Advice on a new simple NAS Device please..

samjolly

samjolly

samjolly

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6 Oct 2008
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Hi,

I would be interested in your views on NAS devices. I am proposing to get a new Gigabit NAS device for Home/SOHO use. This will connect directly with the router and mainly used for robust backup. I will probably go for about 1TB storage.

I was thinking of going for something like the Western Digital "MyBook", but I have since started to think about buying just an enclosure like the "Icy Box IB-NAS4220-B Ethernet NAS Enclosure" and putting 2 Seagate Barracuda HDDs in. My budget is really around the £140 or less mark...

Finally it would be good if the unit ran quietly and cool, since it will proabably go into a bedroom and I do not want it sounding liver a server room !!!

Finally, Finally, can some of these units operate via WiFi. The enclosure that I mention has a USB slot so perhaps one could put in a WiFi stick...?? Although it may not be a brilliant idea due to the slow speed of transfer.

Any wisdom appreciated...

Thanks in advance,

Sam
 
If you get a proper NAS device (not external USB drive) and connect it to a wireless router then it will be available over WiFi too.

Just be warned that read/write speeds on NAS devices are quite slow but should be ok for incremental backups and single-user steaming.
 
Hi Imy,

Yes of course the NAS will be available over Wifi..... That was a "Doh" on my part !!

What is your view on using a simple LAN connected external HDD (type, model recommendation welcome ) versus a proper NAS such as the Icebox? I was hoping to get gigabit speeds to speed up file transfer - Wifi Excepted since this will be limited to 54MB/s

Thanks,

Sam
 
A networked computer with a USB hard drive attached will be quicker than a dedicated NAS device.

I don't think you can connect an external USB drive to a LAN without the aide of either a PC (which in turn is connected to the LAN) or one of those rare home routers which have USB ports designed specifically for external HDD's. For the latter I have no idea regarding performance.

Do you have a PC that you could leave on?
 
Yes I have an old Pentium 4 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM PC. I guess I turn it into a file server with Linux/Samba or a version of windows...

I guess I was concerned about leaving on a tower which may consume quite a bit of electricity (I may be paranoid here..!!) and look unsightly(although I could hide it).

I got thinking about a NAS cos it was neater. Actually I was surprised to hear that its performance was far less than say a PC since you are still dealing with Gigabit ethernet. So why is the performance poor...

Ironically I am building a M-Atx Silverstone Sugo based system for portable server testing... complete with Q66 Processor and 8GB of RAM... Now that would make for a good NAS !!

Thanks for your comments... Really appreciated.

Sam
 
Just been reading about how to be energy efficient with PCs and the advice was to use sleep mode. Is this wise with a file server? Can one wake it up when doing a save or something? I may be ignorant here, as I so do not use sleep mode on PCs just on laptops and then you have to press to the "on" button to wake it up.

Sam
 
Hi Sam,

I cant offer any advice on a NAS but I have created a home server using a pentium M cpu for its low power efficiency. My PC consumes 20w idle and about 35 on load with an efficient psu and 1tb HD. I also make use of the sleep function and WOL. Basically any as soon as any media PC requests a movie/mp3 it wakes the server.

You can build something like this quite cheap especially now atom boards are available for £40-60

Any questions just shout.
 
Ninja,

Thanks for your comments. Interesting Idea. What were the components for this very cost effective unit?

Yes, having discovered WOL, I think this will be very useful.

Sam
 
samjolly said:
Yes I have an old Pentium 4 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM PC. I guess I turn it into a file server with Linux/Samba or a version of windows...
Click to expand...

That spec sounds ideal, especially if used with a stripped down unix OS.

samjolly said:
I guess I was concerned about leaving on a tower which may consume quite a bit of electricity (I may be paranoid here..!!) and look unsightly(although I could hide it).
Click to expand...

The size of the case has no effect on power draw, it's the components inside and power management features (in BIOS and OS) which determine that.

samjolly said:
I got thinking about a NAS cos it was neater.
Click to expand...

Yep, everyone wants one for the same reasons. On paper they look like fantastic solutions.

samjolly said:
Actually I was surprised to hear that its performance was far less than say a PC since you are still dealing with Gigabit ethernet. So why is the performance poor...
Click to expand...

Yeah I can't quite work it out myself. Some of the cheaper ones, fair enough they got poor processing power but there are £400-£500 ones with Pentium CPU's in and are still very poor.

samjolly said:
Ironically I am building a M-Atx Silverstone Sugo based system for portable server testing... complete with Q66 Processor and 8GB of RAM... Now that would make for a good NAS !!
Click to expand...

Bit overkill - but you know that already!

If you go with that P4 2.4GHz kit you got, it might be worth getting a new case (for better aesthetics and smaller size), a more power efficient PSU and silent cooling and fans.

If building from scratch then the new dual-core Atoms look great for this kind of thing.
 
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I bought a commell pentium m itx motherboard, 1.7ghz pentium m second hand, itx case and pico psu. It cost me a couple of hundred! But this was when ITX was at a premium price.
If I was buying now I would get an atom mobo as it runs at about 20-24w W/O hard drives so its comparible to my set up.

I leave my server in S3 most of the time, its quick to resume and with the pico psu s3 only consumes about 2-3w.
 
What about.... one of those £169+vat Vostro laptops Dell were doing?

For that you get something small, cheap to run, portable and with in-built UPS (aka battery).
 
"Ironically I am building a M-Atx Silverstone Sugo based system for portable server testing... complete with Q66 Processor and 8GB of RAM... Now that would make for a good NAS !! - A bit of an overkill !!"

- Yes, but it is really designed for developing a virtual network of windows servers using Hyper-V on Windows 2008 to support development, testing and training.

My P4 motherboard is an old ASUS P4C800 Deluxe Intel 875P chipset board with FSB 800MHz and Dual DDR 400. I am not sure whether I could get it to support "Sleep" and "WOL" functionality.... which would be great if I could.
 
It should be able to support S3, not sure about WOL though but you can get by without it if you are only accessing the server within your LAN
 
You just need to enable wake from sleep on your network card.
Open your network card in device manager, select the power management tab, check box 'allow this device to bring the computer out of standby'

Now when computer is in s3 the network card is still active, as soon as you try to access the networked drive etc the server will fire up.
 
It is also worth looking at Windows Home Server as the OS, it has a lot of really useful features and allows for pretty much limitless storage expansion over time.
 
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