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Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

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Firewire or USB NAS

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This blog post is over 20 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

5 Aug 2004

I just picked up an external Seagate 160GB hard drive with the intention of using it as a primary backup device for my home office. I can easily plug it into any machine via USB or Firewire and back the computer up.

While I was setting up the backup scheduling for my laptop, however, I realized that I can’t really create a schedule. My laptop is very mobile—it moves from room to room and place to place with me. I can’t expect to have the drive’s USB connection plugged into my laptop at any given time. If I schedule the backup to run at 1am, I would need to make sure I have the laptop on my desk and connected in order for the backup to succeed.

What would be great is a small IP addressable gadget that I could plug this drive into so that it could become a simple Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. That way my laptop could be backed up over my wireless net from anywhere in the house.

Something like this might exist already but I didn’t turn anything up in a few moments of research.

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