CoffeeFiend

Alright. Here's a 5 minute guide (written as I reinstalled it): -Install SHOUTcast Server -Install Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP (Winamp plug-in) -Start SHOUTcast Server -Start Winamp -In Winamp, Options > Preferences > DSP/Effect, select Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP (and close config screen) -In the various tabs of the Source DSP, select the options you want (we'll use output 1 for everything): In this case we'll assume a single stream so we can select a fairly high bitrate (one user, fast-ish connection), so under the "Encoder" tab we pick 128/44.1/stereo (less if your connection can't handle it, or if you just like bad sound quality) Go back to the Output tab (still under the source DSP), change credentials if required (should not be needed unless you changed something in the server install) and hit connect. -Hit play in winamp (whatever you want to stream) Tada! You're now streaming. The status should have a counter with a number of bytes increasing. Now open Winamp on the PC that will do the listening. Under playlist, hit add > URL > ip_of_computer_doing_the_streaming_here:8000 Try to play it - should work fine. That's all there is to it! Well, you might want to change default passwords, various settings and what not, but that's all one has to do to get it working on a basic setup. And yes, there will be lag between both PCs (this is why I don't use it anymore, I was kinda hoping to use it for whole-house audio at first, but the lag was WAY too bad for that). You can also use a DSP stacker to continue using whatever DSP you might have been using in the first place (like DFX) - I've been using MuchFX2 for ages and it's works great. BTW, there are many other streaming solutions which are quite simple too (like Windows Media Server 9 if you've got a Win2003 box i.e. mms:// protocol, using WMP or such as a player)

Shoutcast is one way (the only way I've tried or know of using winamp, but there's others like JetCast - never tried them though). Just run the winamp plugin and server, and you're pretty much done (forward port 8080, VPN in or whatever you want to connect to it over the internet) As for guides, I don't think you'll need any, it's pretty straightforward (and google can surely find lots of stuff). As long as you have enough bandwidth to spare (if you have too many listeners, then you need a multicast server with enough BW)

More virtualization solutions (more choice) is always a good thing. But there's already tons of very good free offerings: VMWare Server, VMWare Player, MS Virtual Server 2005 R2, MS Virtual PC (not counting QEmu, KVM, Xen, Bochs and all that), and a bunch of cheap ones like Parallels. The interesting part isn't so much that it's free (as in 0$) as there's already more than enough free solutions, but it's open source. Either ways I'm sticking to VMWare Server (and the VMWare Converter for MS' .VHD files)

