seeking advice on NAS solution

[VorpalBunny]

I am looking to add a NAS device to my network at home and I would like to get your opinion on a few devices I had in mind. One of my preferences for a commercial NAS instead of home built solution is to keep things simple, small, and unobtrusive.

It's unfortunate that Anandtech doesn't carry more material in this area, but I have been over to smallnetbuilder.com to review some options.

I am interested in the following features:
* Raid 1 - I will be using this to store photography and other important files. I would like to add a little protection.
* Streaming - I want to stream videos to my ps3 (and eventually my roku if they ever come up with a UPnP DMA channel). I would also like to stream my music to my computer at work (offsite).
* Print service - I have a USB printer I would like to connect and serve to my network.

There are probably other services I can't dream of because I'm new to this part of the game.

I saw these devices (in descending cost)...
Synology DS211
Synology DS211j
D-Link DNS-325
but one of the big questions is how much memory really impacts file read performance? The DS211j has half the memory that the DNS-325. But one of the frequent critiques I read is the lack of software / apps for the D-Link. I also read that, for the price, the DNS-325 doesn't really deliver.

Has anyone experience with these devices? I could use your wisdom. Thanks in advance.

 

[Gillbot]

raid is not protection, offsite backups are better for data redundancy IMHO

 

[Emulex]

yup - skip raid or go raid-0 for speed. raid-1 stinks on these devices. bad.

dlna and print service rob the WEAKSAUCE cpu so badly it will start to timeout under load or crash - the mad 256meg of ram might run low with too many services running.

(freenas on an old sata pc probably will do 10x better job imo, or openfiler). just sayin!

 

[nanaki333]

<3 freeNAS

 

[VorpalBunny]

yup - skip raid or go raid-0 for speed. raid-1 stinks on these devices. bad.

dlna and print service rob the WEAKSAUCE cpu so badly it will start to timeout under load or crash - the mad 256meg of ram might run low with too many services running.

(freenas on an old sata pc probably will do 10x better job imo, or openfiler). just sayin!

Thanks for the advice folks. My goal is to downsize my electronics footprint. I thought about solutions like freeNAS. However, my "old PC" is about 11 years old, power hungry, has 256MB RAM, and has 2 IDE drives for a grand total of 500GB! IDE drives are expensive and hard to come by. The old PC is not an ideal solution. Besides, I'm looking for something small, quiet, and inconspicuous.

I am intrigued by the comments about how raid 1 stinks and what kind of a load the print server would have on performance. Please explain? smallnetbuilder.com did not document any issues.

What's got me worried is the memory (RAM) installed on these boxes. I'm planning to run a video streaming service to serve videos that are about 400MB each, stream audio, and connect a printer to the device to serve that up. There will be at most 4 concurrent connections at once.

Thanks again.

 

[aceO07]

You can definitely find reviews on the Synology options. I have a DS411+ and it's not slow, but it's also quite a bit more expensive than the 211.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31353-new-to-the-charts-synology-ds211

Synology also have a forum that might be useful to see if other people had problems streaming with the 211. http://forum.synology.com/enu/index.php

 

[RaiderJ]

I think you should be able to use one of those devices you listed to do RAID and act as a print server, but the DLNA might be the tricky part. If you were to just send the data over the network to a video player you might be fine, but for a weaker NAS you're probably asking a bit much.

 

[Anubis]

i use 2 Thecus N7700+ at work, while they are enterprise NAS devices they are amazing. yet expensive, I run them in raid 6. full of 1.5 TB drives

Thecus does sell consumer SHSO items as well and id imagin their quaility extends down to those as well. Would be worth looking into

 

[VorpalBunny]

Yeah the Thecus consumer line is a bit more expensive, but I'm seeing a trend in hardware. For that reason, I feel the added memory will come in handy. So I guess that rules out the 211j series. And as far as capability goes and simplicity, it looks like the 211 has it. The DNS-325 would probably work too except it would be more work to jailbreak it and mess around to bring it up to snuff with the 211.

Thanks for the advice all.

 

[Jimmah]

+1 for freenas