Of all the things that can happen during Chinese New Year this week, I accidentally made the data on my network attached storage (NAS) device unreadable – and could easily have wiped out all the years of reports, financial statements and holiday pictures I’ve stored on those two 1TB drives.

After days of pulling hair out, I eventually salvaged everything. But the entire episode prompted me to ask if I was really as prepared as I thought if I had accidentally deleted my data or, in this case, plugged my drives into a new NAS without backing things up.

The answer lies in a series of software tools you can use at home, before really going to the pros in data recovery for help. Here are a few that I tried out while panicking through my attempt at rescuing my data.
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A few months ago, I did what was once unthinkable for many audio geeks and unplugged my Marantz CD player from a living room hi-fi setup that was beginning to get more complicated than it should be.

I had decided there was no turning back from what audiophile snobs once called “digital music”. Sure, the CD was digital but how could music encoded, stored and delivered from home computers be any good, compared to what’s played on a $20,000 CD player, they would say.

Well, thank goodness that type of argument is no longer the in thing now in audio circles, thanks to advancements that enable “bit-perfect” ripping and playback – with no detail lost. For me, the argument was settled by the fact that my Marantz CD6002 was no S$20,000 CD player, but a money’s-worth budget player that could be improved quite easily with a new digital music setup.

Thus began a sometimes unfamiliar – but ultimately fulfilling – journey to build a setup that could play high quality music using the affordable utility that everyday computing offers. …

One of the questions I often get from friends coming up to Hong Kong is if stuff is cheaper here or in Singapore. In many cases, the answer is “not really” or “just a little” – but in the case of the Synology DS210j that I bought for my bro recently, it was a helluva lot cheaper!

At HK$1530 (which is about S$278 at 1S$:5.5HK$), you’d be paying almost 50% more if you bought one from Synology’s dealer in Singapore (Memory World) which has priced it at S$408. Plus according to the Synology forum (post dates back to 2007 though), Synology does provide international warranty.

So why the DS210j? Only the Qnap TS210J II comes close to the DS210j’s transfer rates, but is more expensive. The rest of the 2-bay NAS competition, like the D-Link DNS-323 are generally slower. Oh, and its DLNA compliant too, so fits in with the plan of adding those ‘media extender’ devices to stream video and audio later.

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