[Freedombox-discuss] NAS or little-space-sheevaplug, the HD question

[Anthony Towns]

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 08:27, Arthur Lutz <arthur.lutz at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering about something : how much disk space would *your*
> FreedomBox have ?

I'm wondering that right now actually -- my SheevaPlug arrived, and
I'm not sure what to do about storage for it. Options are: a trivial
amount on board (~512MB), an SD card (16GB maybe?), a USB memory stick
(16GB also), an external USB disk (300-750GB), or local network access
to my NAS box (TB+).

For me, use cases are:

Barely any space needed:

  - routing, ipv6 support
  - personal wiki
  - wordpress

Some GBs needed:

  - irclogs (.5GB)
  - email (~4GB? Gmail offers 7GB for comparison)
  - photos/videos (~4GB? Picasa offers 1GB free, 20GB for $5 per year)
  - gitweb/git repos (?)

Lotsa GBs needed:

  - backups
  - DVD rips
  - Debian mirror

> I feel that a sheevaplug is not really made to have a big hard drive
> attached to it. Does anyone have an (good) experience with long term use of
> a USB drive on that kind of setup ?

My feeling for the sheevaplug is that it's "cheap" so you should
expect it to break and need replacement anyway. Ideally, use case
should be something like:

   * buy sheevaplug and cheap storage
   * configure, create identity, add content, setup "cloud" backups
   * have it break :(
   * buy new sheevaplug and cheap storage
   * re-identify yourself
   * have it grab backup from the "cloud", and start working again

For the time being I think I'm going to just use a 2GB SD card for
development, and a ~500GB? USB drive I've got handy, with the idea
being to work out how much space I actually need and eventually just
use an SD card and my ReadyNAS. Not sure what "cloud" backup might
actually involve, though.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at erisian.com.au>