NAS

milkinc13

milkinc13

milkinc13

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Basingstoke
I am looking to upgrade from USB exteral HDD for the main reason USB is to slow (roughly 4 hours for 90GB of data). So am looking for an ethernet NAS box to reduce times especally when it comes to back-ups with less time spent.

I have been looking at the "LaCie Network Space 500GB Gigabit Ethernet NAS Hard Drive" on OcUK.
Are there any others that i should consider.
Size isn't of importance as the 250 external HDD i have is only around 100GB full and i've had that around 5 years, so 500GB is a lot to me.

Thanks
Phil
 
Don't do it.

Reviews give this under a 5-6mb transfer speed.
USB is normally much faster than any cheap nas device. 99% claim gigabit, but then have a zx81 chip as the controller so it cant handle the data.
 
Agree with blackbadger. The answer you're after is probably an esata external hard drive.
Note that you can buy an enclosure to put a hard drive into yourself. I've got this one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-005-AK

Two good things about that. One, if you ever run out of space, get a new internal drive for less money than a new external. Two, you can rip the hard drive out of your current external drive and put it in this one, won't even need to move data around.
 
Pretty sure you don't need that. The esata port on my case connects to a sata motherboard header, and the motherboard came with a pci plate with esata that connects the same way. So I have two esata ports and no esata pci cards :)

It's a good point that esata without an esata port won't work so well, here's hoping you don't have a laptop
 
have esata on pc, but not on laptop, which is reason to go NAS, easier to synch both together, as go down esata route still leaves laptop on USBwhich is as u guys are aware really slow
 
If you have a Gigabit network, then NAS will be fast, Just look at the reviews and find one with good transfer speeds.
 
If you have a Gigabit network, then NAS will be fast, Just look at the reviews and find one with good transfer speeds.
Click to expand...

Certainly not the case. The only ones with good transfer speeds cost around £400+

In general NAS devices are handy for multiple user access, data redundancy, but not speed. Unless you go high end, at that stage usually a real dedicated file server is a much wiser choice.
 
@Blackbadger or other
I'm considering an atom 330 mini itx board as the majority of a nas, the motherboard I'm looking at has onboard gigabit. I didn't realise there are varying grades of gigabit connector, so how do I estimate what transfer speed I'll be looking at? The atom is hardly quick, but two of them with 2gb of ram gives the more expensive NAS options a run for their money hardware wise.

Would appreciate input on this, would suck to build it and discover transfer rates were shocking. Computer it'll be attached to has native gigabit ethernet which I assume is reasonably good (P5Q board).

At the OP, it might not be as rough as you think. One option would be to leave the esata enclosure attached to your PC most of the time, and sync the laptop with it over the network via your pc.
 
Jon - prob best to check with people in the server or small formfactor subforums.

A atom server does appear to be a good choice performance wise for a small system. People say they get around 70MB/s on large file transfers which is pretty good. You get 2 sata, pci slot, usb ports etc. which allow for possible upgrades/additional drives.

Plus points
Cheaper
Faster
can stream any media
can torrent/web serve/ftp/newsgroup etc..
can run lots of different backup systems.
works as a print server
upgradeable - to a extent

Negative
Not as power efficient as a standard NAS box.
You must set it up yourself, so either Ubuntu, windows home server, FreeNas etc.. So it's not plug and play like standard NAS.


@milkinc13 - apologies for the thread hijack above. I'd suggest you wont see much of a difference in performance between a low end Nas device and a a new usb drive especially when plugged into a laptop. If your current one is 5 years old and slow, maybe that's why. Is it USB2? newer external usb drives are cheap and do 10-30mbs depending on file sizes & your pc's etc. A cheap Nas wont do any better.
 
pretty sure it is USB2. The problem is when transfiring huge files across such as back-ups and my current situation which is I need to put my entire my documents file onto main PC from external HDD.
USB great for small files when it's large files the sustained speeds aren't that good.
 
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