Which NAS do list members prefer?

[zdjh22]

As I don't require that much media storage I'm most likely going down the Raspberry Pi5 route.

Along with the Pi5's 4No USB-A (2No v2.0 and 2No v3.0) ports it's possible to fit a 4-port SATA drive hat to increase the number of HDD's you can connect to it...

All as detailed here:

Over the past 6 years I’ve built 5 NAS systems with these SATA hats, although always with the RockPi version (5 drives, one of which is eSATA) and not the Raspberry Pi.

ZFS on all of them. All have been very reliable. The last two were built with a real hot swap raid chassis that holds full sized (3.5”) drives, which lets you go up to very large (20 TB +) drives that aren’t shingled (so faster writes).

“Full sized” used to be 5.25” LOL. I deployed a ton of Seagate “Elite 9” drives back in the day - 9 GB!

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

“Full sized” used to be 5.25” LOL. I deployed a ton of Seagate “Elite 9” drives back in the day - 9 GB!

Wowza, 9GB... You'll never fill that

 

[zdjh22]

Wowza, 9GB... You'll never fill that

The very first non-mainframe hard drive I used was on an Apple ][ way back in 1980. It was a whopping 5 MB and was in a shoebox-sized chassis. It presented itself to the Apple ][ as many dozens of individual floppies (140K? I can’t recall anymore).

The mainframe drives were the size of a washing machine!

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I'm currently using a couple of USB connected Seagate 5TB HDD's with my Synology NAS and just before Christmas I bought a WD 6TB HDD for music and video back-ups. I store 'non media' data on a USB connected KingSpec 360GB SSD. It's all working very reliably at the moment.

It's not a lot of storage compared to many others on the forum...

 

[esimms86]

Wowza, 9GB... You'll never fill that

Brings back memories of the “Fat Mac”: 512Mb!

 

[Marplot]

Back in they day I remember selling a rare breed of memory to people with more money than me .. 4 MB at $299.00.

 

[barfle]

“Full sized” used to be 5.25” LOL. I deployed a ton of Seagate “Elite 9” drives back in the day - 9 GB!

I’m so jealous! I remember being proud of the two 32MB drives in my first PC.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I’m so jealous! I remember being proud of the two 32MB drives in my first PC.

You were lucky. My first pc had 2 floppy drives and no HD. System disc (DOS] went in A drive, program disc went in B drive. Monochrome monitor. No mouse.

My 2nd pc had a 20MB HD. And color graphics. I thought it was a great technology advance at the time.

 

[esimms86]

If it makes anyone feel better, they still use floppy drives exclusively to access the codes that run the nuclear missile launch silos in the US.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

If it makes anyone feel better, they still use floppy drives exclusively to access the codes that run the nuclear missile launch silos in the US.

No way. Kina makes sense not being connected to anything in the outside world. Where did you learn that?

 

[zdjh22]

If it makes anyone feel better, they still use floppy drives exclusively to access the codes that run the nuclear missile launch silos in the US.

It doesn’t really make me feel good .

Continuing the Monty Python sketch, you folks with PCs with floppies were lucky. My first real home computer was a KIM-1, with a hex keyboard and 6-digit numeric display. A whopping 1.1 kB of memory, enough to play Peter Jenning’s Microchess (which I had to key-in from a hex dump). With a cassette tape drive interface to store and load programs.

 

[DuncanS]

It doesn’t really make me feel good .

Continuing the Monty Python sketch, you folks with PCs with floppies were lucky. My first real home computer was a KIM-1, with a hex keyboard and 6-digit numeric display. A whopping 1.1 kB of memory, enough to play Peter Jenning’s Microchess (which I had to key-in from a hex dump). With a cassette tape drive interface to store and load programs.

Luxury, we used dream of computers like that, we had a computer, well it were an 'ole in t'road, ran on hot gravel.

In 1974 I started A-Level Computing using a teletype, punched tape & punched cards and a link to the local Hatfield Polytechnic(now Uni of Hertfordshire) before we were allowed to progress to the sophisticated VDU. Two years later and now at Uni our only access to the Computer was via batch processing using punched cards!

