This is an Infrant widget that has been customized to work with Yahoo Widgets and you can have multiple Infrants and you select which one you want to moniter. I call this one the Infrant Bunker since it belongs below in the Bunker. Right now I’m dumping all the TV Shows, Movies, and Anime that I have into it.
With it set at X-Raid its redundant and hot-swappable, each 1 TB drive gave 931 GB of actual space for a total of 3.724 TB available in total. When set at X-Raid some space is taken for redundancy and I am left with 2739 GB or 2.739 TB worth of space to work with and this is a lot of space that I am very happy with. Now to dump as much as possible into it, connect the Cat6 Cable with the Gigabit switch and just start streaming from it.
I have been looking at my Infrant Ready NAS NV and it had 903 GB available from the 2 TB that I installed. If I installed two more 1 TB drives then 3.1 TB would be available and the rest would be for redundancy. I have began filling it up very quickly and I am turning it into my media storage in the basement, everything will be streaming from it.
I strolled by Hawally and I got myself a pair of 1 TB drives for 88 KD each this time. It was turning into an entertaining run, but getting those two drives was enough for me. I came back ready to install, but I was running a file synchronization program so that I have everything I want on it before I start adding space, that took about 4.5 hours to finish. Adding a drive takes about 6 hours to synchronize with the NAS, so a total of 12 hours for drives. Then I will have ample space, and I keep thinking what can I fill it up with and all four hard drive spots in the NAS are filled.
I have been looking at different graphics cards for the perfect HTPC, since now I know exactly what I want to get from the HTPC and the perfect software to run as a media library for all the files.
Since I want to watch all HD and high quality movies and shows, I have decided to upgrade my graphics card. I have always been a fan of nVidia but I keep reading good reviews for the ATI Radeon 3870 and with 512 MB it packs a punch. Also DDR4 ram is more oriented towards processing movies and animation rather then games so it fits the bill perfectly. Unlike the very expensive nVidia cards this card goes for around $230 which isn’t bad for a high end card. This is one the first steps to getting a powerful HTPC to do the job.
Link: Guru3d
After going to Hawally to pick up the two Western Digital 1 TB drives I was ready to get stared. These drives look like solid drives and they are relatively quiet compared my Seagate hard drives. Before the installation I cleaned up the Infrant ReadyNAS NV and I got the new hard drive harnesses to install into this machine. I followed the instructions step by step, and I did a preliminary configuration of the Infrant, but I will be upgrading the firmware after the full installation.
When installation the hard drives they have to be synced in, and they are set into X-Raid which is Infrants’ proprietary form of raid and it keeps things safe. I bought two WD drives from Kuwait for 90 KD, and I will expand another two later, but those I will be ordering online. The volume creation and syncing has taken a couple of hours, but I will be organizing my network later. I need to start off with the network cables, they really need to be cleaned up and organized.
So I received my power supply unit (PSU) at last, it felt like a long time since they said they would send it. It was time to work on the Network Area Storage (NAS) since I just have to replace the power supply to get it working again.\
I just had one simple issue, there were no instructions what so ever about how to dismantle the PSU. So I got out all the small screw drivers I had since I didn’t want to mess up the screws, and I found the perfect screw driver. I kept removing screw after screw, and I would bunch them up in to group on a white piece of paper. If you are organized from the beginning then you will have an easier time putting it together. By the time I figured out what to do, it was a lot easier then expected and it only took 33 screws to get there, if I knew how to do it would have only been 14 screws. I dismantled the whole thing, but at least I know how to put it back together.
After 55 minutes of dismantling, I managed to pull out the old PSU and they were very different, you could tell the replacement was of much higher quality. And it looked like something white melted between the diodes, so that is what the strange burning smell was. I felt like I was bringing it back to life, and it is the best feeling in the world when you are fixing something that is broken. After putting it back together I had to go purchase the hard drives from the computer depot which is Hawally.
