NAS devices - help me decide

antc

antc

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Anthony
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Hi,

Looking for a NAS box as i don't particularly want to have loads of external hdds around the place. I realise that i cannot rely solely on a NAS box for backup (i will cater for this with at least one external hdd for offsite backup)

What i would like to know is if you are using a NAS device, what are you using, how have you found it and would you recommend it?

The one that has caught my eye so far is the Drobo FS (gigabit lan and 5 drive bays) Looks pretty good (if expensive) and for ease of use I am not sure I have seen anything that compares? I could be wrong and there could be a product I have not yet seen hence my posting this thread?

Not sure if it makes much difference but I am using an Imac for reference.

Thanks in advance.
 
synology. easily the best performing boxes out there at the moment.

i have the budget busting DS1010+ (now superceeded by the 1511+) and its a fantastic bit of kit. dont bother with netgear.
 
I'm still undecided on the drobo / synology choice :shrug:

I'd like to be able to have 2 macs backing up on the device but can't seem to find out for definite if it will do it via a network connection to my router. I know that's a slower way of doing it but it'd be allowed to run over night.
 
I recently bought a QNAP from Amazon... Only one of the smaller ones - TS-110 or something... Once it's been configured, I can't say that I've got too many complaints... I use it mainly for movies and music, and when I ordered it, I got hold of a 1TB drive as well... only to find out that it came with a 2TB drive installed! (Not documented anywhere!)

Thinking of setting it up as a small webserver as well... For the money, I could have done a lot worse...
 
Some interesting thoughts so far. Also interesting to see a few different devices chosen by people.

Had another scout round today and ended up with another headache. :(
 
Anyone else have any thoughts or suggestions? I am guessing a fair amount of people on the forum will have some form of NAS device?

Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
 
I have a Stora, find it pretty good for what I use it for. As it runs linux, it's very easy to get root access and then install/do whatever you want. Only slight issue is that it's not got that much power/ram on it. However, for about £50 (inc a 500gb if you look hard enough), it's a pretty good device.
 
I use an old PC (actually, it's fairly new, but mid-range) with disks as my NAS. I also use it for a number of other things, including my local DNS resolver, WAMP server (which runs my internal web site and provides a number of databases for example MythTV back end and xbmc movie info), network monitor, print server, ebay sniping server, FTP server......
 
arad85 said:
I use an old PC (actually, it's fairly new, but mid-range) with disks as my NAS. I also use it for a number of other things, including my local DNS resolver, WAMP server (which runs my internal web site and provides a number of databases for example MythTV back end and xbmc movie info), network monitor, print server, ebay sniping server, FTP server......
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I did think of doing that, but my stora apparently only uses 10-20 when its actually being used, and shuts down after 30mins of no activity. It's back up within 15 seconds as well.
 
How about one of these. Runs loads of different Operating systems, and costs only £138 after the cashback. Cashback is valid till end of july i think.

My cashback has just been approved so i will be getting the cheque soon.

Just add disks and away you go.
 
The choice of disks to put in it is also important.

I've had a Thecus N2100 for about 5 years loaded with couple of Western Digital drives in a RAID1 configuration. Had one drive fail in that time but they have a 5 year warranty and you get sent a replacement drive before you have to return the old one.

The Thecus is showing its age a bit now and doesn't have hot-swap drive bays but has done the job for me.
 
aligibbs said:
I did think of doing that, but my stora apparently only uses 10-20 when its actually being used, and shuts down after 30mins of no activity. It's back up within 15 seconds as well.
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I have 5 permanently on PCs in the house....
 
I use a Drobo S with 5 x 2TB disks installed. Initially tried it with an eSata connection on a Mac Pro and it was pretty unpredictable mounting after a reboot. Changed to FireWire and it works fine, great piece of kit, hot swap disks and you can mix and match disk types and sizes.

Steve
 
Excellent, a few more replies.

@Steve, as you are the first person to reply thats actually using one of the devices I am looking at (drobo) can i ask the reasons for going for the S and not the FS? Just interested. And you would recommend it by the look of your post too?
 
Chose the S because I wanted to connect via either USB, FW or esata and not just ethernet. As I say, great piece of kit, very easy to set up and configure, hot swap, can use any disks (I use WD), redundancy on upto two disks. It just sits there and does exactly what I want it to. Let me know if you need any further info.

Steve
 
aligibbs said:
I know its slightly off topic, but you don't find that just wastes power? Electricity prices being so high now, lower power = better surely? :P
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Yes. It's a trade off between power waste and convenience.