Personally the idea of HD is wrong. No matter how much you try HD is not the answer. Well, that's an opinion. I personally think it's the absolute and very best. Yes for a Entertanment center it might be okay but over time the HD will age. HDs age, so does writable media (which is also very scratch prone). Both have a very decent lifespan and reliability, but eventually you want to recopy it all to a newer storage medium. With DVDs, you'll manually be copying thousands of DVDs. With HDs, you plug the new ones in, and a couple seconds after your copying job is started (no interaction required). I think HDs clearly win here. Also Mpeg on a VCD is really nice. It looks just as great if it was on DVD and can play on various player rather then the DVD player alone. And I think we can all throw in a couple bucks towards an eye exam VCDs are truly god awful compared to DVDs (which already aren't great, High Def is where it's at!) Crappy old inefficient and featureless codecs at very low resolutions and low bitrates - not a recipe for quality. I have my stuff my on CD and DVD since I can just access what I want when I want. You can, as soon as you get around to find that one discs you're looking for. I've tired of spending all my free time looking for stupid discs and trying to reorganize all the time to make it easier... And still have to look for stuff for ages. Eventually you have to put all these discs somewhere too - it does take a fair amount of space, gotta dust it all the time and such. No thanks! I still think all DVD+R is rewritable You're entitled to think so, but it ISN'T rewritable, just writable (once). DVD+RW is, though. About Organic dye I use regualr discs and store them in papers. ~99% of regular discs use organic-based dye, and will degrade over time. It's very sensitive to temperature and light (especially UV). Just don't be surprised when you realize your discs can't be read anymore (it WILL happen!) You start getting read errors (not so noticeable on DVDs because of the extra error correction bits), jitter, glitches in audio and such, and eventually you can't read it anymore. I wouldn't store anything on those that you can't afford to lose. At least decent media like Taiyo Yuden (metallic based dye) will last (even though it will scratch just as easily) No single computer is going to hold all the data you would ever need. I am thinking about the children and my grand children. They will not be using my HD 24/7 they will have USB sticks/spheres/Flash and to be honest Discs are much safer then a HD. No single computer can hold all the data i will EVER need. No medium will EVER be able to do this. But they can hold sufficient storage, and that's what matters. Given a large enough case (or using shelving like some are doing), you can have a few dozen HDs on a computer. Along with the new upcoming TB HDs that makes for more terabytes than I could use for a VERY long time (even dumping raw HD DVD images on it). And no, discs are NOT safer than a HD - much the inverse! At least you don't manipulate HDs all the time, so they don't get dirty, scratched, you never drop them and all that. I've lost countless CDs and DVDs over the years, yet very few HDs. The real reason I am using Discs over HD for long term storage is that I had a dream. I was using a Nail gun and for some reason I just nailed a couple threw my drive and then it just came to me. Not only is the HD a victim of easy damage but all data is in one place. A HD is not an easier victim of damage than any disc - again, quite the inverse. The HDs are safe inside a metal tower somewhere. Discs can VERY easily be scratched or damaged in countless ways. Flimsy little plastic stuff you always have in your hands. Again, just look at any rental DVDs - if that's not damage... This means while children could be playing frisbie with my discs. It would be worst if they would be carrying my HD and drop it. But they don't have to carry a HD to play something (that's the very point of having a video server). It sits inside a computer. Image a earth quake and your PC starts rolling around the place and keels over like a freight train. The HD might be damaged along witjh all your data. Well, that's a bit dramatic, but anyways. I've only seen one earthquake in my life (and it was minor - PCs didn't move or anything). But they can take quite a bit more than you seem to believe. Want something more plausible? Like a house fire or such (we see that like everyday on the news)? DVDs won't survive ether. Regardless of all this, I'm not too worried about what will make it or not thru a major disaster (as long as well all survive), and should it ever happen, I've got a HD off-site (at my dad's place), so my very important data's safe anyways. Keeping data spread is better then keeping data in one area. If it is all over then a sacrafice here and there would not matter but in one place that would be game over. Divide and conquer Disagree on that. Having it all together is far better. Centralization and organization is a good thing. In the very unlikely even that a HD dies, you use the backup. It's a non-issue. Yes there was TB drives and they are around the size of regualr HD drives but a bit bigger. They costed like $4000 in most cases. If you are lucky you might be able to find one in a company pc in a yard sale. ROFL. Care to back those claims? Back then it would have been physically IMPOSSIBLE to accomplish this, due to the low densities of the time. And for 4000$ worth of HDs, you had a little over 20GB worth of space (give or take a bit, depending on the exact year). Again, drives that size just came out this month, using perpendicular recording and VERY HIGH densities. If they had terabyte HDs for 4000$ back then, I would've bought one, and I'm sure tons of other people would have. And it wouldn't have taken until this year to see drives this size on the market, and we wouldn't have been stuck with so tiny drives for all that time. Even very large hard drives of the time (like VAX'es) weren't anywhere near a terabyte. Again, any sources to back up those frivolous claims? So you buying a 2gig for $250 is like people buying 2TB drives. I can't make any sense of that sentence, no matter how hard I try Loigically if they are selling TB drives to the public they are selling higher storage mediums to companies. Actually, they aren't selling TB drives to the public yet (soon enough they will though). And no, companies don't magically have a source of bigger HDs. I work for a very large company, and we use the same HDs as everybody else does. The one special thing we use though is high quality, server-class 15k rpm SCSI 320 drives though (they're just very fast and reliable, but no bigger). Even right now, at this very instant, terabyte HDs can't be bought, so a decade ago... the harder route is more rewarding. This is why storing on CD is rewarding then storing data 24/7 on HD. If you find the pain of having to search, sort, burn, catalog, reorganize, recopy DVDs and all that rewarding... Then sure, Why not?

I think 77mbit down or so qualifies to be called as such. We've got super fast links at work (OC3 between all sites) but they're just that (inter-site, no internet access over them, i.e. just intranet stuff), and we use local internet providers for internet access (cheaper that way). Anyways. Is it just me, or speedtest.net is quite pessimistic, or perhaps it's the one mirror I'm trying (Montreal) that's not so reliable or something? At first I thought it was just something with my connection. I routinely get speeds around 1150kb/s to 1200 sustained (saw getright hit 1250 tonite, even with emule running in background). Yet, that site says I only get like 8mbit or so. Tried it at my dad's over the holidays (same mirror), and even though he's on a "basic" plan (640kbit), this thing reports less than we get downloading stuff everyday (download at ~100kb/s - never under 90, and that site reports high 500's to 600kb/s every time we try). Maybe one has to be super-close to the server for it to be a reliable measure or something. Edit: LOL. Something's wrong with that mirror or something. Just tried it and it tells me 5030kbps, and somehow as soon as I start getright (or anything else almost) I hit twice that instantly. Distance information is quite off too (says <50 mi, but it's actually over 100).

