GLAN Tank Media Server

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/glan-tank-media-server-145446.php' target='_blank'>http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/glan-tank-media-server-145446.php</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Challenger, the PC power-user brand of Iodata Japan, announced its latest media server product, GLAN Tank, for January 2006. The case packs two 3.5-inch HDDs, each with 250 GB. Compared to former models it also features Gigabit Ethernet, XScale 416 MHz CPU, 128 MB memory, and four USB ports. The OS is Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 and Linux kernel 2.6.8. The server functionality allows usage of iTunes and other network player software, fileserver WebDAV, Telnet, Multicast DNS, FTP and Web publishing. The price will be around $215."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/GLANTANK-top.jpg" /><br /><br />For $215, I think this is a steal. Half a TB of storage and support for a large number of network protocols, sounds amazing. I guess, you will have to settle with an Xscale processor and only 128MB of RAM but if the transfer rate is good then who cares?! We need some benchmarks. :)

[Tim Williamson]

Wow, that's a great deal! I've been trying to figure out what to do in the way of media server/media player for the living room when I move into my own place in a few months.

My predicament is that I need a living room media center that can play DivX, but Xbox360/Media Center Extender doesn't have this ability. I figure I'll either put together a cheap PC with Windows Media Center or load up Linux with MythTV or freevo.

[jeffd]

wow.. you could strip the hard drives and make money selling them at that price. ^^

[mcsouth]

wow.. you could strip the hard drives and make money selling them at that price. ^^


ummm....not sure that I buy that. I bought my 250GB hard drive a few months back for $110, and the Tiger Direct ads that I have been getting lately list 250GB drives as low as $70 (after rebate, of course). I think you might break even by stripping the hard drives, but what would be the point in that?

Now if you sold the hard drives in order to help fund the purchase of two 500GB drives, I could totally get on board with that! :D

One thing that I do find a bit confusing is that the product page for this item seems to indicate that the discs could run either as RAID 1 or JBOD. Having two 500 GB drives running in RAID 1 would seem to be a great solution for doing backups and storing your critical media (like photos, etc). However, the specs down at the bottom of the page don't seem to make any further mention of that, so I'm not sure I'm interpreting the page properly. Anyone here who can read Japanese and interpret the page for us?

Other question in my mind would be the disc formatting - given Jason's posts on this issue in the past, it would be interesting to see if this server/NAS device would resolve some of his concerns.

[mcsouth]

I tried the BETA version of Google's language tools to convert the product page to English. Besides getting a good laugh from some of the translation, it looks like the $215 price is for this unit MINUS any hard drives. The price for this unit with (it looks like just 1) 250GB drive is $419, based on the Yahoo conversion tools. Therefore, this unit's price is not looking quite as attractive.

The unit can take two hard drives, and can run as either JBOD or in RAID 1 (mirrored). Since the product page makes reference to ATA66 and ATA100, it would appear that this unit is using a parallel interface to the drives, rather than SATA - in my mind, that further diminishes the value. I would rather load two gen2 SATA drives w/NCQ in this unit than hunt down and pay the price premium for high capacity drives with parallel interface.

If anyone can do a better translation, I would be interested in knowing more about this unit, but initial translation results don't seem to paint as rosy a picture as first thought.

[Jonathon Watkins]

I tried the BETA version of Google's language tools to convert the product page to English. Besides getting a good laugh from some of the translation, it looks like the $215 price is for this unit MINUS any hard drives. The price for this unit with (it looks like just 1) 250GB drive is $419, based on the Yahoo conversion tools. Therefore, this unit's price is not looking quite as attractive.

I thought that price was too good to be true. :P

Still a good looking solution though.