New FM Towns set released

[Harrison]

That's one big update. I don't have the free HD space to update my existing set yet. That's always annoying Time for another HD coming on!

[Demon Cleaner]

Yeah. As I bought 2 500GB internal for my barebone, I now have a 320GB external left. I use this one now for all MAME based stuff, as my other 320GB external already has a lot on it, plus now the big FM Towns update. And I still have my 320GB external which is full with Amiga stuff, so no free space on that one.

[Harrison]

Good job HD prices continue to fall. 250GB HDs are now about £30 and 500GB for just over £60. Lets hope the 1TB drives start to drop more soon. Then I can create a 4TB raid NAS

[Demon Cleaner]

Then I can create a 4TB raid NAS

That is also one of my goals, having a NAS working fine with lots of files, as you still know, my Terastation wasn't a success.

[Harrison]

You might be interested in some new NAS hardware that has recently been released.

D-Link have released a NAS unit called the DNS-323 which comes without any drives so you can put whatever you like in the unit. You can get 2 and 4 bay units and it takes SATA drives.

An alternative is a new unit from Linksys called the Network Storage Link. You can connect any external USB drives you have to it and they are then instantly shared on the LAN.

And lastly Buffalo have released a new version of the TeraStation, called the TeraStation Pro II 2TB which is meant to me much faster. The review I read said it managed to transfer 1GB of data in 90 seconds, which seems quite quick.

[Demon Cleaner]

The review I read said it managed to transfer 1GB of data in 90 seconds, which seems quite quick.

But that always depends on the raid mode you have. And raid 5 is generally known as the slowest. I wanted a solution like some NAS from Promise, like the one on the image, but they cost 3.500€, without disks of course.

[Harrison]

Well, if you start going into business grade NAS servers then you are talking serious money, but you do get what you pay for. I would love to have the money to setup a server rack and fill it with a few dedicated rack mounted servers, and the rest of the rack with NAS units. We can dream...

Another home NAS you might be interested in is the Maxtor Shared Storage II. Available in up to 1GB units at the moment and very affordable.

It is very true about the sustained speed of transfer being dependant on RAID setup, but this is mostly down to the on-board CPU the NAS has, so business grade NAS servers will be much faster as they have proper server CPUs in them, not cut down CPU's as smaller NAS solutions have.