Got myself a new toy, a Linksys NAS 200, picked it up at on sale at buy.com for $75 and stuffed it with dual 1TB Hitachi 7200RPM hard drives from Newegg.com for $65 a piece after $10 immediate coupon and, where I to get my ass in gear I have a $10 rebate on each that would bring the price down to $55 a pop.

Here is my cliff notes review.

Installation

Physical

A snap, quite literally (do notice I did have a helper throughout so take that into account!).

Take the front covers out by releasing the plastic latch, then squeeze in the 3.5” SATA drives which fit snuggly and perfectly, until you feel the connectors in the back perfectly couple with the drive’s own.

Power up…

Setup

Pop in the Installation CD, which runs the app that scans for the device in your local network.  Either follow the wizard (which I did the first time) or change settings manually (without the wizard).  Settings to set include device network name, IP (static or DHPC) and drive configuration.

The NAS supports as much as you would expect from a $75, 2 drive device.  RAID 0 (stripping) for speed, RAID 1 (mirroring) for peace of mind.  You can also configure it to use the Two separate disks (Recommended)or Two disks configured as one large disk (JBOD/LVM).

I configured it using RAID 1, since I don’t think I have close to that amount of data requiring “secure” storage.  This is the purpose that best fits my immediate needs and that in my mind justified the roughly $150 expense.

One small shortcoming that I think is, again typical to expect of your $75 device, is that you are tied to manage permissions and setup shares and such from the proprietary software interface, something that may fall short of a great experience but also something that I am probably going to do seldom if ever now that it is up and running. 

It is manageable via its self contained and hosted web interface or via a desktop app included with the supporting media.

If you happen to need additional storage to be served via the same mechanism and want to add to the NAS, one option is to do it via it’s USB interface.  The device will manage up to 2 external USB drives and serve them up via the same interface with some limitations, served straight up no RAID.

Some cool, non advertised features include power management (very welcome indeed) and a “Media Server” option which I haven’t tried out yet.

Thus far, not quite 1 month into the purchase, installation, setup and configuration, I would recommend this product to anyone looking for a truly inexpensive way to store and manage (secure if so desired) data.  How expensive or cheap you end up going depends on your options for the actual drives you put in it, but you could start with one and add to it.  Of course that would limit or somewhat restrict your ability to use mirror after the fact.

Even before I started even thinking about actually "blogging", one of the elements that quickly came up as important to consider was hosting.  Now, I've always hosted my own, and for the most part it has faired pretty well.  I don't (and lets be honest, most likely never will) have the traffic to even put a blip on anyone's bandwidth use radar, and that was one of my initial (unproven and unjustified) concerns.

Since we are putting an addition on the house, and redoing (read ripping it all out) the 70s looking basement, my hand was forced and I had to take down all of my infrastructure, including server and incoming Internet connection. 

I will get a new, decent, nice looking, office out of all this, and it will not be cold and an eye sore like it used to be.

I've been managing by having to relocate the physical infrastructure required to provide me with outbound access (mainly my router, modem and a power strip) which come into my basement, almost on a day to day basis, although its been stable since Wednesday or so and over the weekend because there was nothing going on down there as far as construction goes.

This has created too much downtime for me, and although I have little to no audience, it is clear that it doesn't help.

I have been evaluating options from different hosting solutions, and thus far in 1 week of on and off (15 minutes at a time) dealing with several, I have come across 2 disappointments and no true clear winner.  Of course, a huge contributing factor is that this is merely a hobby and as such justifying too much of an expense (more than say $10 a month) is a hard thing to do.  The search continues, but regardless of my convictions I should be moving this blog to a new site within a couple of days.

In the meantime, read this as somewhat of an explanation for the lack of posts, and my sincere apologies to go with it. 

I am well aware downtime and lack of constant posts are big no-nos in the list of things not to do when one is without an audience and trying to gain the trust of anyone who would listen. 

Again I apologize and my commitment continue despite some of the minor obstacles and workable setbacks.

At the recommendation of a colleague, I decided to forgo self hosting my domain's email and give Google Apps a try.

This move has certainly proven to be a great one, as I not only get the familiar GMail interface available from anywhere at any time, but we can all agree that you can't go wrong leaning on a stable platform that is Google's infrastructure.  Peace of mind and software that works above all else.

