Considering buying a NAS ... Need some advice

Sorry haven't been posting here much recently, I have been reading the replies just now, just been busy

Thanks for all the suggestions and comments, just looking at which hard drive to get, haven't had time to discuss it with my brother yet
 
Just looking at what we might need, if the NAS is slow on our network as it isn't a gigabit network, what sort of switch would be suitable?

Am I right in saying that any 'desktop' switch would work, even though it won't properly fix into the box we have downstairs, it will still work right?

Do we need an unmanaged switch or a managed one? What is the difference?

Also if we do upgrade, would you recommend getting a BT Homehub 3 (we can get this for half price from BT, so £45 is what we would pay) or spend similar money on another router? Any reasonably priced suggestions for a gigabit router?

That is all we would need to upgrade, yes, just the switch/hub (bottom section of that box in the image on the last page) and the router?

Thanks for your help :)
 
azibux1 said:
What are the advantages of that over something that is specially designed as a NAS rather than a server?

Sorry if it's a stupid questions, don't know much about servers and NAS's
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Better CPU.
Will hold more capacity.
More flexiable, can run a proper OS, can add extra NIC, or other add-on cards, etc.
Probably slightly bigger. (depends on what you compare it to)
Possibly quieter (bigger box = bigger fan = less noisy)
May draw a bit more power wise.
Probably cheaper after the rebate.

The HP microserver is the better kit and the better deal if you get the money off.
 
Just purchased the Synology DS212J (went for this due to good reviews, easy to setup, good support and does everything we need it to) and a WD20EARX WD 2TB Caviar Green drive

Thanks for all your help everyone :)
 
shaf said:
Hope you enjoy your NAS - they are a breeze to setup and the interface is great.
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Hope so too :) I'm sure we will enjoy it

Quite busy with things in life at the moment, so might leave it a bit though before I set it up as I want to do it when I have a bit more time :)
 
Van Diemen said:
+1 for the Synology DS212j

I have a DS212+ & a DS212j

the DS212j is perfect for home use
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I bought a DS411j a year ago and it was great for a while but I never knew then what a nas can do.
I now use it for streaming to mobile, sickbeard, sabnzb, camera surveilance, music streaming, photo streaming + more and its at a crawl. very very slow.

I will soon swap it for another Synology as software is great but a faster one with more memory.
 
Essexraptor said:
It's this years model so I can hardly believe it won't ship with the latest DSM... but just incase you can always download the latest version here

http://www.synology.com/support/download.php?lang=enu&b=2 bays&m=DS212j

You can also download the Synology Assistant from the same page ... which basically is the install software for installing DSM 4 onto your shiny new DS212J

Hope that helps :)
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Thanks for that link (Y) Will check it out (Y)

The hard drive and NAS (both from different sellers) have been dispatched :D
 
Hard drive arrived the other day and the NAS arrived today

Got it all setup, downloaded the most up to date DSM from the website rather than using the one on the disk and it is currently "creating the volume", started doing that at about 7:45pm and it is now on 38.38% ... taking a long time lol, I'm guessing that is because it is a large (2TB) drive?

The type it says is "Synology Hybrid RAID (without data protection)", I hope that's the correct one. I unchecked the box that said to create a Synology Hybrid Raid volume when initially setting it up, as I thought as I only have one HDD, I don't want that option, but I think that is the only way you can use it, so afterwards when I logged in it wanted me to create the volume so I done it and that is what it is doing now

:)
 
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