Ethernet hard disks access from LAN and Internet

Factual Questions
1

I often do the Remote Desktop thing with my computer at home but I have been thinking that most of the time I only want to retrieve some file or other so I really do not need to have the computer running, only a drive (server?) directly accessible from the network. Not to mention that the computer is gaining an inclination to freeze every now and then (I think ZoneAlarm has something to do with it).

So.

I am looking into Ethernet disk drives. And, as I read, I get more questions than answers. I am more confused now than when I started.

The first thing I am not clear about is what protocol I would be using. I suppose these drives might come with HTTP and/or FTP etc but what protocol does Windows (XP?) use when it finds other computers and shared devices on a network? I mean, on the LAN would an Ethernet disk simulate and appear on the windows network as a computer with a disk attached, or a disk directly or whatever? Is this how they work?

And, from the Internet, how would I access it? I can think of many different ways but I am not sure which is used in practice.

I suppose it could appear as an HTTP or FTP server in which case I would have to configure the router to redirect the right ports to the right places. Right?

I suppose there would be some password protecting access. Yes? Is this safe?

I suppose somehow I might be able to map that drive on my remote computer so Windows can use it like it was local? Yes? Possible? Safe?

I suppose I might be able to VPN into the drive. Yes?

I just want to be able to save and retrieve files. I suppose I could encrypt all the files if necessary for safety but I would rather have a system that did not require it.
I have been looking at the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini Home Edition - 500 GB (Product code 301269). It has an Ethernet port as I want and it has a USB port but it seems this USB port cannot be used to connect the drive directly to a computer so it appears as a local drive. It can only be used to connect a USB drive and do backups. Well, I can’t see the usefulness of that but it would be nice if the drive has a USB port which I can use as a local drive. That way I have the choice of using it as a local drive on a computer with USB or as network drive with Ethernet.

Then, I see a lot of jargon about multimedia. I have no interest in streaming multimedia or anything of the sort so it may be this is geared to that purpose and would not do other things well.

I also see in the manual there are two ways of transferring files.

 Both look like something I would not like. I would just like to use Windows standard resources to get from the remote computer to the drive at home. It seems these programs rely on central servers at LaCie to coordinate IPs etc. I have a fixed IP and even if I did not I can find my way. I just want to tell Windows to connect to the drive located at such IP (and such port if necessary).

Then I look at the next product up, the LaCie Ethernet disk Mini 500 GB (Product code 301138) which is quite a bit more expensive. This seems to have the USB port interface

The protocols seem more suited also:

Maybe that SMB is the windows network protocol? Is this closer to what I want?
To put it in a nutshell: What is the bestest, cheapest, way to do what I want to do?

2

I don’t have the full answer to your question, just a few points.

You are right that SMBis the protocol used for Windows shared drives. These NAS devices are typically running some type of Linux and they support the shared drives by running Samba.

I currently use a NAS at home for serving my MP3 library, storing photos, and providing common network storage for all of the machines at home. That way, the kids all have a few network drives on their machines, a X: drive with their own files, a Y: drive with common shared files, and a Z: drive with MP3s and pictures.

My backup strategy covers the contents of the NAS device, so if anyone puts their homework on the network drive, it will eventually be backed up.

This device works great for in the house, but I never tried to access it from outside of my network and am not sure how I would do so. There are NAS products that say they do this, but it seems to involve bits of extra software on the client side.

Throughput is kind of pokey. Even when I did an experiment using the device on a gigabit router, I only got 10MB/sec copy speeds. With my current setup, over a G wireless network, I get around 3-4MB/sec throughput. That means that an MP3 album takes about 30 seconds to copy over.

Since most of these devices use Linux+Samba under the hood, they need to provide a simple means for you to manipulate the samba.conf file that controls everything. Samba is complex and allows lots of fancy configurations, so it is important that whatever device you use, the web UI be simple and easy to use.

You will likely find that they only support a subset of the total fanciness of Samba, due in part to the need to simplify things enough to control over a basic web page. On my unit, groups and users are kind of tricky to set up.

3

You access the drive on your local network as a network share which you can mount with a drive letter.

