How many folks remember network file servers we use them in out jobs daily and a few of use more savvy technical types have has at one time or the other a file server for home use. The probably has been keeping up with storage and maintenance needs of the content and users. I fell into this early on at one point in the early 90’s I have almost 2 terabytes spread across 2 file servers to service the storage needs of my family and myself. This unruly creation of 14 IDE disk drives on 4 IDE cards in 2 servers could heat my office on a cold New England winters day. During the summer let’s just say I’d rather be swimming then working in my home office. Another little known bit of knowledge is that 14 drives produce more noise than one could imagine. This type of operation depending on the size of your data needs was pretty much standard fair thru the 90’s in the early 2000’s things began to change. We saw special purpose storage boxes start cropping up for the most part used in small businesses due to their costs at this time my 14 drive monster was still cheaper to put together then to buy a small low end NAS box. We did see however see the growth of the home network switch by this time the and with the rapid acceptance of the wireless networks in the home several interesting solutions began to pop up. I managed to pick up during this time some of the LINKSYS and NETGEAR switch that had media ports My thought was to take something like some along the lines of the My Book at the time and plug this into the switch and bam I have storage and well its USB right so just get a hub and plug more standalone USB drives into this new creation and I have a dual purpose unit. I think I was ahead of my time perhaps a little too far out this failed the software at the time in the routers just wasn’t up to par to the types and count of drives I wanted to use. I wound up doing a fall back solution of fire wire enclosures to one File Server this allowed my expansion and I got to get rid of at least one server.
Let’s march forward a few years/jobs and we get to a brave new world of consumer storage. My file servers are gone they have been replaces by a NAS device. That dream of the 90’s for the most part has been achieved or has it. If you had asked me in the mid 90’s would I need anything other then storage, connection and security for my content I would have laughed at you my biggest goal was to dull the noise of the servers I had and the heat of the drives. But today it’s a brave new world we have the footprint issues solved I currently use one of the new Iomega IX-4’s this is 8 terabytes of raw storage in approximately 1 cubic foot of shelf space. I never hear the beast and much to my wife’s chagrin I’m asking to turn the heat on in my office now during the winter time. One would say I may have arrived at my nirvana but as with all things in the technology market there really never is a finish line once one barrier is crossed it merely opens the road to a whole new way of thinking.
Posts
