April 11th, 2008 Mark
I currently have an NSLU2 with a Terrabyte attached to it at the moment. It is a little sluggish, but i can put up with it as it just stores my movies and tv series collections. Its a bit of a drag copying stuff to it, but onces it is there, it streams around the house to any of the 4 XMBC machines great.
After a very recent episode with my iMac, where i was very close to having lost 5 years worth of family photos, i’ve started taking data security seriously at home, which is weird, because i take it seriously at work.
I am definately looking at going down the RAID 5 route, but as always, there is a budget that comes in to play.
I have toyed with the idea of getting an cheap machine, or build one from old parts i have and make this into a RAID server, but when you start totalling it all up, something like the N4100+ comes in at around the same total cost, comes in a nicer looking box and uses FAR less power (which is good when it is going to be runing 24/7).
I have toyed with idea of the cheap HP Proliant Server, but for the reasons i just mentioned, i decided against it.
At work, we have a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with 3 x 500gig drives in it setup as RAID 5 giving us 1 terabytes of storage. Had it about a year now and have had no problems with it. Great little machine, but as you are probably aware, these are a little expensive. Around £500 diskless.
After reading many reviews and comments, i seem to have settled on the Thecus N4100+. The performance of this may not be entirely a lot better than my NSLU2, but i wasn’t unhappy with it in the first place. I just want something that will allow me to expand my storage capacity and keep my data secure.
With the N4100+ coming in at about £250, i would initially install 3 x 750gig. This would be an initial outlay of about £500 which would give me 1.5tb of space. Idealy i would like to stick 1 TB drives in there, but as i need at least 3 for a RAID 5 setup, this could get very expensive very quickly. I would probably look to maxing out the system to 4TB down the line.
The Thecus 5200 looks very tasty, with its better performance, and 5 drive bays for future expandability, but again you are looking at £500 without any disks.
Posted in Tech | No Comments »
April 11th, 2008 Mark
I thought I would put together this little tutorial as it took me a while to get a setup I really liked. I had used Unison in the past but it just didnt seem the best solution in my eyes.
Anyway, here is what to do.
This tutorial assumes you already have a newgroup account.
The application we are going to be using here is called SABnzbd.
Now, there isn’t actually an OS X version of this program. Just a Windows and Linux version. No need to worry though, because some kind person is regulary compiling the source code of the Linux version and porting it to OS X. This can be found here.
On this page, you will see the download links on the right-hand side. Download the lastest version. Once download, extract the Zip file (if Safari didn’t do it automatically for you).
Copy the SABnzbd application to your applications directory (or wherever you prefer). Then launch it.
Once launched, your browser should open at the following page http://192.168.1.1:8080/sabnzbd/
This may differ depending on your network setup. You will probably want to bookmark this page for future access. Now click the “Config” tab, then “Servers“. Here you can enter your connection details. Once entered, click “Add server”.
That is basically it. You are now ready to download. You may want to go through all the sub-settings in the “[b]Config” tab. When on any page, click the “Help” tab, which will take you to the project Wiki to explain the settings in more detail.
Click the “Home” tab. There are 3 main ways to add files to your queue.
1) Upload an NZB.
2) Specify the URL of an NZB
3) Enter postid of a report on Newzbin.com (This option is only available after entering your Newzbin username and password)
Once you have added your files. You can then click the “Queue” tab to see the files in the queue. Here you can reorder the queue, or click a title in the queue to see individual file details.
Depending on your settings in the “Config” tab, and the option you selected when adding the file to the queue, once the download completes, the files will be checked. If the file needs repairing, enough PAR2 files will be downloaded to complete the repair. Once the repair has completed, it will be unpacked. Job done.
Now for the exciting stuff
Obvousily, as this application is all controlled through your web browser, you can access this from any where in the world any time you want. All you need to do is setup your router to forward port 8080 to the machine running SABnzdb. You may need to use a dynamic IP service such as DynDNS. These steps are beyond the scope of this tutorial.
To make things EVEN EASIER, there is a plugin for FireFox called nzbdStatus. What this does is, it adds an icon in the bottom left of the FireFox window that show you the status of your downloads, you can pause and unpause the queue – from anywhere in the world.
Also, this plugin integrates with Newzbin. It automatically adds a new icon on the report listings. Clicking this icon sends the files to your download queue. Again, this can be done from ANYWHERE in the world.
I think that about covers everything. I hope this is a good starter. if there are any queries, please don’t hesitate to ask. Hopefully I can then refine this document.
Posted in Tech | No Comments »
