Help picking NAS box

[hoorah]

Hey guys,

I've been searching around for a NAS box for awhile. I've read a bunch of the reviews on AT and TH, but there are a few that there are no reviews for (or if there is a review, doesn't cover the features I want to know about).

Basically, I want a NAS box that can take two hard drives, preferrably internal. One internal + USB expansion is acceptable.

The other requirement I have is that I wanted it to be a print server also. I don't need for the device to be wireless. The hard part has been finding an economical device that does these things for sure.

For example, I looked at a review the Synology DS 101, that says it has one internal bay and some USB ports for "something like a USB drive or printer", but in the specifications, it doesn't say anything about having a print server as part of the features. So I don't know if it does or not. Similar stories for a few other devices, i.e., they mention using a printer on the USB port in a review or comment, but nothing in the specs about really supporting print serving functions.
The other problem with the DS 101 is that its $200. For $200, I can get the Netgear SC101 (2 drive bays, $100) and a separate print server for less than $100. I'm not particularly fond of the Netgear due to the proprietary software install on the machines, but since its only being used for backup for a known number of machines, it might not be that bad.

A side note, I have plenty of old computers I could have turned into RAID servers and used it as a print server also. The problem with that is that this device will run 24/7, so thats 8,760 hours per year. If a NAS toaster uses 50W, and this miniATX HP machine uses 250W, and energy costs $.10 per kwh, thats $43.8 a year for the NAS toaster and $219 a year for the miniATX system. Definitely worth the cost of a small dedicated box. Now, take into account the heat produced and the energy expended in airconditioning that space, and it becomes $408 a year for the miniATX (15% efficiency loss, 75% AC per year, about what it is in florida) and $81.5 for the NAS box. Thats almost a $350 difference per year!

I've seen some of the things from thecus and infrant that do everything, but they're more expensive than getting the two components separately. So, after all that useless wind, is there any simple NAS box out there that does print serving as well thats less than buying a simple box + print server?

Thanks for your help guys.

 

[kevnich2]

I know this is much more beyond your budget but if you want maximum cost savings per gb, I would look at the buffalo terrastation. Has 1 tb of hard drive plus the print server option in a small package. But if your looking at <$200, your going to be VERY limited in options. IMO, the netgear is cheap because it sucks. On a side note, I have a smaller linkstation unit that has 1 internal drive & has capabilities for print server as well as another usb hard drive for backing up the internal one. But it did cost about $250 for my unit. But it works like a charm and is very small & quiet.

 

[networkman]

Another annoying thing(at least to me) is that most of these SOHO NAS boxes require the use of a proprietary client to access the NAS; I want one that I can access without the need for such a client so that when friends come over for a LAN party or whatnot, they can easily connect and get maps, patches, etc.

So if you run across one without the need for the proprietary client software, please let me know.

 

[hoorah]

Thanks for the suggestion on the linkstation, but for $250 for 250GB, its a bit pricey. I just got a 200GB drive for $50 after 1 rebate at staples. Now I know that the rebates can complicate things, but at that rate, I can get 4 hard drives, one for each machine, and not have to worry about network drives for backup for that much money. If theres a linkstation with no hard drive thats cheaper, that might be worth it, either now or in the future. I know the linkstation has a drive in it, but can you upgrade the drive in there? Anyone know?

As far as the Netgear SC101, I read a lot of people's comments about it on the AT forums, and my initial impression was that everyone disliked the device due to the proprietary software. While I don't like it either, at least the drive shows up as a drive letter, so its not terrible, especially when I know what computers will be accessing the device. I assumed that AT people being the tinkering crowd didn't like the device for that reason, and thats why people have said that it sucked. Boy was I wrong! I read the forums at Netgear, seems these things have all sorts of problems from data corruption to overheating to partioning and compatibility problems. I'm staying away!

So right now I'm thinking about the Dlink G600. It has room for 1 HDD, apparently doesn't crash all the time, and has a USB port for further expansion. It doesn't support print serving, but I may just take my chances and hope that it will be supported in a future firmware update. I mean, the thing is linux based and has a USB port, so those are the only hardware requirements the device should have for being a print server. If not, I'll get a cheapie USB print server on sale some day, itll still be less than $200.

Hmm, as I type this and do some math in my head (I do that alot), I see that the Dlink G600 is $130. A 250GB hard drive is around $80 on a good day with a rebate or two, and a cheap print server is around $40. So add it all up, and I'm at the same price for 250GB as the Linkstation. Hmm. Now I'm running myself around in circles. Any suggestions?

