A few weeks ago I began having problems with my Linksys NAS200. At the time, I couldn’t discern whether it was a hard drive failure or a problem with the NAS200’s disk controller. The status message within the NAS200’s administrative panel suggested that the drive had been “removed”. I received no alert message and proceeded to diagnose the problem to the best of my abilities.

After some thought, I devised a plan to back up the remaining good disk, power down the NAS200, and replace Disk 1 with a new hard drive. I purchased an Eagle Consus M-Series external drive enclosure and a spare Western Digital 500 GB hard drive for a total of $102.95. I placed the order last Saturday and UPS delivered the package to my door on the following Tuesday.

Last night I backed up the files on my Linksys NAS200 using the Eagle drive enclosure and a spare 250 GB SATA drive that I had laying around. Transferring the files from my NAS200 to the external drive was painful. At speeds between 900 KB/sec and 1.9 MB/sec, I decided to make a sacrifice and chose not to include my music and movie collection.

Even without my media files the backup still took about nine hours to complete. It’s almost inevitable that my wife is awake at 3 AM. Before bed, I asked her to wake me up so that I could check on the progress of the backup. I didn’t want to risk having the USB drive enclosure overheat and foil my plans. My wife is more cheerful than I am at 3 o’clock in the morning. She woke me up as planned and I stumbled from the bedroom to sit on the floor in front of the NAS200. The backup was complete.

Do not attempt to insert a hard drive into your NAS200 in the dark. Remember the puzzling “ribbon” that I found in each of the drive bays? Well, half of the ribbon is encased in plastic. I didn’t even think about it last night and ended up turning Disk 1’s ribbon into an accordion. In the dark, at 3 AM, I thought the drive was properly seated. I turned on the device and waited. The Disk 2 LED lit up brightly. I waited some more. Disk 1 remained dark. My wife turned on our living room lights and found me squatting on the floor holding the NAS200 inches from my face. Within the glow of the incandescents I could tell what I had just done.

I had to shake the NAS200 (gently) to remove the disk that I had just securely wedged into the first drive bay. Once the drive was removed I decided to try again in the morning. With proper lighting and a few more hours of sleep, I carefully inserted the new drive and pressed the power button. The NAS200 whirred and its lights began blinking. Disk 2… Disk 1… Disk 1! According to what I had previously read, The NAS200’s disk LEDs alternate when mirroring. My NAS200’s lights were doing just that.

After work I noticed that both disk lights were solid indicating that both drives were active. I checked the NAS200’s administrative panel and both drives were listed as “Used by RAID 1”. Satisfied, I mounted the shares and proceeded to browse through my files. Everything was there!

My original NAS200 review has over ninety comments and both the Linksys community forums and linksysinfo.org are filled with posts left by people inquiring about the device. I’ve read a lot of bad reviews and received quite a few disparaging comments regarding the reliability of the NAS200. I bought it knowing it was new on the market. Trusting the Linksys brand name, I figured it’d be a sturdy device and for eighteen months it has been.

It’s just as foolish to rely on a single device as it is a single hard drive for safe file storage. Hardware will always fail. That said, I’ve begun to work on an off-site storage strategy for my home backups. I’ll be posting more on this when I’ve worked out the details.

*Update: Read about my NAS200 disk failure and recovery.

Last Sunday I purchased a Linksys NAS200 network attached storage (NAS) device and two Western Digital 500GB SATA drives hoping to solve my problem with backups and provide a shared storage solution for my home network. After a precursory examination of five NAS devices, I chose the Linksys NAS200 based upon its feature set, price, and the reputation of its predecessor, the Linksys NSLU2. The NAS200 boasts features such as:

• Ethernet connected storage.
• Dual SATA hard drive bays.
• Two USB 2.0 ports for extra storage.
• Internet FTP and HTTP access.
• Built-in media server.
• RAID 1 and 0 disk configuration.