My Infrant NAS NV replacement PSU will be arriving in a couple of days thanks to Netgear Support, so I’m going to jump the gun and order some hard drives for the empty racks. Currently I have been looking at a few 1 TB drives, but those drives have to be verified by Infrant to work with the NAS and all its features, some drives don’t seem to work. I’m considering the Hitachi and the Western Digital drives which are really good but both have different benefits.
- Western Digital WD10EACS Caviar GP 1 TB SATA II 3.5-Inch Hard Drive
- Quiet
- Low power consumption
- Good Reviews
- A Bit Slow
- Low Price ($255)
- Hitachi HDS721010KLA330 Deskstar 7K1000 1 TB SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive
- Powerful
- 32 MB Buffer (Fast Data Retrievel)
- Good Reviews
- A Bit Noisy
- Price ($310)
Right now these are the two that I am looking at, they are both high quality drives so I am not very worried about the reliability. What I am worried about is the noise since that is one of the details that reviewers have listed and this is a NAS so you can hear the drives. Data speed is important but I think my bottle neck would be the network and not the hard drive speed.
This is a scary machine from Alienware, as usual they make machines that are meant for gaming and intense usage. If you have a game you want to play in any location then this would be it. It packs a punch with the Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme Processors, NVidia GeForce 8800m GTX graphics card, 3 HD, LED Keyboard, 1080p Video and HD Audio. It will also probably be pretty heavy and the price hasn’t been announced yet, but I’m not expecting this to be low priced.
Link: Alienware
I have had the Infrant Ready NAS NV for over a 16 months now, and an Infrant Ready NAS NV+ for 12 months now. My Ready NAS NV shorted out a little while ago, but it was after the one year warranty period, I managed to get to the data since I was able to move the hard drives to the other NAS even though it is slightly different, whats important is that I enter those Hard Drives in the same order that they were in the other NAS. I was able to access all my data after the data was rebuilt which is exactly why I got this product, if hardware failure be it the hard drive or NAS, my data was safe.
The main thing is that this product is extremely robust but there were a few cases of the Power Supply Unit (PSU) burning out towards the end or after the warranty period. I didn’t get around to contacting them, but I have now and I thought to fix it since I need the space. When I contacted Netgear support, since Infrant was bought out by Netgear, I was pleasantly surprised they are fixing my unit free of charge even after the warranty period, they are sending me the Power Supply Unit and told me to send back the broken one after I have installed the new one which is fantastic. They take a credit card to hold just incase if you don’t return the broken unit, but I don’t mind since I’m going to send it right back.
As soon as it is fixed I am installing four 1 TB Hitachi drives to use as a media server and have everything stored on that.
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I have had this issue with Vista sharing for a little bit now, and after trying so many different ways to get the network to communicate, I found this software solution.
This is a Home/Small Office NMS (Network Management System), there is the free version and the pro version which costs money. I checked out the software and it seems it does everything it says its supposed to do which was great for my needs.
As soon as I got things going with the software I could automatically access all my files for Vista and XP from any computer. The software costs $50 but for 8 PCs which is great, and you don’t have to install the software to able to access the files from XP to Vista or otherwise. You are not bound by the software but it really is a great and simple tool.
What you can do which I liked:
- Intruder Detection (Shows you all people who have been or left the network)
- Can detect flaws in the network (Wired/Wireless)
- Monitor Network
- Test Internet SpeedConnect
- NAS devices
- Access Files Remotely through Net2go, public or password protected address.
- Very simple to use, intuitive
Overall I think its a great piece of software and for $50 you get to use for 8 PCs which is an extremely good deal. It works for both Macs and PCs, and it can connect both of them without too much of hassle.
Price: $50
Link: NetworkMagic
Rating:
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Logitech diNovo Mini is a great new product from Logitech for those PCs that you need to connect to but don’t want a huge keyboard.
Its about the size of a smartphone and can in the palm of your hand. It has a lot windows functionality integrated into it with the full QWERTY Keyboard, the best part is that it has an integrated ClickPad which functions as both a trackpad and directional pad.
With this you won’t need a keyboard and mouse, and it can easily be stored in any location and with the Bluetooth connection it can work from up to 30 feet (10 Meters away)
Price: $150
Link: OhGizmo