Cheap NAS

Phreaky · 16 May 2011 at 20:42

I'm looking for a cheap NAS, 2x SATA II ports, don't care about RAID as I just want an easy way to access the data from multiple machines independently. Any recommendations?

Zarf · 17 May 2011 at 00:45

How important is speed? Building your own low powered server (or buying something like an HP Microserver) and running a Windows OS (7 or Server 2008 recommended) Is best bang for buck if you're trying to get close to full gigabit potential. Cost around £100 to build a low power Atom or Equivalent machine. Can always repurpose a spare old machine or pick one up at the scrapyard/fleabay though. As an added bonus it'll do much more than just serve files, you can add extra drives and use it as a download box for torrents etc.

If speed isn't a problem a Netgear MS2000 Stora is probably your cheapest bet at around £60, believe they had a free hard drive offer too. You'll only get around 20-30MB/s throughput though - plenty for streaming movies but might be a bit annoying if you're constantly chucking large files about.

Cycrow · 17 May 2011 at 10:55

if your looking for cheap, y would u run it on windows ?

i wouldn't say that windows 7 is the best OS for a NAS system.

u can use any linux/unix OS for free.

Phreaky · 17 May 2011 at 19:08

Hmm I hadn't thought of that. I have a few spare parts lying around, I might be able to fashion a lightweight linux fileserver out of that.

lsg1r · 17 May 2011 at 19:24

I'd have said look at synology, they're pretty much fully featured for a nas - print server, file server (mapped drives and ftp), media server (needs device to play media stored on it) and web server. You can also install other apps too but you probably don't need that much.

Randall8686 · 17 May 2011 at 19:30

+ 1 for synology had mine a few years and its AWSOME !

SparkyG · 17 May 2011 at 20:15

You could always get a router with a USB port and attach an external HDD to it

Zarf · 18 May 2011 at 00:30

Cycrow said:
if your looking for cheap, y would u run it on windows ?

i wouldn't say that windows 7 is the best OS for a NAS system.

u can use any linux/unix OS for free.

Because if you're serving files to Windows clients on a Gigabit network, Samba performance simply isn't anywhere near as fast as native Windows file sharing on the same hardware. You're usually looking at 40-50MB/s instead of >100MB/s throughput, and that's after extensive tweaking.

dazz25 · 19 May 2011 at 09:49

Would the transfer speeds of a Netgear MS2000 be quick enough for streaming 1080p over gigabit lan?