SFF Nas Device

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Bry

Bry

Bry

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I have been trying to find the perfect NAS device for a while now.
But, they are either
a)too slow (the prebuilt nas devices)
b)too large/uses too much power (building your own)

What I am currently thinking of doing is. purchasing a Asus Eee pc probably a EEe Box B206 or another gigabit Intel Atom System. This should cover option b) as it is small and uses less power. However, It can not hold 4 hard drives.

But, I have recently come across the Edgestore DAS400. Which is basically a external 4 bay hdd enclosure that connects via a single usb port. This, will allow me to add the necessary storage options while still keeping the size inline with prebuilt nas systems. The only downside I can see is that with this method you will have 2 separate boxes , 1 for the nas and one for the actual hdd storage.

What does everyone else think of this can you see any major downside?
 
Almost all the atom boards come with a PCI card slot, just plug a SATA controller card into it which will allow you to add extra drives, that's what I'm planning to do with my Atom based server when I need more storage.

I was thinking of going along the eeebox route initially but decided keeping it all in one box and having more internal expansion options was better for me.

Although performance will be limited by a USB interface you have to take into account what it's going to be used for. In most home situations it won't make a difference, USB2 far exceeds the rate required for reading 1080p movies across it by a factor of ~10. You won't be able to max out your gigabit network when moving files but big deal, you'll only have to wait a few seconds or minutes more for large files :)
 
Aye thats what I was thinking USB2 should be plenty fast enough, certainly faster than some of the prebuilt NAS devices
 
small low power nas can be done i built this over a year ago

C7 1.2GHz mini-itx very low power board
1gig DDR2
Gigabit LAN
100gb 2.5" Boot drive
6x 1TB hdd's
itx 220w psu
Windows 2007 server

photos of when it had 5x 500gb, also doubles up as a nice download box (usenet, ftp, torrents)

is currently running another two 1.5tb hdd on a esata box

over network transfers go at around 30mb/s


 
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nice box jammir. I wish there was a cheap NAS type box with 6x hot swappable bays, i have been looking at the chenbro NAS case but its only 4 bays and also quite expensive (£150).
 
Yea I cant believe you got so many hard drives in there its very nice.

I decided to go for a Tranquil BBS2 Barebones server. 5 hard drives in a very small box running intel dual core atom based. About £350. Can install your own O/S and when you compare it to a Qnap which is a similar price you are getting ten times the spec, an extra HDD slot and the ability to run your own O/S :)
 
Bry said:
Yea I cant believe you got so many hard drives in there its very nice.

I decided to go for a Tranquil BBS2 Barebones server. 5 hard drives in a very small box running intel dual core atom based. About £350. Can install your own O/S and when you compare it to a Qnap which is a similar price you are getting ten times the spec, an extra HDD slot and the ability to run your own O/S :)
Click to expand...

Just checked out this box and its looks really interesting, maybe exactly what I'm looking for.

What is the noise like with 5 hard disks in it? Do you have linux setup on yours running software raid, was it easy to open the case to install linux etc?

I see how it has E-Sata as well for future expandability, very useful :)
 
Can't answer most of your questions sorry. I only just ordered it, I havent recieved it yet.

If you are loking for review you won't find any or i didn't. However it is virtually identical to the tranquil sqa 5h home server reviewed here:

http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/11/20/hands-on-tranquil-pc-sqa-5h-home-server/

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/241623/tranquil-pc-sqa5h-home-server.html

Main differences are included O/S, included HDD and LEDs on the chasis.

I am planning on running Windows Home Server as I have never used Linux.

You do not need to open the case at all. The HDD are hto swappable via the front. On the back there is a small cover you can remove which covers vga and mouse/keybaord ports (although you can use usb keybaord/mouse i believe too)

yes it has esata which is port multiplier aware so you can connect up to 5 external sata drives via a single port multipler cable.

It is pretty hard to self upgrade the internals of the box although it is possible. I dunno if you can install a CF card inside nbut you could always plug one into the USB portas and boot from that (it is auto setup to boot from USB or you can change it via BIOS )

Here are some comments regarding noise:
It is very quiet. The fan cannot be heard over the hard-drive noise, which itself is very low. I have it in my bedroom and can’t hear it at all. It is much more quiet than the WD MyBook NAS which it is replacing.
 
Thanks Bry, i will check out them reviews. I guess new operating systems are installable buy purchasing an external usb CDROM drive.

I have been looking for a low powered device like this which would allow me to run a full Linux OS as well as share my media, as i have plans to run usenet/torrent clients etc on the box also.

If you could post some PICs when you receive it i would be really grateful!
 
External CDrom or by copying setup files to a external usb stick (about a fiver).

Yea I will post pictures :) basically it is essentiall a lower powered (electric wise) PC that can do everything other than gaming. It can stream HD video and can technically do encoding as well
 
why dont you get a cheap second hand Shuttle of "a well known auction site and use that", I and my college have being looking into a nas box and a small quiet shuttle would be perfect for this purpose.
 
Fevvahz said:
I'll second Jammir's idea for a setup, Im building something similar with the same Adaptec card from a well known auction site. Works a treat.
Click to expand...

just a note those adaptec cards the 2610sa dont like seagate 1.5tb hdd's im running the esata box from the onboard via sata
 
Bry said:
External CDrom or by copying setup files to a external usb stick (about a fiver).

Yea I will post pictures :) basically it is essentiall a lower powered (electric wise) PC that can do everything other than gaming. It can stream HD video and can technically do encoding as well
Click to expand...

Do you plan to install the OS on a flash card or USB drive and boot from that?

If i had it i would want to keep the 5 bays free for just media, without having to load an OS on them.

After having read the reviews on the alternate windows home server box i really want to buy it now! I think i will wait to see how you get on first though :)

I'm currently planning a freeBSD install with the ZFS filesystem setup so i can hot swap all the drives and have complete redundancy. I understand that only 3 of the sata ports it comes with are hardware raidable.
 
Im going to install direct to the HDD. WHS needs very little space and since it doesnt use raid i don't need to worry too much.

I dunno if u can install a compact flash card inside but you can certainly boot from an external USB drive.

You can choose, you can have 4 of the 5 internal on a hardware raid or you can have 3 internal and one of the external on the hardware raid.
Its an option before you click buy same with memory upgrade.
 
Bry said:
Yea I cant believe you got so many hard drives in there its very nice.

I decided to go for a Tranquil BBS2 Barebones server. 5 hard drives in a very small box running intel dual core atom based. About £350. Can install your own O/S and when you compare it to a Qnap which is a similar price you are getting ten times the spec, an extra HDD slot and the ability to run your own O/S :)
Click to expand...


Mates got one of these and there great. He can log on via the web to listen to his music anywhere.
I wnat to get one, I've got a Swqueezebox Boom and a Duet and want to offload music from my pc.
I'll post upi when I get mine!
 
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