[RndTbl] USB3 to Ethernet, to make NAS

[Trevor Cordes]

A couple of final thoughts now that we know the situation:

1. Make sure whatever NAS "device" you settle on for Lynn's side
formats the HDD with a fs that your computer can understand.  If you
only have Windows, then make sure the NAS uses NTFS.  If you have
Linux, then the world's your oyster, and I would opt for a Linux fs,
but NTFS will be ok with ntfs3g.

2. Whatever the Seagate MTBF says, take it with a grain of salt.  Look
carefully at the box/instructions/specs to see if it says "not for
always-on use".  If you have some funky special-grade device, I'd be
curious to know the model #.

3. John and Adam are right: back the thing up.  Buy a 2nd 8TB USB drive,
the cheapest one you can find (often there are sales that are very
attractive on external drives).  Just do a byte-level copy of the whole
thing, or a file-level backup, every few months (i.e. no RAID).  The NAS
device you settle on might have an option to do this for you.  I will
virtually guarantee you your drive will die before you get a hankering
to replace it, even if you haven't personally experienced such a thing.

The very worst thing to lose is the drive full of irreplaceable family
photos.

Also, John's Pi solution might be ideal if you don't want to wing it,
and even better if someone makes some nice NAS OS images that you can
just plop onto it??  For your use case, performance limitations won't
be a big deal.