NAS Box

[antoeknee]

One thing that I now need to think about is improving my storage and just wondering if anyone has a NAS box and would recommend it?

Really looking for a 4 bay device.

[George Bear]

Re: NAS Box

http://www.netgear.co.uk/home/produc...D4000.aspx#two

[Norman]

Re: NAS Box

Netgear is good stuff but I recently found a much better value option in QNAP. I needed something to replace a 4 bay Buffalo Terrastation and thought the QNAP range offered the best VFM. I bought a TS-412 and added 4 X 2gb drives to give me a 6 gb RAID5 array. This runs a web server to enable me to develop my web-site(s) before uploading to the live system. It also holds all my music and is a media server (Twonky) and is fast enough to serve my music to any connected player device.

[DrJon]

Re: NAS Box

I have a Qnap TS419P+ and am generally happy with it. I believe its been superseded.

The things I considered when buying it were:
(1) I was looking for a 4-bay system so I could do RAID-5 and hence not lose anything on a single drive failure.
(2) I wanted low power consumption as it would be on 24/7.
(3) I wanted a quiet one, many aren't.
(4) I wanted decent performance, as points 2+3 tend to lead to slower processors and so less speed.
(5) I wanted two Gigabit Ethernet ports plus eSATA.
(6) I wanted the price to be somewhat reasonable (which also impacts #4).

I found these guys(/gals) reviews the most useful:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/bar/5-r5-filecopy-write

Also if you buy one without drives (as I did) check which are supported beforehand. Firstly you want a good assortment (and ideally some quiet/low power/fairly cheap ones) and secondly you want support for 3TB+ drives (which are different to 2TB and below due to the sector size changing from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes). Do use tested/supported drives as otherwise it might end badly. Oh, and I'm using the EXT4 filesystem.

Plus you want to think about how to back it up (unless you are using it just to back stuff up). I have 4x2TB drives in the NAS (so 6TB capacity) and an Icy Dock MB662US-2S box with 2x3TB drives (in BIG mode, formatted NTFS) I use to back the NAS up, connected via eSATA (but only when backing up, it's elsewhere otherwise).

John

P.S. If you plan to use SSL to access it via the internet you might be better off looking at Synology, as Qnap are a bit behind the times in their SSL version (although an update is promised, one day).

P.P.S. Boxes taking 3.5" drives are a better bet than 2.5" ones as the drives come in larger capacities and are cheaper.

P.P.P.S. The updated Qnaps are these:

http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?lang=en&sn=822&c=351&sc=514&t=522&n=18376

http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?lang=en&sn=822&c=351&sc=514&t=522&n=18377

Handy-Dandy comparison table:

http://www.qnap.com/static/products/comparison/All_NAS.php

(Choose the "Home and SOHO" Tab.)

[antoeknee]

Re: NAS Box

Thanks for quick replies guys. Interestingly been looking at the Qnap kit.

Feel I need to do a bit more research.

[mikep]

Re: NAS Box

Feel I need to do a bit more research.

I feel like I need a degree to understand what you're all talking about!
QNAP/eSata/NTFS/RAID5/single fail-over/giga-flop dubry-what-sit!
This is still a photography forum, isn't it?

For the record, I have a USB external drive I use to backup stuff. I plug it in, and copy the stuff I want backed up. Simples!

Mike

[MX5]

Re: NAS Box

The beauty of a NAS is that many devices can access it ... your laptop, smartphone, tablet, desktop PC ... with just a WiFi or an Ethernet wired connection. Or I can plug USB HDDs into my Router and access them (even from the outside world via a secure connection should I wish).