To NAS or not to NAS?

[Skawn]

I've just moved into a new flat with a couple of mates and was looking at something for centralised media storage.

I've had my eye on this Buffalo TeraStation which seems to do everything I need although for about the same money I could build a new PC with a couple of 500Mb drives and that'd leave me with the possibility of adding additional drives at a later date.

Will the NAS be better performance wise? The components I was looking at for the self build option are below;

Western Digital Caviar 500GB S300 16mb 7200rpm - £155.00x2 = £310.00
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939 512KB - £59.63
Asustek Socket 939 SiS 756 PCI-E ATX A V L R - £37.24
Crucial 2x512MB 184Pin DIMM PC3200 - £56.74
Sapphire X300SE 128MB PCI-E DVI-I VO - £29.62
Total - £493.23

 

[Skawn]

Thanks for the replies.

Software really isn't an issue - shared folders in windows will be sufficient for what I'll be using it for.

I could admittedly drop to 512 RAM without a problem but for the price I reckon going for a gig is worth it. The processor is the cheapest available without going the Sempron/Celeron route and the mobo is about bottom of the range too.

If I'll get better performace from SATA drives running in RAID than from the ATA NAS solutions it seems like the logical choice - I'd kinda guessed that would be the case but I'm just not familiar with NAS technology so thought it best to check.

Whats the advantage of going NAS? I cant see why you'd bother other than a pretty GUI...