NAS recommendations

[Scrag Meister]

Looking to install a NAS on my home/office network, to store my word docs, invoices and other accounting information on.

I want mirrored raid at least if not striped as well, can't afford to lose anything.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Western Digital My Book series seem ok. Looking for about 1-2Tb.

[chef]

scary, I was looking over the past few days for just such a thing, I had slightly extended requirements than yours:

- backup important docs/images of laptops/photos etc.
- media server storing recordable tv for the HTPC media center
- itunes server as im fed up the media center and laptop getting out of sync and not having 1 single place for all my music

my final choices were:

Synology DS210J NAS 177€
Disk Station DS210J - NAS - 0 GB: Amazon.de: Elektronik
Synology Inc. - NEW NAS Experience - Products :: Disk Station DS210j
22cm x 9cm x 17cm, 1kg
2Tb storage available over 2 drives
very quiet and automatically powers down when not in use
The cheapest 2 drive NAS on the market providing RAID that I can find, gets excellent reviews.

alternatively if your looking for 4 drive NAS giving RAID 5 then the Synology DS410 (435€) gets very good reviews.

I also seriously considered the Drobo FS (725€) after reading reviews on here which seems to be the top end of the market for SOHO users but I couldn't justify the 725€ driveless price for what their USP's seem to be:

1) it allows multiple drive types to be used and upgraded on fly - this is useful if I already owned some drives and would look in the future to upgrade but not worth the almost 300€ premium over other devices that do the same job minus the multiple drive sizes feature. Given that I have no spare drives lying around now I would need to buy new drives anyway and so therefore have bought 2x 2Tb Western Digitial Green drives which is far greater than I believe I need at present with the idea that by the time I would need to upgrade I guess that SSD NAS servers will be on the market and I would look at getting a 4 drive RAID5 SSD NAS.

2) it is extremely user friendly with no screwdriver being needed for hot swappable drives etc. - again a great feature but realistically I've owned several drives in several machines and none have died, yet but even if they do then it would not be so regular that I would require gf chef to do the swapping of drives immediately and I am more than happy to screw on the hotswap drive trays to each hard disk in the event of a disk replacement.

Therefore, although an excellent product I couldn't justify the extra expense for something else that more than meets my requirements. RAID5 would be nice but I have opted for RAID 1mainly for the reason I haven't had a dead disk drive in over 10 years.

As a side note I also considered the QNAP TS210 as it has almost the same spec but a slightly faster processor and slightly more RAM but I managed to find the synology DS210J cheaper and I'm happy that meets my needs as I'll simply be using it as a Media Server for 1 HTPC and a day to day backup server.

HTH

Chef in <very bored work mode> who has spent hrs researching new gadgets for home recently..

[h8mmer]

Looking to install a NAS on my home/office network, to store my word docs, invoices and other accounting information on.

I want mirrored raid at least if not striped as well, can't afford to lose anything.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Western Digital My Book series seem ok. Looking for about 1-2Tb.

I bought a Netgear ReadyNAS DUO along with a couple of 1.5TB barracuda drives at the beginning of this year; only get R1 but if 1.5TB is enough for you (along with work stuff it also streams all my media) then I can recommend it. Along with my WD live player it was the best purchase of the year so far.

[Sysman]

I also seriously considered the Drobo FS (725€) after reading reviews on here which seems to be the top end of the market for SOHO users but I couldn't justify the 725€ driveless price for what their USP's seem to be:

1) it allows multiple drive types to be used and upgraded on fly - this is useful if I already owned some drives and would look in the future to upgrade but not worth the almost 300€ premium over other devices that do the same job minus the multiple drive sizes feature.

I can see that feature coming into its own in the future after the current crop of drives are discontinued. It falls into the category of being glad that you chose the gear, long after the event. But yes, 300€ is rather persuasive.

[Platypus]

Western Digital My Book series seem ok. Looking for about 1-2Tb.

I've had a few WD drives fail on me in the past, so I wouldn't touch WD kit with a bargepole.

In fairness, others feel the same way about almost any other drive manufacturer you can name.

[Spacecadet]

I've had a few WD drives fail on me in the past, so I wouldn't touch WD kit with a bargepole.

In fairness, others feel the same way about almost any other drive manufacturer you can name.

I've got 2 external WD passport drives (both >3 years old) , 1 external WD mybook (1TB) (>2 years old) and recently purchased a 320gb WD laptop drive. All have worked fine despite plenty of travelling, dropping etc.

[chef]

I've had a few WD drives fail on me in the past, so I wouldn't touch WD kit with a bargepole.

In fairness, others feel the same way about almost any other drive manufacturer you can name.

I've got 2 external WD passport drives (both >3 years old) , 1 external WD mybook (1TB) (>2 years old) and recently purchased a 320gb WD laptop drive. All have worked fine despite plenty of travelling, dropping etc.

I have/had 1 WD Passport now circa 2.5yrs old, the drive works fine and I liek the features but the mini USB connection port to the drive seems to be failing and requires specific placement/angling of hte cable for it to give the drive power, fiddly and annoying to the point I only use it when necessary hence the reason why I've looked at a NAS solution and a VPN enabled router for remote backups when necessary but then my day to day backup needs are not that great and I'm happy to backup at weekends when I'm back on the home network for the most part.

[Boo]

I want mirrored raid at least if not striped as well, can't afford to lose anything.

Anyone have any recommendations?

I have a Thecus N3200PRO which works well. It supports various versions of raid and I have configured raid 5 with 3 off 500GB Seagate drives which I had lying around. (After I replaced them with 1TB Samsungs for the explicit purpose of having them "lying around", I mean ).

There's a web server component for it as well but I haven't gotten round to trying it yet.

u.d.

Boo

[doodab]

I can see that feature coming into its own in the future after the current crop of drives are discontinued. It falls into the category of being glad that you chose the gear, long after the event. But yes, 300€ is rather persuasive.

I think the synology ones do that as well

Synology Inc. - NEW NAS Experience - Synology DSM 2.3 :: Volume Management

[ratewhore]

I bought a Netgear ReadyNAS DUO along with a couple of 1.5TB barracuda drives at the beginning of this year; only get R1 but if 1.5TB is enough for you (along with work stuff it also streams all my media) then I can recommend it. Along with my WD live player it was the best purchase of the year so far.

I got a ReadyNAS NV+ off Ebay for a good price. All my docs etc are on there now, along with all my media. It has itunes and squeezebox server pre-installed and works for me. I can access docs from any of my lappys or the powermac, itunes and iphoto point at it from various machines and it streams to my squeezeboxes and my chumby.