For remote access, you will want to use the FTP protocol with a strong password and you will have to forward port 21 in your router to the NAS device. You will need FTP client software on your remote computer and connect to the IP address of your cable modem/DSL modem at home. HTTP is read only, so that’s only good for one-way remote transfers.

If you’re connecting from a public network, like wifi at the coffee shop, your FTP login can be sniffed since it’s in plain text. You could log into a VPN first which encrypts all traffic, but you need a VPN server for this. You can by a router with VPN built in.

If the NAS device supports secure FTP (SFTP), that’s certainly a much safer way to connect. In any case, it’s probably a good idea to allow FTP only on a limited set of files you think you may need, not on the entire drive which will contain your entire backup.

4

You can use an older laptop with WinXP pro and set it up as an FTP server, give yourself access and use an FTP client to access your files. The Laptop will use less power than a desktop and take up less space.

5

Thanks for the responses so far.

As I said, until now I was using the remote desktop but the computer was having problems freezing so I though a dedicated NAS ethernet drive would be much more stable. But it seems this is not as easy or as simple as I had hoped. I was hoping to create a backup and an internet server at the same time but I see this is rather complex. I was pretty much hoping to buy the ethernet disk, hook it up and be up and running with minimal configuration.

I have a VIA EPIA M-Series Mini-ITX Board which I do not use and which I could put into a box with a disk drive and use it purely as a server. I would need to attach a keyboard and monitor, which I also have, but space is a problem as I do not want to build more systems. Also, I was hoping to place the small ethernet hard disk hidden well out of the way so it would survive a burglary. On the plus side this solution is pretty much free for me. (Except that I do not have an ITX box and they cost too much so I would probably try to put it in a regular ATX box.) I can try to install as little softare as possible, especially not install Zonealarm, but this entails some insecurity.

Also it seems to me FTP is not very secure so I would rather use some other protocol.

Maybe I could VPN and use SMB so that the drive appeared as a virtual drive on my remote machine? That might be the best.

Or maybe the solution is to encrypt everything but then it seems to me I could just upload it to some free online storage server and not have to bother with having my own server. It seems I need to think about this some more.

6

It sounds like sftp is what you’re looking for. sftp stands for “Secure ftp”. Everything you do is encrypted so nobody can listen in to what you’re doing, or access your files without your password. sftp comes with OpenSSH, which runs on Windows.

7

(I know you don’t want to build any more systems, so just ignore this post…)

However, if I had that cool little system hanging around, I’d make a kickin’ NAS using Ubuntu Server. It’s very easy to set up a bare bones Ubuntu install, extremely lightweight, with just the services you want running (for security, only run the services you need), no gui. And if you set the BIOS to restart on power failure, then your NAS will survive power failures with barely a hiccup.

You can set one up with Samba to do all of the file shares, ssh to handle your secure connections, and a few other useful things such as ntpd to keep the clock synced.

I did several of them and it took about half an hour to do the full install and setup (once I got my checklist down).

I liked this approach (over my current hardware NAS) because I was able to run cron jobs that would do nice things like automatically change ownership of files to “nobody” at the stroke of midnight to protect all but the most recent MP3s from anything nasty on my PC. I also had a tool called “mp3gain” running on the box on a nightly cron job, normalizing the volume of any new MP3s.

The only reason I didn’t continue with my last Linux NAS system was because I feared the aging Pentium II machine would croak soon and I just wanted a drop-in solution at that point. I miss the flexibility.

8

minor7flat5, that sounds like an interesting learning project. And I use "project’ in the sense that it would take me weeks to do. But I am sure I would learn a lot.

First I would have to build the hardware. This is only complicated by the fact that I do not want to spend money on an expensive ITX case but maybe I can build something. You are saying that after the whole thing is running I can pretty much remove display and keyboard and it will run OK without them? Because that’s what I want.

I have the motherboard, including processor and only 256 MB RAM, hard disk (maybe 40 GB for now), CDROM optical drive, PSU, … I have a few unused USB 1GB pendrives … I don’t know what I could use them for so I wonder if they may have some use here.

Once I have the hardware done I need to install Ubuntu. This is completely new territory for me but I suppose I can do it if i have some guidance.

And then comes the seriously difficult part which is the specific for the NAS application and here I would probably need some serious guidance and handholding.

