Archive for February 11, 2007
Network storage – Do you need it at home?
If you are like me – having 5-10 computers around the house (home computer, work laptop, wife’s work laptop, 2x old work laptop, 2x media centers, …) – you’re soon getting tired of copying all thos mp3, movies and images around so that they can be accessible from all the computers.
The solution of course is easy, but not free. I recently purchased the Synology DiskStation DS-106e, added a 500GB disk, and voila! This product works like a charm. It is based on linux, and Synology makes available free updates to the software inside. I used it both as a printserver, diskserver and ftp server. In addition it can function as a webserver as well, but I haven’t tried that part yet.
The setup is based on an onboard webbased configuration tool. I have created a few network shares, one for my personal stuff and one with public read availabilty (within the family) so that everyone can make use of the music, images and videos on their own computers.
The alternative is of course using an old computer running linux. However, the Synopsis was very easy to configure, and remembering hours and hours of previuos time used for Linux configuration, this device pays for itself. Recommended!
