Server or hard drive...

Lots of options, basically you just need a file server. It can be a third computer connected to your network, an external harddrive, or a router with storage like the Apple Time Capsule.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4425743_build-file-server.html

Neither. Use dropbox. We are a 4 person offi and this is what we use. All files are stored locally on each computer and in the cloud as your backup (on about 20 servers around the world). When you save a file it automatically syncs to the cloud then to the other computer.

2 gigs free, cheap for more.

three letters... NAS
Network Attached Storage. Basically a box with 2 or more hard drives inside it. You can set it up as a RAID with redundancy for backup peice of mind. although, you should still backup off-site as well.

You can probably put a WiFi print server on a HP 500 but a wired one is better. The transfer speed is much faster over a wire than a WiFi.

I have an old HP 600 DesignJet working on a network using a D-Link DP 301P+ print server working with a Windows 7 computer. I just loaded the XP 64 bit drivers on the print server for the HP 600. It just shows up as a net work printer as an HP 600 and works fine with the Windows 7 computer.

Anyone have a particular NAS they recommend? I am going to get one to get our desktops backed up. Probably looking at a 4 to 6TB in a RAID config. I need something that will do auto backups of selected folders, and is very easy to setup. IT around here is few and far between, so I will probably have to set it up myself.

Check out Synology NAS devices, you can put it on your network in a raid configuration. You could have a second one at home for an offsite solution. They have many possibilities and I have had good luck with mine. It can be made accessible from the net if you want to do sharing that way. I put job drawings and specifications on ours as well as our accounting backup data.

I use a synology at home with dual 4tb drives in a RAID. works great.

Three letters SAS - Slow As Spit!

We replaced our old server (SERVER 2003) with one of these damned network drives and we are just about to order a new server. Do not expect to pull big files over the network quickly even when one computer is running.

They can be slow if not set up or tweaked properly, most don't work right out of the box for large file users.

Much depends on frame size, hard disk type and speed, onboard memory I try and tune mine for about 100/Mbs

J

I would recommend dropbox too.

Then add a cheap server, and use it to backup the dropbox files too in case anything goes bacd with the cloud data.

Our system:

We have two "datasets", conventional survey and laser scan work.

Laser scan work.
Project drive 512GB SSD
Local archive drive 1 2.5TB HDD
Backup to archive drive 4TB raid
Secondary backup to archive drive 6TB NAS.
Then rotating drives for offsite backup.

Conventional work
Dropbox to computers - 1 of them is the server.
Server backs up Dropbox to time machine.

A good middle of the road method is to add a pair of drives in a RAID-1 configuration to the stronger of the machines in the office. These drives are mirrored and show up as a single drive which can be shared with the other machine(s) in the office. Getting your data off the OS drive and onto a dedicated drive lowers the likelihood of data loss. Plus, I've found that this setup tends to give better performance than the more affordable NAS boxes. Another option depending on your technical ability is to take a machine that has been retired from CAD duty and re-purpose it as a file server or homemade NAS.

I recently took a retired computer (Intel P4, 4GB RAM, 80GB IDE HD, Gigabit NIC card), loaded a shareware Linux based OS called Open Media Server and added a pair of 2TB SATA HD's. With no money out of pocket I created a home-made NAS that gives twice the performance of my store-bought DLink DNS-323 (2-drive NAS with Gigabit ethernet). I torture tested both devices by creating three sets of test data each containing several GB's of files. The first set was all large movie files, the second was small DC files, and the third was mix of all file sizes. Each data set was transferred from my workstation to each of the NAS's and then back to the workstation. Performance varied with data type and direction of travel, but in general the store-bought NAS was able to achieve transfer rates of 15 MB/second average whereas the NAS by Steve™ was able to achieve transfer rates of 30 MB/second on average.

I suspect that my homemade system posted better stats due to the faster processor and larger memory rather than any skill on my part.

> Neither. Use dropbox. We are a 4 person offi and this is what we use. All files are stored locally on each computer and in the cloud as your backup (on about 20 servers around the world). When you save a file it automatically syncs to the cloud then to the other computer.
>
> 2 gigs free, cheap for more.

until the time when you need to access your files & your internet is DOWN!

The Dropbox option is good for backup but for everyday file access, I would recommend getting an external drive that is attached & shared to one of your PCs. If file access is slow then you can easily attach the drive to the other PC via USB.

INCORRECT!

Dropbox is not primarily a backup system, it is a file syncing system. All files are local on your computer whether connected to the internet or not. It is also stored in the could as a backup and for remote web based access to your files. It is also backed up at around a dozen servers around the world. If something did happen to all of those servers...you would still have your data on your PC. You can selectively sync only the folders you want and share only the folders you want with others. If you loose connection you will loose the ability to sync if you are remote...BUT if you are on the same local network it will sync across your router without the use of the internet.

We use Dropbox teams. We have 5 users...each uses our email accounts (all our email is hosted through Gmail and Google Docs) for login. Each user gets their own Dropbox and myself as the administrator set up team folder that we are all sync'd to such as Projects, Field Data, etc. On each PC I created a partition called T:. Only Dropbox data is on that partition. This also allows file association in AutoCAD to hold from PC to PC. We have a TB of storage for $700 a year.

It also works as a far better alternative to an FTP site.

I would do this or get a store-bought back-up.

I bought a DLink with 2 mirrored 1TB drives and connected it to my wifi network. It's slow, but does the job and was very inexpensive - $200.

Off-site storage is over-hyped in my opinion. Back it up on a DVD every six months if you're worried about fire.

> A good middle of the road method is to add a pair of drives in a RAID-1 configuration to the stronger of the machines in the office. These drives are mirrored and show up as a single drive which can be shared with the other machine(s) in the office. Getting your data off the OS drive and onto a dedicated drive lowers the likelihood of data loss. Plus, I've found that this setup tends to give better performance than the more affordable NAS boxes. Another option depending on your technical ability is to take a machine that has been retired from CAD duty and re-purpose it as a file server or homemade NAS.
>
> I recently took a retired computer (Intel P4, 4GB RAM, 80GB IDE HD, Gigabit NIC card), loaded a shareware Linux based OS called Open Media Server and added a pair of 2TB SATA HD's. With no money out of pocket I created a home-made NAS that gives twice the performance of my store-bought DLink DNS-323 (2-drive NAS with Gigabit ethernet). I torture tested both devices by creating three sets of test data each containing several GB's of files. The first set was all large movie files, the second was small DC files, and the third was mix of all file sizes. Each data set was transferred from my workstation to each of the NAS's and then back to the workstation. Performance varied with data type and direction of travel, but in general the store-bought NAS was able to achieve transfer rates of 15 MB/second average whereas the NAS by Steve™ was able to achieve transfer rates of 30 MB/second on average.
>
> I suspect that my homemade system posted better stats due to the faster processor and larger memory rather than any skill on my part.

He said it was a two person office, NAS should be a good economical solution for only a couple users. More than that, a server is definitly a better option if there are going to be alot of users accessing it at the same time.

Thank you all for the input!

> Off-site storage is over-hyped in my opinion. Back it up on a DVD every six months if you're worried about fire.

I run a very small operation, but I currently have about 143GB of data that I consider valuable enough to store in the cloud. Putting that on DVD would require over 30 discs, which takes that option off the practical solution list for me.

You can afford to lose 6 months of work?

Why not just use 3 hard drives and rotate them every week or so? Hard drives are cheap.

Blu-ray burners have gotten cheap and the disks hold 25GB on a single layer disk or 50GB for a double layer disk. Not a bad choice if you want something more durable than a HDD and prefer to keep your data backups closer to home.