Permanently mount a USB Hard Disk for Security purpose

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 20 October 2014, Angelo Moreschini sent:
> I answer to J.Witvlie that I don't know what are NAS-box.
> For what I saw now on Internet I don't think I need it..
> My problem is simple enough:
> I just want to protect themselves from the possibility of losing data.
> I use a program that keeps the history of changes to my work ..
> and that program need to do a weekly backup 

Not wishing to push the point, but I'll nudge it a bit, especially since
we don't know what you read about it...

A NAS can be pretty much the same thing as your hard drive in a box,
except that it's connected over your network, rather than your USB port.
That's your most basic comparison.  There are advantages either way.

With a USB drive, you can usually plug it in this computer, or that
computer, and use it fairly simply.  But computers aren't always that
good at piping a lot of data at speed, for a prolonged time, through
USB.  I've certainly encountered that.  And you get the fun and games of
some PCs that won't boot with a USB drive plugged in, as they try to
boot from it, and refuse to proceed.  I've encountered that, I'm stuck
with it on one seriously annoying PC.

With a NAS drive, you need to have a spare network port.  If you have a
a router or a switch, no problem.  But if you have just one PC plugged
into your single-port modem, and no spare network port, you're stuffed
until you buy a switch or another router.  Having said that, once you do
have the available port, it's a standalone device, not just a dumb hard
drive in a box.  If my computer crashes while I was reading and writing
to a NAS, it doesn't upset the NAS, just the last file sent to it.  But
with a USB drive, a computer crash can do worse.  I know journalling
file systems are supposed to help, but they don't always, and you may
not be using one on the external drive.  The NAS doesn't have to be
plugged directly into the PC, it can be anywhere on your network, or
even externally, accessed by any computers on your network without any
picking it up and plugging into that other computer.  And that access
could simply be reading the data from anywhere that you're working, to
using that one NAS for backups for any computers that you have.

For either drive, they often come with an awful power supply, but at
least NAS drives are intended to be powered on 24 hours a day, and
should be designed to cope with that.  USB drives aren't usually
designed with that in mind, and you may suffer from the typical modern
"design it to minimum specifications" syndrome.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.

George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not
a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments.

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