Need a NAS Solution

[fuzzybabybunny]

I'm looking for a WiFi NAS solution:

1. Able to be accessed via Gigabit and WiFi abgn

2. Able to be shared with PS3/XBOX to play movies/music/etc off of it.

3. Able to recover and not lose any data when a drive dies

4. Perhaps even accessible through FTP/a Browser for when I'm not in the LAN.

Any recommendations?

 

[yinan]

I think the Qnap line of products supports most of these functions. The one I am not sure of is the streaming one. I just bought the TS-869 and I am very happy with the performance for the price so far.

 

[LurchFrinky]

As long as you are comfortable building your own stuff, I (and several others here) would recommend you do just this.
Hardware-wise you will need:
for 1. a mobo with GigE and either built-in wifi or an add-on card.
for 3. at least 2 HDDs to support RAID1.
I use FreeNAS, others use unRAID :
for 2. I have set up, and my PS3 sees, the NAS as a media server
for 4. my wife can access files via FTP from a different state.
Otherwise, it is just a simple, inexpensive, low-powered pc.
There are a couple of recent threads detailing NAS builds that you can search for.

 

[gaidin43]

You can build a NAS/basic htpc for under 200 before hard drives. It all depends how capable you want it to be. I would highly suggest building one over buying a plug and NAS hardware. You can even get a. Old pentium off eBay or something and just buy the drives.

Personally I use my htpc as my NAS that has fully remote functions via LAN. It's on only when I'm using it or when it needs to back something up.

 

[rsutoratosu]

I feel those cheap nas are sluggish at best, the freenas/openfiler / windows svr types are a lot faster.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Hmmm... I guess it'd be nice if FreeNAS was faster than the cheapos, but I *really* do not want an ATX case that I have to lug around. I just want a little black box that's just a tad bigger than all the drives stacked together.

 

[yinan]

Then a Qnap box is what you want.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Then a Qnap box is what you want.

None of the QNAPs seem to support WiFi...

 

[fatpat268]

None of the QNAPs seem to support WiFi...

Why would it need to support wifi? Plug it in to your router, and the router will take care of the rest.


Besides, I really do recommend the building your own route, if you're comfortable with it. My nas is in a small microatx case, and while it's not the best looking thing, it's out of sight in the corner of my closet.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Why would it need to support wifi? Plug it in to your router, and the router will take care of the rest.


Besides, I really do recommend the building your own route, if you're comfortable with it. My nas is in a small microatx case, and while it's not the best looking thing, it's out of sight in the corner of my closet.

I don't want to have it be tied to a router via a cable...

 

[veri745]

I don't want to have it be tied to a router via a cable...

Then get a second router and duct-tape them together and make a wireless bridge.

I haven't seen any "little black box" NAS solutions that include wireless.

 

[fatpat268]

Why would you need to continually move a NAS around?

 

[LurchFrinky]

Why would you need to continually move a NAS around?

+1

You said that you wanted to access it via FTP, and you can, so you can literally access it from any location with internet access (be mindful of security settings). If you want to access it from somewhere without internet, then you don't really need NAS.

My home came pre-wired with cat5e, so my NAS has, at times, been in completely different rooms than my (closet based) router. I do keep it close to the wall jacks so I don't have cables running amok.
If you don't mind it being wireless all the time, then you can tape an AP to the side like suggested earlier. Honestly though, you don't want to be streaming high-bandwidth movies over wireless.

 

[yinan]

You don't really want to put a NAS on wireless transfer speeds will really suck. Just plug it into a wireless router and forget about it.

 

[SeanFL]

QNAP's are great. I also think the Synology line is fantastic. The DS212 (2 drives, can be set up in raid). It has one of the fastest data transfer rates in the under $300 (without drives) range.

 

[taltamir]

I'm looking for a WiFi NAS solution:

1. Able to be accessed via Gigabit and WiFi abgn

If you mean by that "A NAS that makes itself available to wifi devices like my laptop" then you should know that is not a special "wifi NAS"... its merely any NAS on a network whose router has wifi. NAS is attached to the NETWORK... that is, it attaches to the router (perhaps through a switch) and is available to any device on your LAN, wireless or wired.

That being said you want wired or wirelessN because wirelessG and below are obscenely slow.

You don't really want to put a NAS on wireless transfer speeds will really suck. Just plug it into a wireless router and forget about it.

Agreed.

 

[Seeruk]

I can't say enough good things about Synology - their stuff is fanstastic.

For your scenario, absolutely look into the DS212J + Wireless dongle. Whilst I agree that wireless sucks for a NAS, at least synology have one you can buy for it if you are determined to go that route.

With two disks you can have Raid 1 mirrored drives so if one fails, no problem. But even better use the SHR raid type so that over time you can replace the disks with bigger disks one at a time, still have the mirroring but without losing the capacacity of the bigger disk.

Their software is fanstastic, you can access your NAS from anywhere using a browser in an interface that is as simple to use as a desktop. They also have free ios/droid apps so you can access the stuff with the mobile too. A great selection of packages can be installed with a click to provide you with anything from a DHCP server, to a photo gallery, phpmyadmin, squeezebox server, or a wiki.

As you can tell, I am really impressed by them, just upgraded from a DS210J (2 bay 2010 model) to the DS1512+ (5 bay 2012 model) and the upgrade was as simple as taking the drives out the old box and slamming them into the new one (with some extra 2TB disks too )

Plex media server is available for intel chip models like my new 1512+ and I can't imagine there is a better streaming / media centre option in the universe for watching stuff on the ipads and PC's scattered around the house! If you are getting a non-intel model, then there is still normal UPNP/DNLA media streaming too.