..... and every night just before bedtime our Dad used to beat us, but tell that to the kids of today and they just won't believe you

(Apologies to M.Python)

 

[barfle]

You were lucky. My first pc had 2 floppy drives and no HD. System disc (DOS] went in A drive, program disc went in B drive. Monochrome monitor. No mouse.

My 2nd pc had a 20MB HD. And color graphics. I thought it was a great technology advance at the time.

Well, when I first built it, it had the two floppy drives. I kept building it up until it had the two hard drives, a RAM drive (E: no less!), CGA, a math coprocessor, and a 2400 baud modem.

The RAM drive was very useful. I had a "relational database" program called PCFILE-R that I used for parts list and inventory. Whenever I printed out a parts list, it would open and close files on the hard drive for every entry. Very slow, very noisy, very tough on the drive mechanics, but with the RAM drive, it just printed it all out. I had a batch file that copied everything onto the RAM drive when I booted up, and then copied it back to the hard drive when I shut down. I think I was pretty close to understanding how the damn thing worked in those days. Now it's so opaque that I just go along for the ride, which is something a tinkerer like me can't stand!

 

[GOS]

Our first computer at home was a Tandy 1000. And, to be transparent....the company I used to work for bought it for me since I was a workaholic. 95% of the work I did on it was for work.

 

[esimms86]

I remember waiting in line for my turn to load punch cards into my university's mainframe computer. Imagine your grandkids reading this thread.

 

[esimms86]

It doesn’t really make me feel good .

Continuing the Monty Python sketch, you folks with PCs with floppies were lucky. My first real home computer was a KIM-1, with a hex keyboard and 6-digit numeric display. A whopping 1.1 kB of memory, enough to play Peter Jenning’s Microchess (which I had to key-in from a hex dump). With a cassette tape drive interface to store and load programs.

It's hard to hack floppies that never leave the room.

 

[zdjh22]

I remember waiting in line for my turn to load punch cards into my university's mainframe computer. Imagine your grandkids reading this thread.

I used punch cards for assembly language (COMPASS symbolic assembler) on a CDC Cyber 76 at Colorado State in Fort Collins when I was in high school, summer of 1976. That meant a lot of time on the IBM 029 card punch machine!

A bit after the turn of the century I gave an invited talk at DESY Zeuthen, which had been a physics lab in the east side of Berlin before reunification that was incorporated into the big DESY lab in Hamburg as part of reunification. There was an old Soviet-era computer mini-museum that had Eastern Block computer equipment. Seagate knock-offs made in Yugoslavia, for example. My favorite was a Soviet knock-off of an 029 card punch. Almost an exact replica, down to the cylinder in the center to load up your custom punch pattern card.

 

[svtmike]

My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1. I bought it used as a senior in high school with saved-up paper route/lawn mowing money.

I've got a home server (used rack mount Dell enterprise server of some sort) that houses my digital music and backs up everyone's PC. Looking to divest myself of it someday, because it is loud and burns through hard drives like mad.

 

[DuncanS]

I remember waiting in line for my turn to load punch cards into my university's mainframe computer. Imagine your grandkids reading this thread.

When I went off to Uni I expected better access than when I was doing my A-Levels (UK pre-Uni exams) but no, as an undergraduate you only had access to punch card batch processing, and you had to punch your own cards! Mind you trying to write programs in Algol did generate a vast amount of paper which was handy during physics & electronics lab calculations!

 

[esimms86]

When I went off to Uni I expected better access than when I was doing my A-Levels (UK pre-Uni exams) but no, as an undergraduate you only had access to punch card batch processing, and you had to punch your own cards! Mind you trying to write programs in Algol did generate a vast amount of paper which was handy during physics & electronics lab calculations!

Dunc did you have a slide rule or had technology by then already advanced to the Texas Instruments calculator?

Hey mods, I think we need a separate thread devoted to old school computer technology!