Help me to decide what I need

stuartmanton · 19 Jun 2009 at 09:03

At home I currently have a desktop PC, a laptop PC and the wife has an Apple laptop which she backs up to a USB attached external hard disk.

I would like to centalise all the storage. The dilemma is what to build. The minimum requirement is something that provide NAS services so I was initially looking at a QNAP 119 as it also offers the media server etc.

Then I got thinking that maybe it would be better to build an Atom based Windows Home Server (ASRock ION 330 looks good but lacks an eSata port). Then I did some more thinking considered something a little more powerful and run Windows 2008 server to provider centralised authentication as well.

My basic requirements are:
- low power consumption and quiet as it will be on 24/7
- externally attached main storage (eSata) to allow us to easily remove and lock the drive away occassionally (not easy with the QNAP 119)
- must include a media server as it will host all my music
- must be able to backup to the device from OS X

I had a bit of a clear out of old components so don't have much laying around at home to reuse.

I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has had similar requirements and gone through the same process.

Black Hat · 19 Jun 2009 at 09:14

How about the Zotac ION board its an atom dual core and has ESATA.

http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?pag...category_id=15&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

Edit: personally looking at the QNAP 119 i would be tempted to go for that if it was me, a 1.2ghz cpu should be more than enough for backups and hosting music even has a bit torrent app that lets you download torrent files.

chad · 19 Jun 2009 at 09:23

acer aspire revo?

Black Hat · 19 Jun 2009 at 09:34

chad said:
acer aspire revo?

Not going to be able to do a lot with an 8GB SSD, infact going to srtuggle to get server 08 on that let alone music/backups.

chad · 19 Jun 2009 at 09:52

mine should have been 8gig ssd but was 160gig i think all new stock are 160gig

stuartmanton · 19 Jun 2009 at 13:15

Black Hat said:
Edit: personally looking at the QNAP 119 i would be tempted to go for that if it was me, a 1.2ghz cpu should be more than enough for backups and hosting music even has a bit torrent app that lets you download torrent files.

I think when it comes down to it I will probably opt for the QNAP 119 as that gives me want I want right now (i.e. storage and media server), then maybe build a dedicated server in the future. I do like the idea of the Zotac 9300-ITX but by the time I add CPU, memory, disks, case the cost starts to mount.