Recommend me a NAS box

[lost in espace]

I want to start ripping DVD's to a mirrored NAS box, will also stick on photos and mp3's streamed to either an Xbox or PS3.

Any recommendations, thinking 750mb/1tb of mirrored storage.

[evosticks]

I've got one of these with a couple of 500Gb discs....

http://www.qnapstore.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&...

TwonkyMedia does the magic sharing media to the 360. It's a cracking bit of kit and I can highly recommend it. The only chink in its armour is the decidedly st bittorrent client which everyone on the qnap forums is complaining about.

[bigdods]

I have a 1TB WD Worldbook NAS, single drive but cheap (£120ish) and works ok. Transfer rates arent brilliant (IIRC 3 or 4 meg a second) but does the job. Took quite a few hours for the initial upload from my PC due to the speed but once thats done its fine.

The Mirrored version with 2 x 1TB disks is ~£300 inc vat from here http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136041

Being the cheapskate that I am (and as I already have a 1TB single disk version) I'm going to pick up another 1TB version then backup one to the other occasionally.

[Shadytree]

I'm just about to pull the trigger on one of these.

Tranquil SQA-5H

Only read good reports. Any one got one or use Tranquil products ?

[Plotloss]

Shadytree said:

I'm just about to pull the trigger on one of these.

Tranquil SQA-5H

Only read good reports. Any one got one or use Tranquil products ?

Not seen the Drobo?

Thats worth looking at.

[Shadytree]

Plotloss said:

Shadytree said:

I'm just about to pull the trigger on one of these.

Tranquil SQA-5H

Only read good reports. Any one got one or use Tranquil products ?

Not seen the Drobo?

Thats worth looking at.

Will take a look mate. What's funky about it ?

[onlynik]

I've got one of these.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142742

1.5 tb raid 5

[Plotloss]

Shadytree said:

Plotloss said:

Shadytree said:

I'm just about to pull the trigger on one of these.

Tranquil SQA-5H

Only read good reports. Any one got one or use Tranquil products ?

Not seen the Drobo?

Thats worth looking at.

Will take a look mate. What's funky about it ?

Its got some very clever internal processing, disks can be all different sizes/makes and still be added to the array and coped with.

There is a video on the site thats interesting viewing.

[Munter]

I've got myself one of these and bunged 2x500GB drives in it (I think...might have been 2 x 1TB... cant rememeber now)

Anyway it does all sorts of stuff I've never got around to using except the printer sharing, which works a treat.

Edit: err..the link would be handy I guess... http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS207/index.p...

Edited by Munter on Friday 9th January 13:12

Edited by Munter on Friday 9th January 13:14

[Shadytree]

Plotloss said:

Shadytree said:

Plotloss said:

Shadytree said:

I'm just about to pull the trigger on one of these.

Tranquil SQA-5H

Only read good reports. Any one got one or use Tranquil products ?

Not seen the Drobo?

Thats worth looking at.

Will take a look mate. What's funky about it ?

Its got some very clever internal processing, disks can be all different sizes/makes and still be added to the array and coped with.

There is a video on the site thats interesting viewing.

looks a good product for the not technically sophistcated. Also very clever protection against HD failures. Don't see why it needs the Droboshare to access a network, but guess that's only a small thing.

Will read on !

[Plotloss]

Drobo on its own isnt a NAS box, its an external USB drive.

Droboshare gives an ethernet interface so it can be used as a NAS

[Shadytree]

Plotloss said:

Drobo on its own isnt a NAS box, its an external USB drive.

Droboshare gives an ethernet interface so it can be used as a NAS

Told you I wasn't technically sophisticated !

So would you say this is better than WHS or an alternative concept ?

[trooperiziz]

Shadytree said:

Plotloss said:

Shadytree said:

Plotloss said:

Shadytree said:

I'm just about to pull the trigger on one of these.

Tranquil SQA-5H

Only read good reports. Any one got one or use Tranquil products ?

Not seen the Drobo?

Thats worth looking at.

Will take a look mate. What's funky about it ?

Its got some very clever internal processing, disks can be all different sizes/makes and still be added to the array and coped with.

There is a video on the site thats interesting viewing.

looks a good product for the not technically sophistcated. Also very clever protection against HD failures. Don't see why it needs the Droboshare to access a network, but guess that's only a small thing.

Will read on !

The Drobo itself doesn't have any networking, it just connects via USB or FW to a PC. So you have to have your PC on if you want to share the disk to other machines on the network.

I have a Drobo and "it just works" no worries about configuration or anything technical, but it doesn't do anything you couldn't do with a RAID5 setup, as I understand it.
The another annoying thing is that the created Drobo disks you see on the PC can only be 2TB in size (if you want it to be compatible with multiple OS's) so if you have more storage capacity than that in it, you end up with two drives.

[Plotloss]

Depends what you want.

If you want a flexbile NAS with some great RAID/Hotswap features its probably the best one on the market.

If you want a NAS with some extended features such as Torrent client or a Squeezebox server then the QNap boxes are hard to beat.

If you want a backup server with extended remote access functionality then a WHS box is probably the best choice.

[ukwill]

I have a 2x500gb Netgear ReadyNAS Duo (the 2nd 500gb disk was free as part of the bundle).

Took about 10mins to get up and going and has a decent BT client built in (amongst other things). I use it for all types of storage including it being the music library for my Sonos.

I'm waiting for N-draft to be finalised before I get a gig-switch/adsl router all-in-1 jobbie, as right now there is nothing worth buying.

[chr15b]

i have a thecus n3200, brilliant device, also does scheduled downloads (incl bittorrent) and supports modules such as twonkymedia for media streaming.

supports various levels of raid

[annodomini2]

There's also Freenas if you have some old computer bits lying around. Takes up more space and uses more power, but easily upgradable.

www.freenas.org

[Shadytree]

Plotloss said:

Depends what you want.

If you want a flexbile NAS with some great RAID/Hotswap features its probably the best one on the market.

If you want a NAS with some extended features such as Torrent client or a Squeezebox server then the QNap boxes are hard to beat.

If you want a backup server with extended remote access functionality then a WHS box is probably the best choice.

Stream 1080 HD media via Ethernet D-Lan to a Media Player, itunes music server and RAW photography file dump basically.

Reading the DROBO review on PCPRO, they bring into question the USB speed over Drobo Share, so that might not be ideal for my media streaming purposes.

I'm looking at the NetGear ReadyNAS and Tranquil stuff as well.

Edited by Shadytree on Friday 9th January 13:43

[Plotloss]

QNap might be the best choice for you then.

Something like the TS-409

[Shadytree]

Plotloss said:

QNap might be the best choice for you then.

Something like the TS-409

The newer TS-509 looks interesting. cheers for the heads up, more reading to do.