network attached storage

Paul's WD NAS can't be seen on his network after changing the cable connector. There's a red light that says "I'm not working." Leo says he could try to use another computer with the dashboard software and connect directly, bypassing the router. If he sees it, then there's some issue connecting through the router. Leo says that Western Digital's NAS is terrible. Definitely not his preferred NAS. They fail more often than others. Leo prefers Synology.

Aaron has a Synology NAS, and he handles a lot of really large image files. But they load really slowly. Leo says that while loading it can bog down and there are several issues in the chain. He shouldn't treat his NAS as local storage. He should transfer his data to a hard drive. It still shouldn't be that slow, though. Leo suspects a misconfiguration issue. Aaron should make sure SMB File Sharing is turned on. That could help.

Wade wants to know if he can use network attached storage (NAS) with his Chromebook? Leo says he can mount the NAS as a drive, and he can access his NAS through the web. But to do a direct backup using Chrome may be nontrivial. Wade should check out the Chrome extension Network File Share.

Chip has a failed hard drive and doesn't really want to spend over $500 to repair it. Is there a way to do it himself? Leo says that a hard drive dying can mean a lot of things. It could be a hardware failure or it could be a software failure. It could be a corrupt sector on the boot record. Software failures are easy to fix and inexpensive. Hardware failures will cost a lot. Drivesavers charge a lot because they have a clean room with all the parts, and can replace bad parts and recover the data.

David works with about ten other people in a small company, and they all share files using DropBox. They're getting conflicts, however with certain database files that they have stored on DropBox. Leo says if he has two programs accessing the same file at once, they will have problems. David wants to set up a VPN, and he was able to configure Hamachi. Leo says this won't fix the fundamental problem, though — it has to support record locking. David says that Microsoft Access supports locking, but it doesn't work with DropBox because people are accessing the file on their local systems.

Bruce has a network attached storage (NAS) drive and he's getting an error message. He's worried he's lost the data. Leo says that if the network RAID was set to RAID 0 or "scary RAID" then there's a chance that's the case. But if it was set as "redundant" then if one drive has gone bad, replacing it will fix it. The error message Bruce is getting indicates the entire Western Digital NAS has been corrupted and the only thing he can do is reboot the NAS and see if it self-corrects. Bruce also said that the error occurred with all the drives taken out of the machine.

Brian wants to know how safe online encryption is. Leo says that as long as he has the only encryption key, he's safe. But if he doesn't even trust that, then Leo suggests using his own Network Attached Storage. Leo uses Synology, and he syncs it to all his computers using the web.

Keith has two NAS drives attached to his network and none of his Windows-based computers can see the shared data folders, but his Android devices can. Leo says that since Keith's Chromebook and Android devices are based on Linux, it can probably see it without any emulation or extra drivers. The NAS could have a non-standard file sharing protocol that won't allow Windows to see it because it can't understand it.

Eric is looking to get a new NAS and wants to know whether he should get a Drobo or Synology? He wants everything on RAID that can be swappable. Leo says that Drobo is USB and is essentially a very large, fast USB external drive system. But for network attached storage, Leo prefers Synology. It's a computer with massive storage on his network.So it really comes down to what he'll want to use it for.

Edwee wants to create a server using Raspberry Pi. Leo says that the Raspberry Pi is very cheap at $35, but it can do a lot of great things. It uses Raspian OS, which is like Linux. There are some network attached storage operating systems that the Raspberry Pi can run, including NextCloud and OwnCloud.