Before buying this device I had been leaning heavily towards the D-Link DNS-323, but hoping the Linksys NAS200 would arrive on the market in time for my purchase. I mentioned previously that it was out of my character to buy bleeding edge hardware and I have to admit that I was a little nervous that the device would not work out of the box on my network. As a Linux user, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the anxiousness of buying new hardware.

The device was packaged well. The box pictured was merely a container for the much sturdier packaging material that housed the NAS200, a Quick Installation guide, CDROM, network cable, power supply, and some promotional material. I glanced briefly at the contents before proceeding to unhinge the plastic doors housing the NAS200’s drive bays. The doors were a little hard to open single-handed. Plastic clips found on either side of the doors must be pinched simultaneously to expose the bays.

Peering within the first bay, I was puzzled by the length of “ribbon” found inside. Not knowing what this was for, I consulted the manual located on the CD. To my surprise, the manual did not provide directions for hard drive installation. Printed on the edge of the ribbon was the word “Pull”. My wife giggled as she often does when she figures something out before me. The ribbons’ purpose is to aid in hard drive removal. Pulling the ribbon will eject the drive from its controller. Later, in the Quick Installation guide, I found a screenshot of the Setup Wizard depicting the ribbons proper use. Her assumption was correct. Reading the guide now, I’m impressed by the clarity of the screenshots found within. They are small, but readable.

With the drives installed, I placed the NAS200 on the shelf that was to become its new home. I then attached the device to my router with the provided Ethernet cable. You’ll need a longer cable if you plan on storing the device more than three feet from your router. I plugged in the AC adapter and turned on the device by pressing a small button located on the back panel near the AC input. The NAS200 chirped loudly signaling it had been turned on. The device’s internal speaker is loud and its tone is similar to that of a smoke detector. Some lights on the front of the device began blinking and the two that looked like disc platters lit up. At last I could turn on my computer.

Like the NAS200’s packaging, the CDROM was neatly branded. I didn’t have high hopes for running the Setup Wizard, but I did give it the college try. From the command line, I navigated to the CD and typed “wine Setup.exe” and cringed as several error messages appeared in my terminal. I didn’t bother going any further with this. Knowing the NAS200 would be assigned an IP address via DHCP from my router, I launched Firefox and navigated to http://192.168.1.102. I felt a small measure of relief watching the NAS200’s administrative page load within my browser. This feeling was soon found fleeting as I attempted to log in. The default username and password listed in the manual did not work. A few curses later, I remembered the default login (admin / admin) used by my Linksys router and gave that a try. It worked.

Feeling elated, I navigated through the remaining administration within minutes. I first chose “Firmware Upgrade” from the list of options. I was slightly disappointed when clicking “Check for Upgrade” opened a new browser window and directed me to the Linksys.com website. In the days of Web 2.0 you shouldn’t have to search for firmware updates and install them manually. Updates should download and install with one click. I found the NAS200 on Linksys’ website, but at the time of this writing no firmware updates had been published. Screenshots of the Linksys NAS200’s administration interface can be found below:

1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10

Formatting the hard drives took little time. The “Disk Utility” section contained a set of simple controls for both drive formatting and the running and scheduling of Scandisk. I had prepared myself to wait at least a half hour for the formatting of two 500GB SATA drives, but only sat and watched the progress bar for about 5 minutes. Likewise, the “Disk Configuration” menu was also simple and configuring my device for RAID 1 mirroring was as easy as clicking a radio button. Soon after, my 1TB of raw storage became 465.29GB of mirrored drive space.

Once the drives were configured, I quickly changed the admin password and set a disk quota for guest users. Under “System Options”, I gave the device a more suitable name and assigned it a static IP address. I then created user accounts for myself and my wife. When creating user accounts, access to the device’s Download Manager can be set. I don’t remember reading about this feature within the product’s description before purchasing it. Not that I’m complaining, because the functionality is pretty cool. Basically it acts as an autonomous downloader. You provide the URLs, and it does the work. This single feature could end up saving money on my electric bill as I oftentimes leave my computer running all night to download large files. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I feel confident in saying that the Linksys NAS200 draws less power than my desktop PC.

