Know How...

Jul 6th 2017

Know How... 325

NAS Hard Drives, Security, and Feedback!

Best NAS Drives, network security, and community questions!

Although the show is no longer in production, you can enjoy episodes from the TWiT Archives.
Category: Help & How To
Which hard drive should you be using in your NAS, the three dumb routers setup, Steampunk goggle v2, and solder iron recommendations.
 
-- Ben Reese
"I'm thinking about a NAS build in my future and I'm wondering about drive options. Is it better to use cheaper drives (WD Green or Blue) with more protection (2-drive redundancy) or more Red (more expensive) drives with less protection? Prices are pretty close (4x3TB Red ~ $440 and 5x3TB Blue ~ $450), so it's more a factor of which would last longer or be safer.
 
Follow up or related... Are the Green drives found in WD My Passport the same as the Green drives you'd buy bare? It's odd, but sometimes portable drives are cheaper than internal drives."
 
Basic Differences:
* WD Black is their performance hard drive
* WD Green is a low-power, quiet drive
* WD Blue is a "traditional" hard drive
* WD Red is made specifically for NAS
 
Technical Difference
* WD Red supports TLER: "Time Limited Error Recovery"
* Can be configured to change the amount of time the drive spends recovering from an IO (read/write) error
* This is important for two reasons:
  1. In a RAID, like the Synology, error handling is done in the RAIDs hardware
      -- You don't want competing error handling
  2. In a RAID, you can forgive lax error handling in the drives because it's IN A RAID!
* All of this means better performance in a RAID
 
HOWEVER... It's all about the Temps!
 
Seagate Barracude (7200RPM) ~90 degrees
WD Green ~85 degrees
WD Red ~75 degrees
 
 
 
-- Technical Terry
Need some network security advice!
 
I am in charge of video for large live corporate events. At the end of Episode 312, Padre mentioned the TriCaster and its vulnerability since it run on an older Windows OS and is not easy to update/upgrade.  This got me thinking about our  setup.  We have a switcher (not a tricaster) and a playback/replay server which both run on an older Windows OS.
 
All of the equipment needs to be networked together.  Some just for control (won't really work without a laptop to control the gear) and most others for file transfer (still store, records and transcoding).
 
However, we also utilize outside freelancers from time to time and we work with many different clients.  Our freelancers tend to have their own laptops and prefer to use them, while clients are always giving us USB drives and flash memory for file transferring. What kind of advise might you all have in this environment?  Anyone from Twit Engineering or someone with similar setups?  How do we avoid things like WannaCry on systems that can't be updated or something like BadUSB?"
 
Advice
Segmentation
   - 3 Dumb Routers
   - Trusted Side + Mission Critical Side + Public Use Side
 
Trusted Side
- Access to shared store
- Access to the Internet
- Access to Mission Critical
 
Mission Critical Side
- Switcher
- Control Systems
- Access to the Internet
- Access to shared store
 
Public Use
- Access to the Internet
- Access to shared store
 
-- Ken Jancef
"Steampunk Goggle v2 question: I ordered all of the parts yesterday, but didn't see the battery listed on the Show page. Anyone have a link to a battery? I know what connector it uses, but does the size matter? I also had to get the potentiometers from Amazon, and I think I matched them up correctly. This is a great project to get me and my 9 year old son building...."
 
* 4 Batteries + Charger
 
* 6 Batteries + Charger
 
-- Steven Wrightman
"Just watched steam punk gogles. Does anybody know what the soldering rig Padre is using and where is the best place to get one?"
 
* Digital Soldering Iron
* Hot Air Rework Gun
* DC Power Supply
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Connect with us!

Thanks to CacheFly for the bandwidth for this show.