 

[networkman]

I suggest you get a beer - it's always worked for me!

 

[hoorah]

Hmm..excellent suggestion. I've spent too much time on this. I think a beer is in order.

 

[Thoreau]

If it's plausible, I'd just go with extra drives in the PCs themselves. Unless you need to keep data in a centralized location, a simple raid 1 setup can do wonders for safeguarding against hardware failure (two of my own machines run in a raid 1 configuration currently.)

Of course, that doesn't fix the print server requirement unless one of your PCs is close to the printer and always on...

 

[erwos]

The Linksys NSLU2 only takes USB external hard drives, but it's along the lines of what you're looking for. If you mod the firmware, I'm reasonably sure you could hang two hard drives and a printer off it using a hub. Only problem is the relatively anemic 10/100 ethernet, but that's the price you pay for a good, cheap solution.

-Erwos

 

[harrkev]

I own a D-Link DSM-G600. I have posted a mini-review before, but I guess it won't hurt to re-cap.

Good:
[*]Bring your own hard drive. If you have a drive lying around, total cost is under $150.
[*]Standard SMB. Works great with Windows and Linux. No extra software needed. Should work under Apple, but I have not tried.
[*]Just for kicks, I stuck a CD-Rom in a USB enclosure and plugged it in. The sucker mounted it. Network CD-Rom anybody? It SHOULD work for DVD also, but I have not tried.
[*]No file-size limit (fixed in latest firmware). 4GB files are no problem.

Bad
[*]Using an older 120GB drive with only 2MB of cache, I get around 4.5MB/s write and around 5.5MB/s read. This is for transfering large files. If transfering a lot of smaller files, the speed will drop a lot. This is plenty good enough for office work. It will take a while to transfer DVD .iso's. Don't even think about video editing. I understand that this is typical performance for this class of device, so don't expect other brands to go too much faster -- unless using a proprietary protocol, which means loading software.

Ugly
[*]Fan is rather noisy
[*]The unit does not spin down the hard drive -- ever. Even at 3:00 in the morning when the computers are shut down, the hard drive still spins.
[*]There is a bug with Word and Excel. If you open a file, make changes, and go to re-save it, your computer may lock up for up to two minutes. D-Link has confirmed this. Supposedly they are working on a bug fix and send me a beta version of the software to test, but I have not heard anything from them for three months. Note that this problem ONLY happens with Word and Excel. Open Office works great, and no problems with ANY other applications.

So overall I consider it to be acceptable. I have hope that the hard drive and Word/Excel bugs will be fixed in firmware -- eventually.

But if you want a challenge, I would recommend building your own from old junk hardware and a Linux or BSD distro.

 

[kevnich2]

Well, to me, you seem to be comparing apples & oranges here. Yes, you can get hard drives pretty cheap, but when your talking NAS devices, anything less than or equal to $1/gb is VERY good price. You can get cheap NAS devices but keep in mind, you get what you pay for. Having a small dedicated network accessible hard drive available to everyone on your network is a nice thing to have and yes, you can do that with a regular PC but with that it creates more heat, is a larger box and has to be running 24/7. In some environments I've come across, they had a computer that had to be running 24/7 anyway so I simply set that computer up with a shared hard drive and used it also as a print server. But for a home environment, I haven't seen many situations where someone had to have a computer running 24/7.

 

[networkman]

Originally posted by: kevnich2But for a home environment, I haven't seen many situations where someone had to have a computer running 24/7.

I'll hazard a guess and say you're not a Distributed Computing enthuiast.

 

[jwhitt]

i can compleatly see the concern for wanting to use an embedded solution for this nas solution, i have a p3 733 machine that i use for my nas box running freenas www.freenas.org it is a bsd based nas os that is ccompleatly web administratable, and fits on a 32 meg cf card, the config is stored on an xml file, and if it ever dies all you have to do is replace the cf card, and upload the config to it, like a linksys router etc... hosnestly i havent see my power bill go up from riunning the machine but thats just me

 

[hoorah]

@Kevnich2,

I see your point, I am asking for too much to get network storage price rates for standalone drives, or close to it. I guess I'm just a cheap bastard

Anyway, I think I'm either going to get the Dlink G600 + a print server or I'm going to get the NSLU2 and get some external boxes. I was against the idea of the NSLU2 at first because I would have to mess around with the firmware to get it to do what I want, but I guess by this point its been so well documented by the modding community it should be farily easy, right? I'm not sure which one I want yet, probably whichever is on sale memorial day at best buy (I have giftcards that expire then too). I think either one of those solutions is about what I'm looking for.

