Which NAS Box to get??

[lxskllr]

I'm with the server camp also. If you go with a dedicated NAS, make sure it doesn't use a proprietary file format. You could end up screwed if the box goes bad, and you have to retrieve your data.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: JeffABCD
I read somewhere that the NAS solutions are preferred as they are actually designed to run 24/7 and handle simultaneous multi requests from several sources, and offer a better throughput than let's say my current PC which has an IDE disk (2gb of DDR running at seemingly 400mhz) with an AMD Athlon XP 3200 (runs at 2.19ghz not over clocked) on an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe mobo, with 760 Gb storage (all IDE) at my disposal on my current machine.

Sure, anyone can make claims for this or that, but to have such a broad claim be right is next to impossible. There is no such simple rule. More specifically, your hardware is still much faster than the vast majority of consumer NAS boxes, and as you could install a similar NAS distribution yourself, that argument is not credible.

Claims about 24/7 power consumption could be valid, but these can be significantly mitigated with automatic sleep modes and wake on LAN, or simply with some turn off and on discipline.

The day of socket A has gone, but your setup was one of the best, and at the leading edge of its time. It has some limitations from a modern perspective -- specifically, you only have 2 SATA slots, and they're on the PCI bus, and you don't have the ability to add a PCIe controller, so additional drives would potentially further crowd the PCI bus which is shared with the gigabit NIC.

However: (1) You have a 10/100 network, and until you upgrade it to gigabit, performance is a non-issue, as you're limited by the network, not at all the rest of the hardware. (2) If/when you upgrade to a gigabit network, you can still get 2-3x the performance of a 10/100 network and be at least as fast as the majority of consumer NAS boxes.

Originally posted by: JeffABCD
If I were to use this as a server / workstation server, could I do that on XP Pro or better to use as server alone on Win 2K server? I am only suggesting these 2 as I dont have other versions of windows to use as a server.

XP Pro and Server 2000 are very similar in many respects, and not very different from a file sharing perspective. Unless you have some important software which doesn't run on W2K, I suggest using Server 2000 as the server. I don't see it making a big difference one way or the other for basic home file sharing. If you want to do more media-related processing on the machine as well, then it might be advantageous to use XP, as vendors sometimes have better support for it.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: JeffABCD
Madwand1,

Many thanks for your time on this.

I read somewhere that the NAS solutions are preferred as they are actually designed to run 24/7 and handle simultaneous multi requests from several sources

You mean to say that they are market this way. Unfortunately in the last decade Marketing took over Technology.

Standalone NAS' are designed to do what it claimed the way Wireless designed to yield functional 300 feet indoor and 1200 feet outdoor.

The Marketing approach also forced many Review sites to change. Their choice of Hardware and the wording of their reports are more marketing oriented rather than objective technology, and their contact with Vendor are through Marketing people, and Not anymore through the technical people.

Standalone NAS' are small computers that uses very old CPUs (or new ones with comparable low power, many are 486 CPU level). The OS is their firmware, and in all of them it is based on sloppy use of open source, and thus not fully compatible with Windows, and can not be formatted with NTFS.

None of the sub $1000 standalone NAS' does better than a P-III 1GHz with modern SATA drive.

Windows 2000 is very good OS to use unless One needs none direct related to NAS features that are Not available in Win 2000.

The only short coming of a computer acting as NAS is the extra use of electricity.

If this is a real concern, then building an Intel ATOM computer can brink the Electrical consumption close to standalone NAS.

Sub $1000 Standalone NAS' address the market of Entry Level users that have little actual understanding of the technology and humble needs that are Not depending on speed and flexibility (it is perfectly OK to have such Market segment).

However we having here a discussion on one of the top Enthusiasts Forums. So let the truth be truth .