New Laptop as a NAS?

[pvdm]

Hi,

Based on the reviews from Tim, speed seems stronly related to the CPU and memory of the NAS or server, besides availability of a gigabit interface.

As I see prices of NAS and WHS appliances offering high performance above 350 USD, I wonder if buying a laptop that includes a gigabit network interface, e-SATA interface, and a 300+GB hard disk drive would be a good alternative?

A laptop doesn't use a lot of energy, is easy to maintain, is silent, and with Vista or Windows 7 installed, it should be possible to find one for 350 to 500 USD.

I know this is not a solution for somebody requiring a RAID redundant solution, but with a good external backup solution it seems a valuable alternative to me.

Good or bad idea?

 

[Jay_S]

Years ago in college, I used a laptop w/broken screen as a print server.

Another advantage of the laptop-as-NAS, is that you have a built-in battery backup!

 

[thiggins]

Nothing wrong with the idea at all. And the eSATA port is good because it should provide much better speed for backup or storage expansion.

Might be tough to find one w/ your specs for $300 - $350 though. Netbooks generally don't have gigabit Ethernet LANs or eSATA ports. You might find some refurbs, however. Post back with what you come up with.

 

[Osamede]

Can maybe add an E-sata port to as standard laptop via a full size PCMCIA card slot. I think the PC cards are relatively cheap but not sure the impact on data throughput via the PCMCIA port.

 

[pvdm]

The Gigabit network interface shouldn't be a problem to find, many laptops have those now. The e-Sata interface however may not be easy fo find within the budget. I'll try to see what I can find and post it on this forum.

 

[Armornone]

The ESATA will allow you to connect a hard drive array to a regular computer or laptop?

How does it work? Like 1 hard drive per port or can you have an entire raid system connected to 1 ESATA port?

I use to have some external USB connection a while back which did not work very well for me.

Thanks

 

[pvdm]

I've found numerous laptops with a Gigabit LAN interface, so that doesn't seem to be a problem.

The eSATA port however is only available on higher end laptops like Dell Latitude 6400 or brands like MSI and ASUS.

Buying an eSATA Expresscard seems to be a $50 worthy alternative.

Another alternative is to buy the docking station with eSATA port for the laptop.

The price range for the eSATA-Gigabit laptop NAS-Server therefore seems to be around $500 to $650.

Still looks like an excellent alternative to me. Because right now I don't need the extra HDD capacity requesting the eSATA port, and by the time I will need it, new notebooks will probably include USB3 and bigger hard drives, solving this issue.

Any other issue I should think of?

 

[thiggins]

Like 1 hard drive per port or can you have an entire raid system connected to 1 ESATA port?

Both configurations are supported. There are single and multi-drive eSATA boxes available.