a dusty supply closet at 1 Times Square, a computer terminal hooked up to hordes of ethernet servers, RAID arrays and monitors humbly runs the largest LED sign in the world. The sign, a 3-sided, 17,000-square-foot Goliath, debuted last night at the opening of a Walgreens in New York City. Today, I got to see what makes it tick.
Network-attached storage options are more abundant than ever, but jumping into the copious bush of NAS can be quite a task, especially if you want a system that plays nice with both PC and Mac. Macs have historically been an unreasonably complex challenge for many networking products, and NAS was no exception. Here I've assessed the usefulness of three different cash-conscious strategies for setting up a Mac-and-PC-friendly NAS: Building a NAS out of an old PC, using a router with an external USB drive and buying a dedicated product.
There are plenty of dual-hard-drive outboard storage systems on the market, but SimpleTech's Duo Pro struck me as particularly brimming with awesomeness. It's not a NAS—it's totally local—but you have a choice of USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800, and eSATA, which clocks a max transfer speed of 3Gb per second. (That's gigabits, not gigabytes.) You can naturally do RAID 0 or 1, and though the current options are a 1TB total for $US280, a 1.5TB total for $US420 and a 2TB version for $US550, you will be able to choose a 3TB config when the winter winds start to blow. Have a look at the back of this in the photo below the jump. [SimpleTech]
WD just launched a drive that looks awfully familiar: Because the WD MyBook Mirror Edition houses two 3.5" GreenPower drives—in this case either 500GB or 1TB each—it uses the same case as the networked MyBook World Edition. But this one is just for you, and you alone. The Mirror, which costs US$550 for 2TB version and US$290 for a single TB, has only a USB 2.0 jack on the back. It comes Windows-formatted (though there's also one for Macs). As its name suggests, it comes RAID 1 (mirror) configured, but it can be set for striping instead, if that's how your geek flag flies. [Western Digital]
Synology's new SATA NAS servers offer up to 4TB storage capacity and Synology is claiming they're the fastest non-PC RAID 5 NAS servers there are. The desktop Disk Station DS508 takes five hot-swappable drives, while the rack-style Rack Station RS408 fits in four drives for up to 3TB RAID 5 capacity.
QNAP has upgraded their line of NAS drives to include the one-bay TS-109 Pro II and two-bay TS-209 Pro II models. Both of these beefed up systems will include a Marvell 500MHz CPU and 256MB DDRII large memory, a faster BitTorrent download engine, built-in Joomla! CMS 1.5.1 and upgraded TwonkyMedia version 4.4.4. QNAP also claims that the P2P download speed is now the same as a PC-based BT download.
Fitting a 1TB into a box measuring 13.5 x 8.2 x 4 cm isn't all that easy (most NAS boxes we've seen would crush a squirrel easily) but Buffalo seems to have not only accomplished this but shoved in a whole bunch of other features as well. The Mini's got a Gigabit Ethernet port, support for RAID 0 and 1, Active Directory Support, UPS support (to shut down in case of power failure), and best of all, runs an on-board TwonkyVision DLNA server.
In a stealth move after announcing their new Xsan 2 software, Apple has killed their Xserve RAID as if it were a vulgar HD DVD player. After years of promoting their solution as the best in its class for pro environments, Apple's Xserve RAID page has been eliminated completely and now redirects to a new page which presents the Promise's Vtrak E-Class RAID subsystem. Apple gave us an explanation about why Xserve RAID has been cancelled and what to expect from now on:
Norazza's new PocketRAID drives may look tiny, but don't say that to their faces, because they store anywhere from 120GB to a whopping 320GB in a measly 5" x 3" x 1.5" frame. Support for eSATA and USB 2.0 ensures that the data is good to go wherever you are. Shipping now, these puppies will set you back $439 to $929, so start saving. [Norazza]
If you have an OiNK account, one of the largest piracy music sharing sites in the world, you may have already discovered that it has been shut down. The Interpol raided their offices and arrested everyone and their dogs. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, this year OiNK leaked 60 major pre-release albums. Hopefully, none by Christina Aguilera or Britney Spears (in that was case, the raid would have been totally justified.) [BBC News - Thanks Sam]