But if you think it is worth it I might give it a thought as it would allow me to learn about Linux and other interesting stuff.

Maybe there is some board specializing in Linux and this type of application?

Seriously, how many hours do you think this project would take me (not counting building the heardware)?

9

Because I have had to set up several of these systems, I put together a substantial Word document covering the steps needed to get the basics going (Ubuntu Server + Samba + ssh). PM me if you want a copy.

You are right in that once the thing is set up, you can maintain it via ssh and you don’t need keyboard or monitor. I have one of these systems still running in the kids’ closet on an old eMachine that I use as a proxy server (to limit their access to nasty sites).

Of course that doesn’t mean that you will never have to grab the keyboard/monitor off your regular machine to figure out why the darned thing isn’t responding to ssh. But every single time I had to do that it was the exact same cause: I had needed some file of the original Ubuntu CD, I left it in the drive, and months later a power failure (or kid tripping over the cord) caused the machine to reboot, booting from the forgotten CD. Once I plugged a monitor in I saw the Ubuntu installer startup screen and did a :smack: before removing the CD and rebooting.

10

An alternative to Ubuntu server (not knocking it, I’ve been tempted myself) is SME server. It is out of the box (well, off the CD), 15 minutes, ~10 basic questions and you are running, providing secure web, file, email access and vpn (pptp). All web managed and secure, additional contribs are available for a variety of tasks, and runs reliably for years.

I’ve been running SME and predecessors for nearly 10 years, and am really happy with it, and for a beginner, it is seriously simple.

Si

11

Thanks both. As I have no idea about Ubuntu Server or SME Server maybe you can give me some comparison and recommendations on which to try first. Which may be easier to get up and running. I think Ubuntu would have the added advantage of me learning a bit about Linux which I have always wanted to do.

Before I go any further I need to get the hardware ready and make sure it is up to the job so please tell me if there is anything which might be a problem. The only thing I need to get is a case but mini ITX cases cost more than they are worth so I might opt for building some shoddy wood case.

12

Suggest setting motherboard to boot to HDD before CDROM, then passwording motherboard. Keeps this from happenning, and slows down intruders.

13

SME Server is still Linux (Centos 4.7 currently, moving to 5.0 soonish). The real value using SME is that all the basic functionality of a small server is there and running out of the box (email, web server, file server, web mail, proxy), with easy management via a web interface. It is also secure without you needing to know anything about how to secure it. And it is very reliable.

Ubuntu is a bit more modern, but does not come with a unified management console (you could install Webmin and do most things via that, but YMMV) and you will have to edit config files and read lots of help documentation to get things set up. I am sure that the document from minor7flat5 is great, but until you get familiar with linux command shells, you will probably get a bit frustrated at times.

Your hardware will be fine, although moving to 512Mb memory will give you some headroom. My system (2.0GHz Pentium) runs at 2%-3% utilization most of the time (or did, until I added a file shadow task every 15 minutes to backup personal files). I kick off intensive tasks occasionally (converting legally owned DVDs to Xvid to stream to my TV), but I do that overnight. I have more memory (1Gb), but I have loaded the box up with additional services.

I am a Linux enthusiast, and have run home servers for years. Nothing I have tried is as easy or as straightforward as SME Server, and I have set up systems for non-IT people and walked away, and had no calls. It is that good. And if you want to dig a bit, and add something additional from a linux HOWTO, well, you can generally do that too (with a few cautionary steps).

Just a note: SME server will try to mirror multiple disks during install. If you want two disks installed without a mirror, build the system off one disk, then add the other later.

Si

14

Just thought of another selling point for a Linux solution:

It gives you lots of flexibility in how you present the disk space to your network. You can use a mixture of symbolic links and mount points to either split folders into different devices or combine hard drives into single folders or mix and match.

I had two drives on one server, one with photos and MP3s, another with documents and programs and user personal network folders.

When the MP3s started getting out of hand, I was able to completely reconfigure this arrangement by moving the MP3s to one drive and everything else to the other drive. By tweaking some symbolic links and mount points, this total hardware reconfiguration was invisible to the network clients. As far as anyone knew there was a single “X:” drive that held pictures, music, etc, though it was served from multiple folders on different physical devices.