Spec me a NAS..

..please, because I know nothing about them.

Currently I am running my desktop PC 24x7 so I have access to content via wired DLNA in 2 LED panels in other rooms of the house, and in one of them I have an eeebox which I only turn on when I need it. (The Wife prefers the DLNA as its very easy to find what she needs so I need to keep that option)

Currently I have 4TB worth of WD Mybooks on my desk and its a bit silly now, so I would rather have everything on one device and be able to access it from my TVs or HTPC without turning my desktop on, and if the Desktop fails, as it might, I can still keep the family entertained.

The NAS needs to have DLNA, at least 8TB storage, capable of running utorrent would be nice.. but not essential.. and able to make regular backups from my desktop.

Above all.. it needs to be easy to use!

I have looked around my local stores and could only find these options..

Seagate NAS400 8 or 12TB
iOmega Storcentre ix4-200d
Netgear Ultra4

They all seem to have DLNA, but are they more small business than Media storage?

Budget: max of around 800 of your English pounds. But less would be preferred if it ticks all the boxes.

I do have limited options locally but if there is something that suits me perfectly I can always get it shipped.

Thanks in advance guys

Look at the HP microserver its £150 after cashback and is probably your best bet - you can put your current hds inside and buy some more disks for storage.

Big thread on it over in Servers forum

Build one yourself

I have a qnap 409 and its great but I could have built something
much better and more flexible and Cheaper IF I had of just built a NAS PC
using cheap parts.

At least half your budget will be on drives currently, given the crazy prices, unless you can open up your externals.

I'd build something yourself thats Fusion based and then install Windows Home Server 2011 on it and go with a Matx board with lots of Sata ports
You're not limited on hard drives that way and can plug in all your External drives easily until drive prices come down cheap enough again to warrant putting internal drives in and then use the MyBooks for back ups.

Could build something for about £250 initially and then add drives at a later date.

How much room do you have to store it? Do you need a very small case or would a mid sized tower be ok?

Thanks for the input guys, I was actually surprised by how expensive these were so your suggestions are very interesting. I have no experience with servers but will look into that route, maybe can even find a used one and upgrade it.

I'll check around and post some ideas on whats available tomorrow.

I am a bit limited on space though and have a toddler who likes pressing buttons, so I need to find something small and quiet enough to put on my desk.

cheers

Server guy at work said anything qnap or buffalo. Be careful when building yourself... The off the shelf solutions use like 30w under stress, which is basically just the hdds and a few watts idle. Keep that in mind.

sHo0sH said:

Look at the HP microserver its £150 after cashback and is probably your best bet - you can put your current hds inside and buy some more disks for storage.

Big thread on it over in Servers forum

Click to expand...

+1 this is the best option but with HDD prices so high atm it might be worth waiting or seeing if you can open the externals.

Yes, thanks. I am going to look into that HP.. just need to go to the computer mall and check all the shops there.
I was there yesterday and got quoted 110gbp for a 2TB HDD.. which seems ok, and thats before playing the neighbouring shops off against each other and haggling

If I open up the Mybooks do you think ill find a conventional internal HDD or will I just break it?

I would go synology or qnap.
thats what Im planning.

sHo0sH said:

Look at the HP microserver its £150 after cashback and is probably your best bet - you can put your current hds inside and buy some more disks for storage.

Big thread on it over in Servers forum

Click to expand...

This is what I did. I was going to go Synology but this is so much cheaper, higher performance and higher capacity. After a lot of reading, I would suggest:

- Claim your £100 cash back cheque from HP
- Run 8GB RAM (About £40)
- Boot from a USB drive (The microserver has internal USB slot for this purpose)
- Convert the optical bay to fit a 5th HDD
- Run FreeNAS
- Run ZFS RAIDz1

That will give you an awesome NAS that will be far cheaper than the off-the-shelf offerings.

As I'm sure you're aware, HDD are very expensive at the moment so you probably want to use your current disks while you wait for the costs to come down.

Double post.

I have to agree with the microserver route. These things are ridiculously cheap! very powerful and very versatile. I really dont understand how anyone would want an off the shelf Nas when you can get a hp microserver for £150 after rebate. You can have up to 6 hard drives in these things. That along with the fact you can upgrade the ram and it has a dual core processor make for a powerful custom nas or homeserver. They can max out a gigabit network easily allowing for transfer speeds of around 100mb a second that you would likely not get with a off the shelf nas.

I have two of these microservers, each with 5 x 2tb hard drives. Both are running unraid. Im really impressed with them and wouldn't consider anything else. It took me about 30 minutes to install unraid to a usb stick and then place that stick in the internal usb port so that it is hidden. In all these are very easy to set up, cheap and also powerful.

I've got a Qnap TS-412

Great bit of kit. If only hard drive prices were the same now as what they were a few months ago !

Anything from synology that matches your space requiments and budget. I think all have built in DLNA etc.

Phill4321 said:

I have two of these microservers, each with 5 x 2tb hard drives. Both are running unraid. Im really impressed with them and wouldn't consider anything else. It took me about 30 minutes to install unraid to a usb stick and then place that stick in the internal usb port so that it is hidden. In all these are very easy to set up, cheap and also powerful.

Click to expand...

This looks like exactly what I have been looking for!!
Would you mind explaining a little more about installing the unraid from the usb stick if possible, as I have no idea on when it comes to server stuff Is it easy to do for a noob?
I presumably, put my internal hdd's in this server (sata 2TB each up to 5?), then plug this server into my router/network and it is all distributed around the house/network perfectly?
What's this 150 cash back thing also?

