Please recommend a NAS

[anandtechuser07]

I want to buy a NAS box. I'd like it to do data mirroring, be able to stream MP3s to Winamp, and be VERY quiet. Any opinions on the following products?

Thecus N2100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822102008

D-Link DNS-323 (supposedly loud)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822155003

Drobo + Droboshare (no streaming server)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822240001

 

[JackMDS]

I Would Not use any of the Sub $500 Stand alone NAS.

However of the above the Droboshare seems to be the best choice.

 

[DrGreen2007]

I had the DNS323 and its not loud at all, my wife never noticed it behind the couch in the living room.

 

[leeland]

If it is any help I had the Thecus N2100 and I sold it and got a QNAP TS-209...

I am still figuring out the TS-209 but I am MUCH happier than I was with the Thecus...that is FOR SURE!!!

www.qnap.com

 

[dajeepster]

microcenter has the DNS-323 for $119 after rebate

microcenter link

 

[DivideBYZero]

I have a Linksys NAS200. Good little box for the money.

 

[blahsome]

Another vote for the DNS-323. Very respectable little device with great speeds. $119 is very reasonable.

 

[Slowlearner]

I have been looking at Iomega's 360GB Home NetworkHard Drive (NAS) #33969 that seems very reasonable priced at $149 + shipping. Unfortunately, as the file format is not NTFS (the case with most nas), if it stops working - it will be very difficult to recover any data at all.

 

[doan]

An easy option for a NAS is an old PC. Windows XP works fine snd is easy to administer via remote desktop. Just about any linix distro will work as well.

I run windows on mine to make it easy to swap drives and copy files - everything NTFS.

 

[jaqie]

To be completely honest, I wouldnt use most of the NAS boxes if I was given them for free.

Either an old machine, or building one out of a via mini ITX mobo would be far and away the best, especially considering there are now a multitude of truly good linux (free) NAS-designed distros out there (designed to be run on a homebuilt system to turn it into a NAS).

 

[telemachos]

Surely you're joking about the Drobo! Those things have very questionable reliability and besides, they're really slow.

Haven't you guys heard of the ReadyNAS Duo? It's $400, fast, has an amazing number of features including Infrant's brand of RAID so that you can just install another hard drive and get automatic data protection.

 

[pukemon]

Originally posted by: jaqie
To be completely honest, I wouldnt use most of the NAS boxes if I was given them for free.

Either an old machine, or building one out of a via mini ITX mobo would be far and away the best, especially considering there are now a multitude of truly good linux (free) NAS-designed distros out there (designed to be run on a homebuilt system to turn it into a NAS).

QFT.

I'd consider the Shuttle KPC45 with some low power Celeron or Celeron Dual-Core along with FreeNAS (FreeBSD/m0n0wall based) and one of those Western Digital Green Power hard drives for a decent performing, low-power, small form factor NAS.

 

[jaqie]

Morex Venus case comes to mind - google project udat

 

[JackMDS]

The best NAS that I currently can think of is building a little computer based on VIA C-7 and install Windows Home server on it.

Without HD it is about $160 for the OS' + about $140 for the computer = $300 (less if you already have an old P-III/IV computer lying around).

Windows Home sever provides services that are much more extensive than the lame NAS' with the puny free* OS' loaded in them.

When working on VIA C-7 the whole thing takes 36 - 40 Watts (with the Hard Drive) at full loads with is not much more than a puny Entry Level NAS.

*Most Entry level NAS' are cheap because the vendors do not have to lic. an OS, they slap something "Free" together and you end up with a NAS that functionally is very slow and not fully compatible with NTFS.

 

[BigPete]

Nice recommendation with that VIA C7. I've been looking into it and it seems like it would work perfectly! Do you know if there are any C7 motherboards that will do RAID out of the box? Or is a PCI card required?

 

[Peter]

VIA's southbridges have been supporting the usual CPU-driven RAID 0/1 for quite a while now, just like everyone else does. SATA only.

 

[Slowlearner]

From somewhere else in these forums, I was surprised to learn that Intel has a mini itx board with an integrated Celeron processor Intel® Desktop Board D201GLY2 - one version has a cpu fan. I tried to find out its power consumption - but cant seem to locate any data on that. I would guess that it would be pretty low. Pricing in 80-90$ range. Size may be problem. No mention of raid in the supporting document. Does have one pci slot

Any Windows XP os should be adequate.

 

[mooseracing]

The via supports SATA Raid 0 or 1 and JBOD. I run the Jetway board with a C7, but am switchign my file server to a Jetway board with an AMD Geode NX and SATA RAID as it has better performance.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: Slowlearner
From somewhere else in these forums, I was surprised to learn that Intel has a mini itx board with an integrated Celeron processor Intel® Desktop Board D201GLY2 - one version has a cpu fan. I tried to find out its power consumption - but cant seem to locate any data on that. I would guess that it would be pretty low

I think that that is a problem as compare to the VIA C-7 it takes twice the wattage.

 

[hoihtah]

i have two of these intel boards, one with sata and one without.
the problem for me is not so much the power rating, but limited expansion slots.
it has just 1 PCI (32-bit) slot.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but if you try to add a sata raid controller + a gigabit nic, you're out of luck.
Onboard nic is 10/100.
it has a 40mm fan to cool the celeron pre-soldered cpu... which can get a bit noisy.

in case you were interested...

 

[mooseracing]

Again I don't know how intel sells those boards. The boards I look for have gigabit onboard-definately needed for a file server. It also has RAID on board, granted it's not the best perfroming but its a start. But I'm also not sure how much a PCI RAID card would be able to improve over onboard.

 

[Plugers]

http://home.comcast.net/~cance.../images/pc/network.jpg

The server in the pic above works great. 45mbps max throughput. but it seems to do closer to 25mbps on average. I hear samba lows it down, but you need it for windows sharing.