Feb 7, 2007
The gadget I need right now (that no one’s making)
Rest assured, the list of gadgets I want right now that just aren’t being made is rather long: a decent cellphone, a decent portable audio player, etc.; but the one I really need right now is just plain elusive. I’d like an affordable external RAID box that’s BYOD (bring your own drive) with RAID 5, and preferably USB 2.0. Oh, there are definitely eSATA, RAID 0, FireWire, and simple NAS boxes that vaguely fit the bill (most of which cost $600+ for the box and card alone), but I’ve already got the drives for an array — I just want to mount them offboard for my still-delayed Vista upgrade. (Maybe this is why I’m kinda stoked for Windows Home Server.)
Co-founder of 
I completely agree. I have a WiFi / Ethernet NAS, but I’m concerned with drive failure, so a RAID5 version would be idea. Then, on top of that, I’d love to have Subversion running so I can have version control over my files.
Hopefully, someday, services like Amazon’s S3 will replace our need to have localized storage – when we have the bandwidth to push and pull files > 1+ gb…
Ryan I have to second you on the decent portable music player front. I’m still limping along on my Rio Karma because i’ve honestly not seen anything that is suitable for me since. There are some nice looking NAND based players coming out but I need at least 30gb of storage now. :-(
Aw man, I used to LOVE my Karma. I didn’t replace it for years because nothing was as good! I’m using a Zune now, but it’s kinda sucky (see here: http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/15/zune-review/).
Agree with you about the decent cell phone. Everything out there is crap.. And I can’t stand the RAZR and it’s UI.
So the question is: will the fact that the supposed ‘Zune killer’ has Jim Cady on the board (and some other big names) mean that it turns out to be a decent product, perhaps with some kind of resemblence to the Karma?
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/12/startup-claims-to-be-working-on-a-um-zune-killer/
I totally agree on the Raid 5 BYOD thing. I want one. I’ve got a whole load of old harddisks waiting for it. It can’t be so hard to make.
Have you looked at UnRaid? It sounds like what you need.
http://www.lime-technology.com/
I haven’t! But it just looks like PC-based RAID. Not bad, but not really the solution I’m looking for. There are definitely a few decent Linux-based NAS-centric builds out there.