High performing NAS with media serving?

IAmATeaf · 8 Sep 2009 at 17:34

Have a Lacie 1Tb NAS with built in media server at the mo that I use for backups and streaming to the PS3.

Problem is that it's almost full and slow as hell when copying data to it, connected via Gigabit and I get around 6-9MBs transfer rates.

Can anybody suggest a replacement which would have a larger capacity, say expandable to say 7.5Tb, which would also be speedier and have media serving builtin?

Firegod · 8 Sep 2009 at 17:52

I don't own one myself, but I've been looking at the QNAP stuff.

Guru3d have a review of the TS-439 Pro.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/qnap-ts439-pro-turbo-nas-review-test/

Hope that helps.

Tomsk · 8 Sep 2009 at 18:22

Cheapest option is to build your own Linux based PC server.
Start from <£250.00 inc 1TB and you could add the 1TB from your Lacie.
Even motherboard gigabit network adaptors will get >90MB/sec.

Venares · 8 Sep 2009 at 21:49

What Tomsk said.
I would seriously take a look at unRAID.
It runs off a USB stick on standard pc hardware and can scale upto 16 (beta will do 22) drives currently

IAmATeaf · 8 Sep 2009 at 22:52

Firegod said:
I don't own one myself, but I've been looking at the QNAP stuff.

Guru3d have a review of the TS-439 Pro.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/qnap-ts439-pro-turbo-nas-review-test/

Hope that helps.

Read the review, then saw the price, woah, £700+ for the unit plus drives :eek:

Zarf · 9 Sep 2009 at 05:14

building yourself a server is the cheapest and highest performing option, plenty of free linux distros out there that'll do it - Freenas and Openfiler are free and are meant to be good. I went the windows route with a hardware RAID controller (Perc 5/i, can be had quite cheap second hand)

Cost me a few hundred initially to build - Antec 900 case, hotswap drive bays, Athlon X2 CPU, but Performance wise I get around 500MB/s Reads and Writes to the 8 Drive RAID5 array on the server itself (great for PAR2 checks), and manage a shade under 100MB/s over gigabit.
I have no problems streaming high def content to multiple PC's around the house simultaniously.

derkaderka · 9 Sep 2009 at 13:51

I have a Qnap 409 , and its amazing , I use it share media to all the PC's in the house
Its moves data about a LOT faster than any other stand alone NAS
Has upgrade ability (runs linux) , has web , ftp , apple shares
I use mine to auto download nzb's from tvnzb.com and grab tv shows for me
cant rate it enough

You can build a PC to do that same for a lower cost , but it will cost more to run in electricity costs in long run.

daz · 9 Sep 2009 at 14:24

Zarf said:
but Performance wise I get around 500MB/s Reads and Writes to the 8 Drive RAID5 array on the server itself

500MB/s on an 8 disk SATA RAID5 array.... lol.

Tomsk · 9 Sep 2009 at 15:23

derkaderka said:
You can build a PC to do that same for a lower cost , but it will cost more to run in electricity costs in long run.

My 10 disk WHS server typically consumes ~120W.
It's not on 24/7 as I don't need it when I'm sleeping or when I'm at work

dustofnations · 9 Sep 2009 at 15:30

My suggestion would be a Synology device like this http://www.synology.com/enu/products/index.php

One of Synology's greatest features is that they continually upgrade the firmware. Some of the models they released about 6 years ago they still release firmware updates for that are similar/identical to those of the newest hardware releases.

Look on xbitlabs and ananadtech and you'll see the Syno devices are some of the fastest and best they'd come across

They have a range of products from ~1TB up to ~10TB by the looks of it

derkaderka · 9 Sep 2009 at 20:09

Tomsk said:
My 10 disk WHS server typically consumes ~120W.
It's not on 24/7 as I don't need it when I'm sleeping or when I'm at work

Mine uses 40W ish , but its on all the time (most USA tv shows nzb's are released in the middle of the night - so it auto grabs them for me)
It does spool the discs down after 5 mins of inactivity which I do like

Daegan · 9 Sep 2009 at 20:23

I get about 55MB/s out of my FreeNAS box built from old parts, could build something similar with new components for £100 plus storage. Doesn't matter what I do with the drives, limiting factor is the LAN interface (onboard Realtek).