no Storage/SAN/NAS forums?

[Toadster]

I'm looking for a high-performance NAS for home usage, it needs to be viewable by Vista, XP and Mac OS

what's everyone's preference?

cost is negotiable - but let's keep it under $500 for 1TB+ of storage

 

[yuppiejr]

How important is redundancy?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822155003

Plus 2 x 500 gig drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16822145137)

... you could run a RAID0 Stripe set but you'd have double the chance of failure if the stored data was critical...

Otherwise I'd say build your own and use either Linux or a copy of XP Pro as the O/S (fine for home file server duties).

 

[yuppiejr]

.. here's a $500 DIY NAS:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?item=N82E16811119118
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?item=N82E16822145137 (3 of these)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?item=N82E16813186115
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?item=N82E16820161623
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?item=N82E16819103604
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?item=N82E16835103166

Summary: Foxconn Nvidia 6150 based mainboard with onboard RAID 0/1/5, video + Gigabit LAN, AMD 3500+ sks 939 CPU with basic cooler, 1 gig (2 x 512 meg) DDR SDRAM, 3 x 500 gig Hitachi SATA2 drives, Coolmaster full ATX case with 350 watt PSU.

The key is the mainboard, finding an inexpensive mainboard with RAID5, Gig-E and onboard video is kind of a pain which is why I went socket 939 vs AM2 or 775. My NAS is nearly identical to the configuration above running Windows XP and has done a great job streaming DVD's, music and photos around the house.

 

[JackMDS]

Quote: "No Storage/SAN/NAS forums".

NAS - The N stands for Network, and so is the help and knowledge concerning it, in the Network Forum.

 

[yuppiejr]

Hmm, I'd actually have to respectfully disagree with the "N" in network implying that NAS discussions belong in the Networking forum. One could just as easily point out the "S" = Storage - and that the primary function of the device is to store, secure and share files rather than act as a "network device." Routers, switches, wireless devices, other components who's primary function is to provide or manage network connectivity have a logical home in the networking forum. A device which is basically a lightweight file server does not belong to the same group unless the topic is secondary to it's PRIMARY function such as jumbo frame support or network transfer speeds to/from the NAS, etc...

With all of the RAID questions, Raptor vs other drives, how to perform backups, SATA vs IDE, HDD accoustics, etc... it does seem logical that a storage forum would remove some of the clutter among the truly "General Hardware / Rate My Build" discussions.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Toadster
I'm looking for a high-performance NAS for home usage, it needs to be viewable by Vista, XP and Mac OS

what's everyone's preference?

cost is negotiable - but let's keep it under $500 for 1TB+ of storage

It seems that you think that you can find an off-the-shelf consumer NAS box that's cheap and performs very well. Consumer NAS boxes typically perform at the "fakegigabit" level. See the Small Net Builder NAS charts for more details. Ignore all the "small file" performance data -- they're meaningless / inaccurate; look only at the 1 GB file size performance. You'll see that most current NAS boxes perform barely above 100 Mb/s despite having gigabit NICs. This is because they're typically built on cheap, low performance hardware compared to even budget desktops. (You can see how the performance improves when the start using faster processors.)

But I'm not sure what "high-performance" means to you. If 100 Mb/s is "high-performance", then it's an easy problem. If not, then based on the SNB NAS charts at least, you pretty much need to look at DIY.

 

[Toadster]

right now i'm looking at setting up the following:

micro-itx board or uATX like the new Intel D201GLYwith 1.33GHz cpu, 1GB RAM
Free-NAS
capability for at least 3-4 drives (2.5" or 3.5")
capacity > 1TB (more if cost effective)
near silent running and will fit in or around a home theater setup, or in HT closet with minimal heat output

this case is pricey, but the look i'm looking for http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811163081

 

[sandiegoislandboy]

wow, just the topic ive been looking for.

im also looking to build/buy a home NAS inthe $500 range.

initially i was leaning towards the dlink dns-323 but was also considering a pc to do the work of a file server.

i want raid 1 or 5 option because itll be storing digital photos, and with that being said, at least 500gb but a 1tb is ideal.

going the dlink route with raid 1, due to costs, im limited to a 500gb raid 1 setup for less than $450 (the nas unit and 2 x 500gb hard drives).

if i was to do the pc route, not sure which cpu/mb to select to keep performance high but costs low while having money for the drives. also how much memory is ideal. i know a hardware based raid is out the window due to costs.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: islandtech
i want raid 1 or 5 option because itll be storing digital photos, and with that being said, at least 500gb but a 1tb is ideal.

"RAID alone is not a backup". Regardless of the quality of the RAID implementation, there are many modes of failure that it won't protect you from, and RAID also introduces new points of failure.

I suggest getting a large drive or two and putting them into external enclosures, using them for periodic backups. Keep them off and detached when not in use.

For personal photos, you might also use a DVD-based backup because the data usually doesn't accumulate very quickly, but optical media are prone to failure and long-term issues, so you shouldn't count on that alone.

 

[yuppiejr]

Toadster - I don't think that board you linked or the case is an appropriate choice for a NAS machine. The case only allows a single hard drive, and the board has no native SATA support and only a single PCI slot which means you're stuck with 10/100 ethernet which, to me, is unthinkable for a NAS to which you intend to copy any significant amount of data.

I will humbly refer back to my own post above in which I identified part by part all of the components you need to build a $500 do it yourself NAS/server that includes 1 TB of RAID5 storage, Gigabit ethernet, a gig of RAM, Athlon 64/3500+ CPU plus a decent case with PSU with room for all of the drives. I'm running exactly this configuration at home (added an optical drive and a 40 gig IDE drive for the O/S) right now using Windows XP Pro, though Ubuntu would probably do the job also. There are not a lot of options since you are looking at a $500 budget, $300-$350 of which goes into drives leaving you only $150-$200 to afford a case, PSU, processor, RAM and mainboard.

For $500 there are no "out of the box" solutions that will fit your budget and your DIY options are exceedingly limited. Unless you can find another sub $50 mainboard with Gig-E , native RAID5 support, and integrated video the Foxconn offeringI linked is your only option. The AM2/775 mainboards that support RAID5 are simply too expensive and going hardware RAID is not an option either at your desired pricepoint.

 

[3NF]

Originally posted by: yuppiejr
How important is redundancy?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822155003

Plus 2 x 500 gig drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16822145137)

... you could run a RAID0 Stripe set but you'd have double the chance of failure if the stored data was critical...

Otherwise I'd say build your own and use either Linux or a copy of XP Pro as the O/S (fine for home file server duties).

I can vouch for this product, the DNS-323. It's relatively cheap and easy to use. Note that it doesn't support NTFS or FAT partitions, so you will need to use the EXT2 partition (don't use EXT3). Current firmware is at 1.03, which removes the advertised disk utilities like defrag.

The one thing I really like about the DNS-323 is that it is easily hackable. In a matter of seconds, you can get telnet access to the unit and start tweaking I had problems with the existing UPnP server, mainly with playing video files back, and I understand that it is a problem with the 1.03 firmware. However, you can install Twonky on this and use that instead.

Additionally, the advertised USB port says it only can be used as a printer server. Well, since it's hackable, you can install the usb-storage.ko module, and use it as a removable disk. If you use a USB hub, you can support multiple disks.

If you're seriously thinking about the DNS-323, then I recommend checking out http://wiki.dns323.info/ and take a look at the little hacks that can be done with it. If you like Linux, then you'll probably like playing around with it