Ludwig Von Cookie Koopa: all on DVDs? Perhaps you don't have much stuff to backup then (seems so: a single 100GB HD)! Or perhaps you don't realize how much stuff 2TB really is. Keeping stuff on DVD quickly becomes a TOTAL and absolute nightmare IMO. Backing up 2TB on DVDs takes like 500 DVDs or so. That would take pretty much eternity to do even just monthly backups that way, a few minutes to burn each disc, and having to be there to swap the media, repeat 500x (I'd be able to it if I quit my job to do that full time perhaps!) Even just having stuff (not backups) on DVD was already a nightmare. Had ~2000 discs of just video contents alone, and when I wanted to check something, I often had to search for it a very long time (no matter how well I try to organize/catalog stuff), sometimes giving up after an hour (hence the video server! a true god send!). And DVD(+ or -)R is not rewritable (only the RW stuff is), so you'd have to buy 10 new spindles every time you'd want a backup. With monthly backups that'd be ~120 spindles a year, which would cost MORE than using HDs in the first place (besides the media swapping/storage hell). And discs are easily scratched (and lots of organic dye based media deteriorates and such). And going thru 120 spindles a year makes for a LOT of discs to store somewhere (or lots going to the landfill). Rewritable discs are even more expensive and slower (and add erasing time to every disc...) I gave up on the "countless large CD wallets full of DVDs" thing a while ago and couldn't be happier. Using HDs is so much better in every aspect: stuff immediately available and automatically sorted in any order you please, trivial to organize, copying and backup jobs take seconds to start (try recopying 2k DVDs and tell me how long it took!), stuff available from anything networked (from any PC on network or even via internet or via VPN, playable over network by XBMC, etc), no CD wallet mess, no scratched discs (got kids?), backup/sync jobs can be automated (totally transparent, take no time at all, set once and forget - even nightly backups are no work at all), you can take advantage of many useful technologies (such as Distributed File System, Volume Shadow Copy Service, BITS and Single Instance Storage), it can integrate/interact with other things (like a handy file router app), the drives are reusable (no erase time either, no disc swapping, or anything like that), etc. Seriously, I'd pick ANYTHING over the DVD solution. From a ghetto and overpriced NAS, to external USB2/FW HDs, RAID array (any level!) in any old box, SAN of any type (software based or using fibre channel hardware or anything), tapes (*shudder*), to Windows Home Server and everything else. And as far as I'm concerned VCD = Very Crappy Disc, and DVD itself is just OK (720p is FAR better! 1080p would be nicer, but interlacing? No thanks!) H.264 (and mpeg4 in general) is where it's at! And, I've never heard of 2TB drives being available in the 90's at any price (or size)... That was more like 2GB drives back then (I remember paying like 250$ for a 1.28GB Quantum Fireball in '95). They JUST came out with 1TB drives this month (Hitachi) - you can't even buy 'em yet.

The only real guidance I may have: if you're having such virus problems all the time, then something's wrong. Running an unpatched system with no firewall and browsing with IE? Running every executable downloaded from anywhere as admin? You shouldn't have problems like this. Removing viruses is a bit like fixing a flat tire. It may happen once a year or something, but anymore than that, you don't just keep fixing the consequences of the problem, you find why it's happening, and fix that! I wouldn't use Norton either.

I'm not much the person to ask about mice as I'm a die hard trackball user. But I do love my Intuos2. I bought it exclusively for photo work (primarily restoration of old photos). If you can find one on special, 2nd hand or perhaps even refurbished, that's likely your best bet for photo work. Doesn't have to be a huge tablet either (work zoomed in like you would anyways). I'd take a cheapo refurbished 4x5 tablet over any mouse! But as for mice... I'll let a mouse user answer that one.