The box really has to run 24/7 because the 3 people that will be using the device have absolutely no set schedule and regularly turn their computers off. So to try to have a once a week time to backup the systems is a difficult task to synchronize, especially when I'm doing it over the phone. In addition, I will also be using the box for backup, although I'll be doing it remotely over FTP, and will probably have to let the thing run all night. Computers left on at my parents house regularly get turned off without warning, but they know enough that the blinky-light thingies near the modem need to be left on . Besides, their electricity bill from the computers and air conditioning is high enough as is, running another PC 24/7 just isn't worth it.

I will probably still build a NAS box out of an old computer and have it hooked up to the network with a couple of 20GB drives, but it would only be turned on for bi-annual backup of super important stuff, like vacation photos and whatnot.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, and thanks for the review on the Dlink box. I'll let you know which one I get.

 

[trikster2]

Putting together a file server now. Still undecided if I will make it dedicated using something like FREENAS ( http://www.freenas.org ) or NASLITE ( http://www.serverelements.com ) or use this as an excuse to put together a general use Solaris 10 server and fool around with ZFS.

I considered the dlink but things like excel hanging? Sorry my wife would chuck the thing out the window. Anyhow looking at the above analysis the following bothers me:

> this miniATX HP machine uses 250W

Is that the rating fo the power supply (max draw) or the actual power used? If max draw, does anyone have any idea what a stripped PC (onboard graphics, no PCI cards, no CDROM, 2.6 ghz or so P4, 2 SATA hard drives) would actually use?

Thanks

 

[aidanjm]

Originally posted by: jwhitt
i can compleatly see the concern for wanting to use an embedded solution for this nas solution, i have a p3 733 machine that i use for my nas box running freenas www.freenas.org it is a bsd based nas os that is ccompleatly web administratable, and fits on a 32 meg cf card, the config is stored on an xml file, and if it ever dies all you have to do is replace the cf card, and upload the config to it, like a linksys router etc... hosnestly i havent see my power bill go up from riunning the machine but thats just me

this is exactly the kind of setup I want to implement. Cheap, slow second hand pentium III and the operating system on compact flash (FreeNAS is only 16 MB I think).

I think the OP is over-estimating the power draw for a micro-atx system. I cannot see a micro-atx system (running headless or with an old agp x4 video card) drawing 250 watts power. I think the power draw would actually be well under 60 watts with an old pentium III chip (especially if you use an old Coppermine core pentium III - which were low watts/ cool running chips)

low powered CPUs

via C3 chips (700MHz - 1.2GHz) (the miniitx boards) - < 10 watts

Intel PIII Coppermine (500~750 MHz) 14~20 watts
(I have a 500 mhz chip in an asus pentium III motherboard from ebay)

other low powered CPUs:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article31-page1.html

 

[HKSturboKID]

Thanks to everyone on this thread, I just setup a NAS box utilizing a old p4 1.5 using FreeNAS. The whole setup process took no more then 10 minutes to get the NAS up. My question is that the transfer is kind of slow. The system I am running this on is an old Dell workstation with 256mb ram and a 120GB Maxtor drive using the onboard nic. Will adding more memory make the transfer faster? My main user for this is to centralize the storage of my kids growing up pictures as to having it all over the price.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: HKSturboKID
My question is that the transfer is kind of slow. The system I am running this on is an old Dell workstation with 256mb ram and a 120GB Maxtor drive using the onboard nic. Will adding more memory make the transfer faster?

Not really, but adding gigabit probably would. RAM does help -- for caching files, but this only works for multiple references, and doesn't help much during the first reference.

You'd need to have gigabit NIC's on all the machines you want to speed up, and a gigabit switch connecting them. The extent of the speed-up is an open question, as I don't know about FreeNAS, your drive speed, etc., etc., -- but between 20-30 MB/s is usually achievable (roughly 2-3x what you could get with 100 Mb/s).

But before you do that, I'd check the speed of the drives, and ensure that DMA was enabled. Read tests can be done using something like time cat testfile > /dev/null or using other tools. Ideally you should do read+write tests, but unless you have multiple drives in the system, you'd have to find benchmarking software for this purpose.