NAS / UPS / have I got enough ethernet ports?

[Mockingbird]

Hello!

I've been browsing around this site and found it most informative, so initally thanks to everyone that's contributed to it.

I have decided to purchase a NAS for my home, mainly to act as a media server/store for movies, music, photos etc. to main PC, laptop and PS3.

I would prefer to use one with RAID to act as a first-line data protection (and yes, I realise it's no replacement for a full, regular backup, which I will ALSO do with an already-owned external HDD).

Looking at various options and prices, I'm pretty much sold on the
Netgear ReadyNAS Duo RND2110 (Comes with a 1Tb drive and a send-off for a second)
NOVATECH have it for about £180

I was all set to drop the hammer when I realised:

This needs to go in my 'PC room'. I am in a relatively old house at the moment, so most rooms have only a single 2-socket power outlet. I have also networked the place with wired ethernet, but being the superb forward-planner I am, only wired one line to the PC room.

This means I need to add the NAS to a room with one (used for my PC) ethernet port and one free power socket (on a standard, non-UPS power bar).

As far as I can see this leaves the following options:
1) Daisy-chain another power bar onto the exisitng one to support a NAS AND a switch. Don't want to do this for the obvious safety reasons.

2) Replace the power bar with a 5-socket UPS (PC, Monitor, Speakers, NAS, Switch), add the switch and the NAS. This seems pricey, and adds an additional power-using device.

3) With either my existing power bar or a UPS, get a NAS that also acts as a switch (do these exist? Are they any good/really expensive?)

4) My PC has an Asus P5Q-E motherboard, which has dual gigabit ethernet ports - if I connect one to the router and the second to the NAS, will the rest of the network see the NAS while the PC is powered down? Is this a ludicrous idea?

5) Lay an extra network cable - clearly a good plan, except that laying an additional network cable would require drilling through walls, which requires permission from my Landlord who's in New Zealand for the next 2 months, and I'd rather not wait that long (plus there's always the chance he'd say "no, you've made enough holes").

So, can people please recommend one of the above options?
I you'd recommend a UPS, can you tell me what to look for?
Would a simpler, cheaper surge protected power bar be sufficient?
What about switches or switch-incorporating NASes?

Recommendations from Novatech.co.uk would be appreciated, as I am a fan of them for their customer service so would prefer to send my money their way unless there's a major price difference elsewhere.

Ideally I'd like to keep the entire project below £200, but I appreciate that this might not cut it if a switch + UPS are required.

Thanks!

Mockie.

 

[00Roush]

Based on my understanding of your setup I would say you should be fine just adding an additional 5 plug power strip (or UPS if you prefer) to the mix if needed. As for the network setup I would recommend just adding a gigabit switch to your PC room. You could use the dual NICs on your PC but when the computer is off it wouldn't work. The switch would plug into the Ethernet from the wall and then to all of computers/NAS/devices in the PC room. This would allow all the devices in the room to communicate with each other and the rest of the house. The only downside to not running additional network cables is you only have a single connection to the rest of the house. If you are running gigabit this isn't really a problem but with just 100 Mbps you could have a bottleneck if you intend to transfer lots of data to/from the rest of the house.

Overall it is nice to have a UPS but for a decent one it can cost quite a bit so my guess most (including me) do not have one. Instead my guess is most (like me) use one or two power strips to power everything.

As for a switch I can only recommend the Netgear ProSafe ones as that is the only ones I have used that are available from the website you listed. The Novatech ones look like they have a bit less features (no jumbo frames) but would probably work just fine.

00Roush

 

[Mockingbird]

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I guess I'll go ahead and get a new power strip and a switch to go with my NAS.

An additional question I should have asked before - do all gigabit switches play nicely with all gigabit routers (my current network centrepoint), or should I do a bit of model-compatibility checking before laying out the cash?

 

[00Roush]

To my knowledge there shouldn't be any compatibility problems between any gigabit router and any gigabit switches. Of course it is always possible but generally I would say any of the name brand stuff should work just fine. I wouldn't really worry about it.

00Roush

 

[Mockingbird]

Thanks!

I've just got to finish finding the money now...