Transferable drives

[Joe]

want to build a NAS either a server or a 4 drive box. I'm a photographer -
I mostly just ad to pictures and look at old pictures - I don't modify the
old stuff but want alot available.
I envision a stack of 4 drives with say a year worth of images on each. each
drive would have a copy off site.
I don't (mentally) like raid I need transfer speed (gigabit NICs) I biggest
issue is I would like any drive not in the system to be able to be put in
(using an enclosure or USB case) to be read by any windows XP / Vista PC
(NTFS) .

My question - from my understanding a NAS like infrant the drive need to be
in their unit (group if using RAID) to be read.

Is there a good way to have multiple drives over a network movable from live
to backup on any PC.

Thanks
Joe

 

[Arno Wagner]

want to build a NAS either a server or a 4 drive box. I'm a photographer -
I mostly just ad to pictures and look at old pictures - I don't modify the
old stuff but want alot available.
I envision a stack of 4 drives with say a year worth of images on each. each
drive would have a copy off site.
I don't (mentally) like raid I need transfer speed (gigabit NICs) I biggest
issue is I would like any drive not in the system to be able to be put in
(using an enclosure or USB case) to be read by any windows XP / Vista PC
(NTFS) .

My question - from my understanding a NAS like infrant the drive need to be
in their unit (group if using RAID) to be read.

Is there a good way to have multiple drives over a network movable from live
to backup on any PC.

Hmm. Tricky. The best I can think of is to put the drives into sleep
mode. Does not work with USB though. I don't think this is possible
with bare drives. What about using NAS enclosures that can be shut
off remotely? A bit more expensive, especially with GbE, but may
be what you want...

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Hmm. Tricky.

Babblebot pretending he understands a completely incomprehensible question
that's full of gibberish.

The best I can think of is to put the drives into sleep mode.

Sleep, now there's one concept you should try, Babblebot.
Your brain would appreciate it.

 

[technotim]

want to build a NAS either a server or a 4 drive box.

A NAS is a server.

I'm a photographer -
I mostly just ad to pictures and look at old pictures - I don't modify the
old stuff but want alot available.
I envision a stack of 4 drives with say a year worth of images on each. each
drive would have a copy off site.
I don't (mentally) like raid I need transfer speed (gigabit NICs)

You would barely be able tap into gigabit bandwidth with a simple
desktop/unraided disk scenario

I biggest
issue is I would like any drive not in the system to be able to be put in
(using an enclosure or USB case) to be read by any windows XP / Vista PC
(NTFS) .

You would need to put each drive in a removeable caddy. Then you
would install the same model caddy in either the other machines or a
USB/Firewire enclosure.

But I don't understand why you would need to do this though.

My question - from my understanding a NAS like infrant the drive need to be
in their unit (group if using RAID) to be read.

Don't understand what you're asking. As long as you don't remove
whatever media has the OS the NAS can boot and operate. Obviously
whatever disk you remove can't normally be served by the NAS. Whether
or not you can hot-plug or swap depends.

Is there a good way to have multiple drives over a network movable from live
to backup on any PC.

I don't understand. The point of a NAS is it sits there and you read
and write to it over the network. i.e. the main benefit is you don't
have to run around swapping disks. If what you want is firewire disks
that you can move around get that instead. But you haven't revealed
why you need to swap the disks around.