Having done a little research since my last post I discovered that my understanding of RAID0 was not correct. A 10Gb + 30Gb drive in RAID0 = 20Gb striped array. It's JBOD that adds drive capacities. The above drives in JBOD would = 40Gb.

I've decided to use tried and trusted RAID5 with my 3 disks. Software RAID admittedly, which will impact on CPU performance, but it'll do for now whilst I have a play with it. It'll be purely for backup at the moment, I'll progress to my goal of a low power media server eventually.

Fire/theft isn't much of an issue (it's difficult to type with fingers crossed) because I have essentially a 2 storey building with no access between the two floors other than separate outside locked steel doors. It's all concrete and brick too, nothing to catch fire. We have had burglaries around here where PC's have been lifted but to my knowledge, nobody has had their underhouse storage area broken into unless it's obviously living quarters. My security arrangements are sufficient to deter even the most determined thief, or at least good enough to encourage them to move on to easier prey.

Possibly our biggest threats are flooding and earthquake. We do get the occasional tremour, nothing serious as yet. Flooding happens about once a year during spring but everything I have under the house is on pallets or benches and I have a live sump/pump arrangement to get rid of the water at the rate of 600 litres a minute.

I'm rambling a bit here, back to building my RAID 5 NAS box.

Cheers,

I've actually got 3 160Gb drives, 2 are in unused firewire enclosures (Vista fails miserably to use them).

I've used 1 for my initial trial. I'm planning on putting all 3 into this box.

I just need to decide whether to use JBOD RAID or RAID 5. I haven't decided yet whether capacity or data security is more important. I've used RAID 1 and 5 extensively in my career, but never JBOD. As I understand it, if 1 of the JBOD array drives fails, I lose everything that's on the entire array. Correct?

If that is the case, how does this differ from RAID 0 where array size = disk 1 + disk 2 + . . . + disk n?

SOunds cheap enough, and certainly not much power used.

Thanks for the info.

Thanks Matt, the freecom box might be an option for me. Low power consumption is the key for me.

I doubt it's much less than with them, the monitor would take most, kbd & mouse next to nothing.

I don't know, I'll check.

I think so, but haven't tried it. It will allow the drives to go to sleep after a period of inactivity, but I don't know if the PC will go to sleep.

Cheap, or free, is my main criteria. A new PC is not an option for me. I would be willing to shell out (no pun intended, this is a UNIX/LINUX box) a few shekels for a very low power system that'll hold 4 disks which I'll configure in RAID 5.

The only problem I've found so far with FreeNAS is that when I shut the NAS box down, it doesn't turn off the power, "Press any key to reboot" is the message I get. Not a major issue for me, but might be for others wishing to try it.

Thanks for your comments.

Has any of you used any Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices?

I dug out an old PC today, a 600MHz Pentium III with 128Mb RAM, and stuck a 160Gb HDD into it.

FreeNAS runs from CD, saving its configuration to a floppy, and it took only about 20 minutes to get the whole thing configured and running on my home network. The system can also be configured to run from HDD or Flash Memory. Once booted, it all runs in a 64Mb RAM DIsk (apparantly)

It uses web based admin tools so once configured, it doesn't need a monitor, keyboard or mouse.

It looks pretty good to me. I'm now looking for a very low power consuming PC to have it running permanently for video/still images and music files storage.

Nice try John

Even now, the MZ-S sells for £400+ from dealers. £500+ from a (ebay) dealer in Germany.

Noooooooo, don't do it. You'll regret it . . . eventually.

I have the same dilemma. I've had 3 MZ-S bodies and have one left, the best one which is in mint condition. In the last 18 months, I've put one film through it. I don't think I'll ever use it again, but . . . you never know.

The digital workflow is my/our future and I really love the ability to see the results of my efforts at the end of the day, rather than having to wait for processing. I still don't know whether to sell my MZ-S so I think I'll keep it for a while yet.

Not much help to a customer who buys a print though.

I've got two of those fiddly Pentax remote thingies. Trouble is . . . I can only find one, it's in the K10D grip. I've no idea where the other one has got to. They are very small and hence very easy to misplace.