Well, what's the odds of my original data going bad or missing, same thing for the backup, and same to the off-site backup as well? I probably have more chances to be hit by lightning than that. My off-site backup HD is an "old" 200GB drive (large enough for family photos and such stuff that can't be replaced), although lots of that is also on several DVD copies (my dad likes to have copies of my photos, so I mail him copies on Taiyo Yuden DVDs). I've also considered using Blu-Ray or HD DVD for backups at some point, but right now the media alone costs more per GB than HDs... And by the time it's affordable enough, and drives affordable, I'm only going to have more stuff to backup. And it's already not very practical. Backing up almost 4TB on 25GB Blu-Ray media (@ ~1$/GB, and single-use no less!) would already take 160 discs. By the time the drives are affordable (a couple years or so), I'll likely need 300 or more. And by the time larger media is available and cheap, I'm also going to have more storage, so it still won't help much. It's not very cost effective, and requires manually changing a LOT of discs, and storing all those individually somewhere. As for tape, the idea is good, but the prices aren't. Big tapes and the tape drives (or tape libs) required to use 'em cost an arm and a leg, and the prices aren't coming down anytime soon (longer rant about those in the other 2TB backup thread). As for Blu-Ray, it's currently cheaper to use external USB2 HDs to do backups. dino213aa: I wouldn't worry too much about expensive hardware RAID cards. It's not like streaming music is going to put any kind of load on any modern CPU. It's a very low speed/bandwidth thing. If you were doing AV editing in RAID0 or using it in a high-load server environment in RAID5 or something it would be a must, but for this, there's just no need to spend that much (and again, the hardware RAID cards aren't PCI, so new motherboard too). I've been dreaming of an Areca ARC-1230 card for ages, but I just can't justify the cost (~1000$ with 1GB ECC SoDimm cache, ~100$ more for battery module, add exchange rate, tax/customs clearance, shipping, etc, so roughly 1500$ CDN)

Good call, but it still has to be a single user system Otherwise people will reboot it (and kick you off) to login... I don't know... Perhaps it just seems more natural to me to have a VPN starting as a service on my server (along with everything else server related - IIS, SQL Server, RRAS, VMWare Server, etc), and not have to deal with an app like that.

That works well, as long as you're the only user of that system, and that you're not afraid of people just walking by and have fun with your PC while it's already loggged in Either ways, I'm sure Hamachi works just fine for a lot of people (especially being user friendly). But all I'm saying is that someone should evaluate other alternatives (which are very good) before settling on a proprietary/closed-source/not totally free solution.

Well, someone has to be logged in at home while you're at school trying to connect to it. Nobody logged in? No VPN. That's a VERY significant problem by me. I just went away for a couple weeks, and I wanted access. Not only did I want to be forced to be loggged in on every PC before leaving, but things like having to reboot (or power bump or anything) would leave you with no way to reconnect. All VPNs should be services and do routing IMO. I do think this would affect most people a lot. I'm not starting a flame war at all. But realize their business model revolves around crippling their VPN product enough to force people to pay for it so it's usable. So I wouldn't call this totally free. Perhaps you never looked at other VPN solutions. Many are better, unrestricted/non-crippled, secure, and TOTALLY free (gratos) & Free (open source, under GPL v2), such as OpenVPN. And most of these ARE using well established industry standards that work on any platform and using almost any 3rd party products, unlike Hamachi. Theres lots of documentation, support, guides and all too. Hamachi surely isn't the worst product out there, but it's not the end all be all application that everyone says it is. It's main advantage is being n00b friendly.

Impossible, that would be a 122" TV or so. Rough math says around 54" (that'd be 110"... so perhaps an inch less or so)

I think that was made already clear enough, about the redundancy thing. Mirroring and such doesn't count as "backups" though. Like he said before, speed is largely irrelevant for this setup. RAID 6 would also be a better pick than 10 here. RAID 10 being more expensive? For sure! RAID 5 requiring a more expensive controller? Only if you're going the hardware RAID way, which he isn't, so it's NOT the case. So it's more like RAID 10: 8x500 GB + cheap controller card = ~300$ more, counting HDs alone RAID 5: 5x500 GB + cheap controller card 500's aren't too bad. Considering the extra power more drives will use, you eventually pay the difference (and often more) in electricity (in AC too). More drives also mean a beefier PSU, or dual PSUs, and a larger case and more ventilation overall, and perhaps more controller cards for the extra ports if required (further negating the price advantage). And filling up a large case so quickly with smaller drives means less room to upgrade down the road, without throwing the old drives away (kind of like buying 512MB sticks nowadays, then having to remove them to upgrade to 1GB sticks later...) There's always a fine line between getting the absolute cheapest $/GB and being stuck with countless small drives (which use power and create heat). 750GB and 1TB drives are too expensive though. If 1.5TB will do for now, it's likely the best option (just add more cheap drives later) This is already supposed to be the backup. I'm no big fan of backuping backups. And Blu-Ray / HD DVD burners cost an arm and a leg, and so does the media. External HDs are far cheaper and are faster, and require no 1000$ drive (that nobody has yet) to work. Personally, I keep a cheap external hard drive at my dad's place (a few 100 KMs away) just in case the place burns down or something. One can just reuse and old drive with a total cost of 0$.