The electricity bill pales into insignificance compared to the mortgage....
 
Another vote for Synology here. I've been using one of their units for the last 5 years or so and it hasn't missed a beat. Easy to configure, easy to manage and comes with some useful built in features :)
 
I have a Netgear ReadyNas Duo, only two drives but I have two 2TB drives in there raided, I use it as a Time Machine Backup for my MacBook Pro as well as standard backup for Photos and other media etc
 
Islander said:
Another vote for Synology here. I've been using one of their units for the last 5 years or so and it hasn't missed a beat. Easy to configure, easy to manage and comes with some useful built in features :)
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Another thumbs up for Synology, they also come with a 2yr warranty which is nice...
 
barneyrubble said:
How about one of these. Runs loads of different Operating systems, and costs only £138 after the cashback. Cashback is valid till end of july i think.

My cashback has just been approved so i will be getting the cheque soon.

Just add disks and away you go.
Click to expand...


I got one of these recently as well (after reading very lengthy thread on the OCUK forum). Added 2x 2TB drives and replaced the memory with 2x cheap 2gb DDR3. Installed Ubuntu on the supplied drive, did a lot of swearing (short version : don't use fakeraid), and now have a nice network server which also does Various Other Stuff (tm). If you want the Apple Simpler Way of doing things, Windows Home Server is easier, but very overpriced for what it is...

...Now if only Lightroom would support Catalogues on shared drives.... sigh...
 
flossie said:
If you want the Apple Simpler Way of doing things, Windows Home Server is easier, but very overpriced for what it is...
Click to expand...

not the new 2008 based version though as theyve stripped out the support for different size drives.

...Now if only Lightroom would support Catalogues on shared drives.... sigh...
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AMEN. its annoying as hell to have 2 cameras worth of photos from an event but can only edit on 1 computer and keep a centralised photo store.
 
flossie said:
I got one of these recently as well (after reading very lengthy thread on the OCUK forum). Added 2x 2TB drives and replaced the memory with 2x cheap 2gb DDR3. Installed Ubuntu on the supplied drive, did a lot of swearing (short version : don't use fakeraid), and now have a nice network server which also does Various Other Stuff (tm). If you want the Apple Simpler Way of doing things, Windows Home Server is easier, but very overpriced for what it is...

...Now if only Lightroom would support Catalogues on shared drives.... sigh...
Click to expand...

I'm running windows server 2008 on mine. Runs pretty weel considering.
 
in the interest of getting an accurate picture of a device and company ive had to speak to Synology support regarding my DS1010 the last few days.

really helpful support team, by turning on a few options that are disabled by default (telnet etc) and allowing some ports through your router they can remote in and take a look at your device. unfortunately for me though they have diagnosed i have a faulty disk slot.. over to my retailer to start the RMA.

it does seem like an iscolated incident, i cant find any high occurances of slot failures. lucky for me i run a raid5 so can just pull the disk and carry on (everything is backed up already, so thats covered).
 
neil_g said:
in the interest of getting an accurate picture of a device and company ive had to speak to Synology support regarding my DS1010 the last few days.

really helpful support team, by turning on a few options that are disabled by default (telnet etc) and allowing some ports through your router they can remote in and take a look at your device. unfortunately for me though they have diagnosed i have a faulty disk slot.. over to my retailer to start the RMA.

it does seem like an iscolated incident, i cant find any high occurances of slot failures. lucky for me i run a raid5 so can just pull the disk and carry on (everything is backed up already, so thats covered).
Click to expand...

update, estimate from the retailer says i will be without my main storage for approx 5-7 working days. hopefully it wont be that long.. :gag:
 
jezgb said:
Just bought a QNAP TS-419P+ and installed 4 x 1TB drives in RAID5. No complaints at all - the hardware is well put together and it seems quick.
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I have the same though with only 2 hard drives so far.
Again, no complaints after over a year, so has to be recommended..
 
i run one of the original drodo units with two 500gb and two 1 tb hhd
i had to buy the sledge so i could have network connectivity.
must say very impressed this the whole way it works.

however ever is alot slower compared with my buffalo link station.
 
I have tried an older Netgear unit and Cisco both of which weren't too reliable.
I then swapped to a DLink DNS-232 which proved very reliable and have now added a DNS-343 too. (232 is a 2 drive unit and 343 a 4 drive unit.)
 
Good product support then :)
 
indeedy-doody :thumbs:

getting the new unit up and running should be easy too, migration instructions were sent to me (backup data just in case, backup config on old unit, make sure the new device is on the same firmware, restore config on new unit, put drives into new unit).
 
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