I have, by no stretch of the imagination, exerted the kind of "load" that some may wish and will be more than able to put on the service.  Things like using the full gamut of all available application including more common use ones like Calendar, Google Talk or even Google Docs.  I do see myself starting to embrace web applications over the more common desktop application (especially on the personal aspect) as a platform.

Scott Hanselman has a VERY comprehensive post on his process and later on his take of the service and his usual detailed pros/cons, good/bad/ugly features.  Him being a much earlier adopter and having different criteria and needs, went with the paid Premier Edition, whereas I elected the Free Standard edition.  Check out the edition comparison chart.

The signup and configuration process was incredibly simple.  One important thing you should have available before signing up is all your domain DNS management information handy.  If you host your domain's DNS with a 3rd party provider, make sure you are ready and able to make changes. 

I use ZoneEdit for my DNS provider, it is free up to 5 domains and up to a certain traffic limit which at the moment escapes my mind, but that is certainly a non issue for normal use.

You will need to edit your DNS settings to point your MX records to Google's designated servers.  For this and during the process, they use a wizard that is incredibly smart.  I liked that they put some thought into things like the simple fact that they knew who my DNS host was and included directions specific to ZoneEdit.  Simple but powerful in providing the best user experience.

Once you are all setup and ready to go, you will get a Start Page you can customize with things like a company or personal logo, and the myriad of other portal parts available from Google.  I am running at "vanilla" level.  Spicing things up on the web front it one of those things I know I have to get to.  That and revamping my so year 2000 domain home page, including but not limited to my resume and content (hmm, WHAT content?). 

My excuse? I am seriously graphically challenged and rely heavily on my friend and coworker Adam Gilson to provide the much needed touch to the look and feel of my presence.  I know if I continue with the "bug the heck out of him" approach, I will soon see a nicely redone image!

I am currently dealing with a little annoyance which is not having a reliable wireless connection. 

Now, I've always had issues to some degree or another with my wireless signal at home, as has much of the wireless community in general.  Wireless just isn't as reliable, period.  However, up until this Sunday (or at least I think it was Sunday) I was getting a usable signal, if not the most highly performing one.

For the life of me, I can't think of what changed either purposefully or not that may have caused my current signal woes.

My first suspect was the wireless card I was using.  Mind you I am running an "ancient" Dell Precision M50 workstation which doesn't have wireless integrated, so my wireless connection comes via a Netgear WG511 card.  I was initially using the "v1" of the card, or simply WG511, and given my initial suspition I then tried the "v2" of the same card, and even tried different PC card slots (although I only have 2).  Because of the change of hardware, I also uninstalled the "old" drivers and installed the new drivers that go with the v2 of the card... all by the book... no good.

I run a  Netgear WGR614v4 Wireless Router as my main router, and also a Netgear WAG302 Access Point.  Both of them are located in my basement, both within arms reach of each other (that is, if routers and access points had arms).  What I know I am doing wrong, is that I should place the Access Point in the highest level of the house.  My excuse is that it is an older house, brick, hard to impossible to fish cabling through walls for an amateur cabling tech.  So what I will probably do as I further analyze my situation is probably have a cabling contractor run a couple of cables to my 1st and 2nd level from the basement, and use those to connect the access point.  I will follow up on that.

Back to the problem on hand, and trying to keep the idea on course, although the "solution" would appear to be to move the source of the signal, I was presented today with an interesting curve ball to deal with.  My wife brought home her work laptop a Dell Latitude D510 with Dell Integrated Wireless card and placing the laptop on the exact same spot as where I experience the lowest signal on the aforementioned crippled laptop, I get a great signal strength reading... very weird.

In addition to this, if I take my laptop down to the basement "by" the router, I get great signal with no intermitent drops like I get while at the main level... so, yeah, it appears to be a matter of signal strength other than the fact that my wife's laptop (on which I am writing this post), has perfect signal from pretty much anywhere in the house... I am totally puzzled.

My next steps: I will test my laptop with a 3rd wireless USB adapter from D-Link, to change both the vendor and the form factor.  I will update as I unravel this mystery.