It's NOT totally free. There are many restrictions and features missing on the totally free version. Personally, I dislike Hamachi. It looks simple and good enough at first, until you try it. Want to use it as a service (so you don't have to be logged in for it to work)? Paid version only (or install service manually with 3rd part apps, copy stuff manually, etc) Want it to do routing (have access to full network at the other end, w/o installing Hamachi on every PC)? Gotta make a hamachi-override.ini file by hand. Tons of little things that add up quickly. It's as much work as setting up any other VPN in the end. And the the crippled features and limitations are annoying (a VPN not installed as a service, you gotta be kidding!), trying to force people to pay for something that's essentially free if you use competitor's products. I far prefer to use a more standard, fully free and uncripppled VPN such as OpenVPN, even if that requires me know hot to open the ports in my firewall (vs auto firewall hole punching). Right now I use Windows' built in VPN (PPTP and L2TP/IPSec), and couldn't be happier. Hamachi is VERY overrated, except perhaps for the auto firewall hole punching (more n00b-friendly). I suggest you also look into other VPN solutions and not blindly pick Hamachi.

And perhaps in english, if he wants to be understood... I think forums would be a real mess if everyone started to post in other languages.

Real hardware RAID is less CPU intensive (especially for RAID5). However, your cheapo RAID card is NOT a hardware RAID solution, it's still the CPU doing all the heavy lifting. Want a real hardware 4 port SATA RAID card? It's not 40$ anymore, it's more like 300$ for the basic ones (options cost more, more ports costs more). Look at Areca or 3Ware if you want such cards. And you won't find any PCI ones, just PCI-X or PCI-e, so you'd also need a new motherboard or something along with it. Between using the cards' BIOS to configure the array and using Windows' disk manager... It comes down to preferences really. It's somewhat easier to use the card itself to create a 4 drive array, but the drives will ONLY work on a similar card (should it ever fail, you will have to find the EXACT same thing). Whereas with Windows (using plain controllers), you put 'em in any old Windows box, and they'll work (perhaps a bit more work or complicated to create, but not very much) Yes Looks like you've figured out what you want though.

You don't HAVE to have the space for it, you MAKE space for it! Seriously though, I'm not real sure I'd want one. Pretty much all we watch is 480i stuff (sat broadcast, DVDs and lotsa mpeg4). I can't imagine how possibly bad it could look deinterlaced and stretched over a 108" screen. For a screen that size, I'd almost want something more than 1080p (like UHDV -- 7680×4320 pixels, or 16x more than 1080i/p!) Now THAT would make a totally stunning image (not that the display has that much resolution though) That screen is like 50" high, so non-anamorphic DVDs with an AR of 2.35:1 or such, with often heights like 272 pixels, over 50" high makes individual lines about 5mm high. That's *GIGANTIC* pixels if you ask me, even using interpolation and all, it's still going to be ugly. LLXX: I know they still make 'em (got a Dell AT101W, a Customizer 104, etc) - that's all I'm using!

Using RAID5, your total storage is (size of drive)*(number of drives -1) as one is used for parity. In a 4 drive RAID5 setup, you'd only have 1.5TB using 500GB drives indeed. So yeah, you could use 750GB drives (much more expensive in terms of $/GB). Or what I would personally do is stick to 500GB drives, and when those are full, throw in another controller, and 4 more drives (the coolermaster stacker 810 could work with up to 12 HDs using 3 RAID cards). By the time that 1.5TB is full, HD prices will be even lower, and at that time you can buy 750GB drives for cheap (or whatever's cheap at that time). Or you can also forget about using RAID5 if it's really a backup. The odds of the backup failing at the same time than the original storage it's backing up is very remote. Again, it depends on the size of drive. If you want 2TB with 4 drives (one for parity), then you need 2000GB/3 drives, or ~666GB per HD. 750GB drives would offer more space than that (2.25TB), or you could also use more than 4 drives (5x500GB in RAID5 is 2TB). if you're sure you're NEVER going to upgrade this, then I'd likely opt for a cheaper case (why spend 200$+ on a case if one under 100$ works fine?) Yes, it sure does, but the how many drives and what size is still up to you. But with 4 or 5 drives, a standard/normal case with proper ventilation (preferably one 120mm on the HDs like the case I mentioned before) will do just fine - including reusing some old case you might already have, and most decent PSUs should be able to handle that just fine (again, why not reuse an existing one). So: -If you want 2TB, it's either 5x500GB (using 2 cards in non-RAID mode, and using the OS to make it a RAID5 array) or 4x750GB (using RAID on the card or the OS) -One cheapo PCI SATA RAID card like that Sabrent one (or 2 if using 5 drives) -Any case with 4 or 5 bays, and decent air flow/cooling (like the one I mentioned before), or an existing one -Almost any half decent PSU, or an existing one

