NAS - best solution for around £100 Budget?

Rob.Marsh

Rob.Marsh

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Hi all,

I am fast running out of disk space on my laptop, as is my good lady. We have been talking about investing in an external hard drive for a while now, one that we can both use.

The most logical set up seems to be Network attached storage. I have a basic understanding but there are so many products out there and so many different people recommending different ways I am left confused at to the best solution I could go for.

I have around £100 budget and I want to have a reasonable size storage area that myself and my good lady can access freely, and to make the system as efficient as possible.

What do you peeps recommend?

Rob
 
I like the look of the cheapest Lacie NAS, nearly got it to run as an iTunes server, but am now using my old Power Mac instead.
 
What size of external drive are you looking for? Something like this would do; wireless and takes a 2.5" drive, which kind of limits you to 500Gb for HDD size....

A 3.5" wired 1Tb NAS here as well... worth having a look on eBuyer as also.

If you want to have a trawl around eBay, searching for 'NAS Enclosure' and 'NAS Drive' seems to brings up the largest number of hits...

I've got something similar to the 2.5" wireless and it works a treat - not the fastest transfers over the LAN using wireless, but it doesn't matter to me... :D
 
Hi Rob,

I think you'll struggle to get a decent NAS for £100. In an ideal situation, you'd want a mirrored drive setup in the NAS. But that will set you back a fair bit. Perhaps you'd be better off buying 2 external USB HDDs?
 
I got a NAS box from eBay, same were selling on amazon aswell (can't remember the name though)

then I bought two SATA drives (750 gb) and added those myself, the box comes with software for you to setup things aswell so its quite simple to sort out

drives are cheaper now so you could get the box (think it was around 45) and a couple of 1tb drives quite cheaply now but will be over your 100 budget
 
Some interesting info there peeps, cheers.

I was after 500GB or up (iappreciate budget will have an effect on the capacity of course). I have considered a couple of usb drives but would like really to avoid having to each of us plugging in the driv to use it. A freely available drive on the network would be perfect.
I did look at things like the WD Mybook and MYworldbook as the plug into the router and seemingly are form fit function.

Is buying en enclosure and drives seperatly the cheaper option then? Bear in mind setting up mirroring etc would be a steep learning curb for me.
 
I have the 1TB Lacie Internet Space, although now I know how the internet connectivity works, I'd have had the Network Space instead. The media server(s) work fine, and it's a reasonable performing device for the price.

If it comes down to building one, have a look at IcyBox enclosures.
 
A little outside your budget but i can't recommend the Buffalo one highly enough.

The reviews I'd read said it took longer to unpack than get it running and that was definitely true. Have it with a USB drive plugged into the back which takes an incremental backup every morning.

The one we have isn't made any more I think, the Linkstation live pro, but this one is a newer version and is in budget. You may want the next size up.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000N9508K/nextag81-21/ref=asc_df_B000N9508K358786
 
Thanks for your help peeps. I'll take a look at all the suggestions.

Unfortunately I don't have an old PC lying around.

trapper, what size usb drive do you need on the back for the backup?

Rob
 
I bought an enclosure from ebay and put 2 x 500 gig drives in it. The enclosure is near your budget without the drives link. I paid about £70 but it seems to have gone up a lot since then. Not sure if it was the same seller but the enclosure is the same.

It has a built in print server as well as a bunch of media servers (that I've never used). Having the printer accessible without needing a particular PC turned on is good. Unfortunately it didn't always work with my Epson printer so if printing is important maybe try a different model.
 
Rob.Marsh said:
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trapper, what size usb drive do you need on the back for the backup?

Rob
Click to expand...

It doesn't have to match, just be big enough for the files.

I set the Buffalo up at my partner's house to run his Sonos music system, it is 500Gb.The Backup is a Western Digital Mybook which he already had, that is a 320Gb drive.

The Buffalo does a back up every morning at 7 am then sends me an email to tell me if everything is ok.

The drive is in his spare bedroom and the drive is set up to switch off all its LEDs at night so that it doesn't disturb anybody.
 
If its any use to you I have a Bufallo NAS enclosure that I dont need any more so would be willing to part with it.
I was selling it on here with the drives included but decided to take the drives out and stick them in the spare slots on my mac pro so I just have the enclosure now.

To do what you want to do you could just take this enclosure and buy 1 or 2, 3.5" SATA drives from Ebuyer and away you go. It works as an FTP server and a print server which is quite handy. When I used it I could access my files from anywhere on the net which was useful.

If you are interested PM me and I will give you the details so as to avoid this thread becoming a sale thread.

Cheers.
 
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