NAS solutions?

[waruta]

I've been looking at a small(ish) NAS solution for the office recently, we only need something like a 2x2TB in mirror RAID config for backup and sharing purposes. ReadyNAS looked like the perfect option until I read some of the reviews on (famous online retailer), and it looked pretty bad.

Anyone else have any suggestions on a solution under $600? Diskless is ok also, I'll just buy 2 WD SATA600 2TB drives for 10,000yen a piece.

[Sarutaro]

Personally, I use one one Buffalo LS-XHL NAS. To that I have connected a Buffalo USB hard drive and set the LS to copy itself to the USB drive every night at 3 a.m.. Works like a charm. and costs around 20000 yen all together.

[waruta]

Wuz searching all day on teh internetz:

Synology looks like a winner. especially as their newer OS and DS212 line is both affordable and easy to use.

[Tsuru]

Build it yourself from an old dualcore box with Linux, RAID, gigabit ethernet, Samba and MiniDLNA and stuff it with as many drives as you can.

I had a Synology, but I found it far too slow to handle more than one thing at once, so my advice is a custom DIY-fileserver.

[Coligny]

Build it yourself from an old dualcore box with Linux, RAID, gigabit ethernet, Samba and MiniDLNA and stuff it with as many drives as you can.

I had a Synology, but I found it far too slow to handle more than one thing at once, so my advice is a custom DIY-fileserver.

And an I7 920 and 12GB of ram and intel dual port gigabit cards and multiple sata expanders and kvm virtual servers and several LVM on raid 5 and 6... And 'ohhh shit, I used Ubuntu server instead of Cent OS' and... (don't ask me aboot my electric bill, or the budget needed to renew the battery banks in the back up UPS or the price for the Antec super ventilated box to put that mess in)

You can buy a GTR R35 and be monstruously fast for a lot of money.
Or a GTR R34 second hand, tune the sh1t out of hit spend your life under the hood.
Or... buy a Nissan March 'appliance' and go everyday to the supermaket with it never even checking oil once...

I think people searching for a NAS are more Nissan March type customers... For which even a (*) Buffalo Router running OpenWRT and with a USB HD plugged on the side would be enough but out of question because of the tinkering needed.

(*)BTW this is also a real -energy tight- solution... Track a buffalo router with a USB2 port put OPENWRT and the usb mass storage extension (with or without virtual Raid support) and be happy...

[waruta]

And an I7 920 and 12GB of ram and intel dual port gigabit cards and multiple sata expanders and kvm virtual servers and several LVM on raid 5 and 6... And 'ohhh shit, I used Ubuntu server instead of Cent OS' and... (don't ask me aboot my electric bill, or the budget needed to renew the battery banks in the back up UPS or the price for the Antec super ventilated box to put that mess in)

You can buy a GTR R35 and be monstruously fast for a lot of money.
Or a GTR R34 second hand, tune the sh1t out of hit spend your life under the hood.
Or... buy a Nissan March 'appliance' and go everyday to the supermaket with it never even checking oil once...

I think people searching for a NAS are more Nissan March type customers... For which even a (*) Buffalo Router running OpenWRT and with a USB HD plugged on the side would be enough but out of question because of the tinkering needed.

(*)BTW this is also a real -energy tight- solution... Track a buffalo router with a USB2 port put OPENWRT and the usb mass storage extension (with or without virtual Raid support) and be happy...

I can agree with both Tsuru and Colig, if I was planning to hang around and admin the system everytime anyone so much as accidentally-on purpose deleted a file, then I would definitely build up a antec 900 (have a spare lying around) with 8 HDD and use it as a fileserver, but at the moment, the Win XP server/desktop is at it's limit and I really don't feel like reinstalling XP and making nice-nice with 3 different OS's again while remembering 15 different people's IP addresses and their permissions.

*edit* plus I don't wanna mess around with Linux or Ubuntu or anything even remotely close when all the users are doing is moving MS Office files around.....

One of the main reasons of going with Synology/NAS solutions is that our freelance/out of Tokyo ppl can access it anytime without having a desktop and 700 watts on all the time. The DS212 uses 17.5 watts with both HDD active on RAID 1, and something like 4 watts on standby. Also can make a sleep schedule which is nice.

Plus, buying a cheapo mobo, dualcore, ethernet card etc...etc... adds up in the end to more than what the Synology and 2 WD x 2TB HDD would cost, so in the end, maybe it would be a Nissan March, but it'll be a Nismo March

[gkanai]

This is a very good NAS.

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/synology-diskstation-ds211/

[gaijinpunch]

Build it yourself from an old dualcore box with Linux, RAID, gigabit ethernet, Samba and MiniDLNA and stuff it with as many drives as you can.

I had a Synology, but I found it far too slow to handle more than one thing at once, so my advice is a custom DIY-fileserver.

This. I have found NAS devices suck massive cock. Just build a cheap Linux server... the only problem is is that SAMBA/CIFS sucks donkey balls in terms of performance, and I'm pretty sure NFS support on Windows is shit.