Month: October 2009

Netgear Stora NAS

 

Warning:  Nerd Content ahead!

Since I work helping companies manage their enterprise storage environment, I tend to be very anal with storing my data at home.  It needs to be resilient, redundant, and fast. Why?  I’m retarded. Most of the time, I spend more than enough money on something I have to manage and tweak constantly.  No inexpensive NAS device has had all the features I wanted in an embedded device – until now.

A few weeks ago, I decided to try Netgear Stora, and I’m very impressed with it.  Firstly, it’s a 1TB NAS device for $200 bucks that performs.  I have a gig network at home, and Stora works very well with its 1gbit net interface.

It can support USB drives directly and will auto RAID1 if you install a second drive inside it, which was the main reason I tried it.

What’s so lovely is that it has a web interface for file manipulation that can be accessed easily from the internet. Who cares, right?  While the 1gbit network is fast, direct hard drive access is much faster.  Usually, a NAS device has a computer available to upload the data from other disks onto the NAS device.  With direct USB disk support and a web interface, I could migrate 700Gb of data much faster than having a computer as the middle man.  Since the Stora was doing the copying, I didn’t have to worry about network hiccups and file share weirdness with larger files.  Nice.

I just found out that while Netgear says the file system is propriety, I was able to mount the internal mirrored drive on my computer by mounting it as a XFS filesystem within a ubuntu VM instance.    AWESOME.   If the Stora dies, I can still get to my data.

Optional RAID1, Great Net Performance, USB Disk Support, Internet support, Media Server support for my PS3 – $200 bucks. Good times.

Here’s  a demo of it:

High School 1957 vs 2009

From a recent email spam – that was sorta funny…

Scenario 1:

Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck’s gun rack.

1957 – Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to his car and gets his new shotgun to show Jack.

2009 – School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2:

Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school…

1957 – Crowd gathers.. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.

2009 – Police called and SWAT team arrives — they arrest both Johnny and Mark.. They are both charged them with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3:

Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.

1957 – Jeffrey sent to the Principal’s office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again..

2009 – Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario 4:

Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1957 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.

2009 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has an affair with the psychologist.

Scenario 5:

Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 – Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock.

2009 – The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6:

Pedro fails high school English.

1957 – Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.

2009 – Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro’s English teacher . English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7:

Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed..

1957 – Ants die.

2009 – ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents — and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny’s dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.