It entirely depends on how many drives you're going to use (4x500 for 2TB?), and how much expandability you want (will you want to add more HDs to that box sometime?). Recommendations for a 4 drive or a 12 drive setup will be very different, especially for the case and PSU. With just 4 drives you can use just about anything, but as you add more drives you need more drive bays, more cooling, more power and all.

It depends on your budget and how many drives you'll be getting, sort of. -A bunch of HDs (Seagate's my favorite, so no objections here) -a cheapo PCI RAID controller (e.g. silicon image based, like the sabrent one) or 2 depending on how many drives (4/card) -a case & PSU(s) that can handle your setup The coolermaster stacker 810 (with 2 extra modules and 2nd PSU) is your best bet if you're going to use a dozen drives or so. But it's not the cheapest way... If you're going to have 4 to 8 drives or so, you can find a smaller case that will cost under half of that (it's a matter of budget really, if one can afford it, the CM stacker is the way), like perhaps this one which can still hold many HDs (4X5.25 2X3.5 5X3.5INT bays on this one), and has decent cooling too. Again, any more than that, and you'll want dual PSUs anyways, and more space, so CM stacker. It's just that a ~200$ case might seem a bit too expensive for someone who just wants 4 HDs. Your call.

You missed the point. He has ONE hard drive now.

Then your needs are very much like mine then. Most of my storage is used by media contents (mpeg4 video though). I'd just throw 4 cheap 500GB SATA drives on a cheapo RAID card, like the Sabrent PCI SATA RAID card (like this one @ 42$ CDN). Speed isn't as good as with a 300$+ PCI-e RAID card, but it's already overkill for streaming AV anyways (like 30x faster than that NAS too) Very affordable overall (as much storage as you can buy), very much bang for the buck, scalable (just buy more controllers as required), reliable, fast enough for almost anything, etc. Works for me at least! For the price of the NAS you were looking at, you could buy 2 such PCI SATA RAID cards, and fill 'em both with 4 cheap 500GB drives like I've pointed to. That's a lot of storage As long as it all fits in your case and that the PSU can handle it... You could turn this into a iSCSI SAN too (I would, if only I had a place to put the box out of the way where I don't hear it, but there's no basement in this condo unfortunately, maybe next place...)

RAID5 to prevent data loss in case of HD failure. Four 750GB Seagate drives in RAID5 would work fine (on a nice and expensive hardware RAID card or cheapo software RAID card or anything else you like). They're pretty expensive though, so if you can do with smaller drives (less storage) or doing software RAID using more drives then it'll be far cheaper (nice hardware RAID cards for many drives are very expensive unfortunately) The NAS you're mentioning is only 2GB without any "redundancy" (4x500GB HDs in RAID0) - a drive fails, you lose it all (I believe backups should be safe and secure, and that RAID0 is a bad choice for that). There's some RAID modes (1 and 5), but then you have less than 2TB (1TB with RAID1, 1.5TB with RAID5), which doesn't answer your needs anymore. 500GB drives can be had for 150$ each at newegg. So 4 of those (for a similar setup) would be 600$. That NAS costs more than twice that. Besides, most NAS (besides being pricey) usually have issues, like slow performance (this one seems rather slow in RAID5 too - check this review -- 70GB/7h is under 3MB/sec) and countless little things... Either ways, I'd skip the whole NAS idea altogether. Either just fill an old box with a lot of cheap and large HDs, or go the SAN way. Tape is the most expensive and slowest solution of 'em all (it's just somewhat convenient for storing stuff off-site and such), and it would involve changing and storing lots of expensive tapes. I'd even pick the NAS over that, and that's saying a lot. Edit: BTW, there are other threads about large backup solutions like this one which are worth reading too (I've answered and convered this more in detail in that one, esp WRT tapes)