Clipsey said:

This looks like exactly what I have been looking for!!
Would you mind explaining a little more about installing the unraid from the usb stick if possible, as I have no idea on when it comes to server stuff Is it easy to do for a noob?
I presumably, put my internal hdd's in this server (sata 2TB each up to 5?), then plug this server into my router/network and it is all distributed around the house/network perfectly?
What's this 150 cash back thing also?

Click to expand...

Hi mate, Its very easy to do. I'm not very knowledgeable with server's myself. But it didnt take long. this was my first time doing something like this myself. The key thing is to take your time and not rush. Here are the links for what to do with installing unraid. That shows you step by step how to install unraid and then set it up when you have it running.

Basically all you do is download all the unraid files from their website, place them on the usb stick. Then place the usb stick in the microserver. It will then boot from the stick. You set up the microserver through a web browser on another computer. You will then be able to access the server through the network section on windows where you can just place files and access them anytime. Thats the rundown of it. That link will show you how to install and get it running.

The microserver accepts four 3.5" hard drives in the internal cold swap bay but you can also get a hot swap bay for the cdrom tray at the top allowing for 5 hard drives in total. With the new unraid beta you can have support for 3tb hard drives and bigger apparently. As you mentioned, just plug this microserver into your router/ network and it shows up for access to any computer. I use mine for bluray rips that I share around the house. My htpc and brothers computers can stream these full rips with ease over my network.

So for this set up you will need:-

. A hp microserver

. One small usb stick to place inside the microserver, I use a Kingston DataTraveler 108 4GB USB Flash Drive. You can google that, it only cost £4.90 and its really small, perfect for fitting inside.

. A sata cable that allows for the fifth drive internally, one thats 50 cm should be fine. Also it should be a right angled SATA to straight SATA cable. This allows for easier installation.

. A Molex to SATA power connector, this allows power to the fifth drive.

. Star tech 5.25in Trayless Hot Swap Mobile Rack for 3.5in Hard Drive - this will allow for the fifth hard drive to be added in the cdrom drive slot. Below is what it looks like. I will trust you a link to where you can buy this for £14.


And I think thats it. The link that I will trust you also sell the microservers, for £250, but offer a £100 rebate promotion that you can apply for. You can email the rebate as well, which will save you time. The email is [email protected]

They are very professional and helpful whilst dealing with the rebate. I also have more links for you below about the microserver.

. This guy gives a run down on how to put it all together

. This is a big thread on OCUK about the server

. And this is how to install unraid

The good thing about unraid is that if one drive fails you still have all your data intact. Also if two drives fail, then you only lose the data from one drive instead of losing a whole array. If you want to upgrade with a bigger drive, then just stop the array. Shut the server down, take out a drive and replace with new one. Switch back on an let unraid rebuild the array with the bigger drive. Its a very versatile and solid os. Obviously you dont have to use unraid though. You can also use windows home server or even freenas if you wish. I hope this post helps. Any more questions then please ask or post in the ocuk thread posted above. Theres loads of people who will help you out

Phil, that is awesome! Thank you for posting that information. It certainly does look like exactly what I need as my HTPC is getting extremely full and I want to build/buy a server. Looks like this will do everything I need and have more than enough potential for extra space
One question:
If you have it setup as raid and say you have 2 x 2TB drives. They back each other up correct? Kind of like a mirror image? If you have unraid, they don't back each other up and you have the full 4TB of storage?

There is some excellent info in this thread now, thanks all. and particularly to Phil and Razor for the idiots guide I cant believe I was considering an 800 quid NAS when this looks like a far better solution from all angles. I dont mind learning something new and experimenting if its going to save cash and be scale-able.

n.b I am probably more noob at this than Clipsey, so lets keep each other updated on our progress here

cheers

Clipsey said:

Phil, that is awesome! Thank you for posting that information. It certainly does look like exactly what I need as my HTPC is getting extremely full and I want to build/buy a server. Looks like this will do everything I need and have more than enough potential for extra space
One question:
If you have it setup as raid and say you have 2 x 2TB drives. They back each other up correct? Kind of like a mirror image? If you have unraid, they don't back each other up and you have the full 4TB of storage?

Click to expand...

If you used another os such as freenas then yes you could have a raid 1 set up allowing for 1 x 2tb drive for redundancy and then leaving you with 2tb for data.

But with unraid, 1 drive would be what is called the parity drive, which is used for redundancy, the other drives in your array are all for storage. For example, I myself have 5 x 2 tb hard drives in my microservers. 1 drive is for redundancy, and the other four are all for data. That leaves me with 8tb out of 10 that I can use for storage space. If one drive fails, then I insert a new one to replace the failed drive and let the array rebuild itself. If one drive fails then I also still have access to my data and I can still use everything as normal and nothing is lost.

Now, if 2 drive's fail then you will probably lose the data from both drives, but no more than that. With a raid array, if 2 or more drives fail, you lose all your data. Personally I would hate that to happen to me. I would rather lose some data than all of it. The only thing to remember with unraid is, the size of the parity disk must be equal to or larger than the largest data drive. Also the only downside to unraid is the fact that it is not the fastest in terms of transfer speeds. I get speeds of 60mb a second which I find acceptable and obviously more than enough for streaming bluray rips.

What I really like about unraid is the fact you can add hard drives as you go along, you could start with your two, and then just add more drive's as you need more. Also you can have different drives of different size's in you array as long as they are not bigger than the parity drive. The os is dead easy to use over a web browser and there is not much difficulty involved for novices like myself.

Its obviously worth bearing in mind that there are other os's to run, and each will have its pro's and con's.