Network Attached Strorage...

[MelonStrings]

Hi All,

Anyone have any recommendation on a reasonably priced home NAS device? Preferably with RAID...

I'm cutting back on the amount of machines I have... and want something I can slap on my network and not have to worry about again...

I like the Netgear SC101 but that requires software on the OS accessing it, which I don't really want. Is there anything similar that can just be accessed? Something that has it's own SMB server and HTML configuration page or something?

I could possibly go down the "Router with USB port that supports adding storage" path... My Draytek has USB but only for printing...

My last option would be a SFF PC that could sit in my AV cabinet, running Windows MCE... but this is more money than I planned on spending...

Open to suggestions...

Cheers,
Melon.

 

[inactionman]

OCUK sells a synology that should fit the bill, the CS-406e (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-003-SY).

Else if you want something a bit cheaper and don't need RAID, they also sell Buffalo linkstations, which are good. I had one for a couple of years before I replaced it with a Linux NAS box. They aren't upgradable though, and only the Terastations have RAID (and they, at least used to, have performance issues running RAID 5, due to CPU limitations).

 

[MelonStrings]

OCUK sells a synology that should fit the bill, the CS-406e (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-003-SY).

Else if you want something a bit cheaper and don't need RAID, they also sell Buffalo linkstations, which are good. I had one for a couple of years before I replaced it with a Linux NAS box. They aren't upgradable though, and only the Terastations have RAID (and they, at least used to, have performance issues running RAID 5, due to CPU limitations).

Hmmmm... very interesting... Hadn't seen or heard of these up until now... Thanks for the tip... will investigate some more...

Cheers,
Melon.

 

[Curiosityx]

The Netgear SC101 Storage Central provides a cost effective LAN based SMB storage solution but doesnt support Raid.

The Buffalo NAS products including the TeraStation they support Raid but youll be paying for it.

The Iomega NAS 200d Range with Windows Storage Server 2003 built in.

The Western Digital NetCenter with CIFS "Common Internet File System"

The choice is yours but redundancy does come at a price.

 

[inactionman]

Steer clear of the netgear, it requires buggy software to be installed, and isn't a true SMB server. Which makes it a bitch to connect to from non-windows operating systems.

The rest are ok, but beware the windows lock-in on the Iomega.

 

[shadowze]

You could use a NSLU2 from linksys , you can attach 2 external usb drives to it and can have one drives contents auto duplicated to the other once a day.
I use mine with 3 drives ( u can use a hub - but no auto dup ) and I store movies , tv shows , mp3s on it.
They are about £50 ( then u need usb hds to conenct to it )