To complete the installation I did a quick training session with my wife. She now knows to click Places -> Network within Gnome to find our network devices. Double-clicking “Thorbardin” (Yes, I was a Dungeon Master) displays her private folder and the public share entitled, “PUBLIC DISK”. Not being particularly fond of screaming caps, I tried to rename the folder, but was prompted with the following error message.

Unlike some other NAS devices, the Linksys NAS200 is quiet. I have to be standing within a foot of the device to hear any noise. The noise that does emanate from its internal fan is not of the jet engine variety. The fan within the NAS200 emits a low-pitched whir. I’m still quite impressed by this as my second story apartment is extremely hot. Its probably a good thing that the device has an operating temperature of 41 to 104ºF (5 to 40ºC). The surface of the NAS200 is not cool to the touch, but it is not particularly hot either. I can faintly feel air being pushed by the fan through the tiny holes dotting all sides of the device. That is a good sign.

I certainly feel more comfortable now that I have the Linksys NAS200 integrated into my backup strategy. With the NAS200 configured as RAID 1, I’ve all but eliminated the potential for single disk failure. My wife and I are already benefiting from the advantages of having a networked storage solution. We can finally share family pictures without the hassle of peer-to-peer file sharing between our computers. The NAS200’s product packaging and administration controls are both well designed and the device itself appears of exceptional quality. Any anxiety I had about the device communicating on my home network was unjustified. It works well with Linux and will undoubtedly perform just as well with Windows.

Compiling historical family data is not easy. Luckily, my wife has taken the job. This summer, she has been attempting to piece together our ancestry from a variety of sources. Ancestry.com has provided valuable census records which have been useful in tracking the migration of both of our families across the Unites States since the late 18th century. Relatives on either side have donated old memorabilia including pictures, letters, and diaries that have been an enormous help in tracing birth and death dates. These dates have been the single most important clue in searching the census records provided by Ancestry.com. Unfortunately, Ancestry’s transcribed data contains numerous misspellings that has made our quest harder than it should be.

Earlier this year I learned of the website, Geni.com, from the net@nite podcast provided by the TWiT network. Geni has proved a useful tool for recording genealogy data. The site itself is very well designed. It uses Flash as its backbone to provide a user-friendly means for adding and updating family records. Without even registering, users can immediately get to work by adding relatives to a dynamic family tree. The tree can easily be navigated with the click and drag of a mouse. Throughout the past six months, Geni has been adding new features at break-neck speed. None of which has caused the website any serious downtime. Not too bad for a Beta release.

The backups kick that I’ve been on lately prompted me to have a long conversation with my wife as to how we’re going to store our data for future generations. Will a SATA hard drive formatted in an arcane file system even be readable in 100 years? Will Geni.com exist? I doubt it. As our forefathers, my wife and I have begun to record our history on a media that has proven timeless, paper. To our benefit, Geni provides a data export service. This service allows data to be exported in two versions of the Genealogical Data Communication (GEDCOM) file format. Version 6.0 happens to use XML as its format. Reading this, my imagination immediately entertained several geek fantasies involving data migrations, SVG, and… JSON? My wife quickly squelched these dreams by reminding me of her pressing deadline.

I did, however, harbor the notion of converting the raw GEDCOM XML into DOT scripts so I could then use Graphviz to render some intricate graphs of my lineage. A quick test proved this possible, but manipulating the graphs would have taken too much time. Searching Google for Linux genealogy software yielded a handy program called GRAMPS. With little effort, I was able to import a GEDCOM file from Geni and begin testing GRAMPS’ reporting tools. Generating text reports was easy, but the graphing functionality in GRAMPS provided less than desirable results. With some time, I’ll master this new program and create a suitable low-tech solution for archiving the family tree.