What makes a good NAS?

Spyhop · 14 Mar 2009 at 11:38

I don't particularly mean who, rather which special features and general qualities make for a good NAS?

Are multimedia-y and server-y features reliable and worth the cost or are 'dumb' drives better?

There are many to choose from - why did you get the one you have?

m_cozzy · 14 Mar 2009 at 16:01

Depends what features YOU need.
I wanted speed, 5 drives & iscsi so bought a thecus 5200pro.

Multimedia/server functions did not even register to me as being useful requirements but to others maybe absolutely 'must have's.'

Snapshot · 15 Mar 2009 at 06:32

The speed results plus the relatively low number of complaints in the user forums made the QNAP TS-209 II my choice of 2-drive NAS. I also wasn't interested in the extra applications provided although finding a mail server on the support site was interesting.

smids · 15 Mar 2009 at 13:00

I wanted to keep it cheap but fast and flexible. Built my own -

E2220
Foxconn Intel G31 (with gigabit LAN)
2GB RAM
20GB laptop IDE drive (boot) - this is being reconsidered for something like compact flash - my 4GB card wasn't enough though, so I'm looking at 8GB for my needs.
2x 320GB seagates in RAID1.

Runs at 59W - heavy load puts it up to 95W, but this is very rare. Yes, it's probably 3 times more consuming than a standalone unit (which will draw about 20-25W), but I'm happy with it. Didn't cost me much either. Motherboard was £18 (auction). CPU was an old CPU I had lying around (well, I did a trade, so I could get the E2220 which idles at 8W as opposed to the 22W of the old E6400), RAM was lying around, as was case and Enermax 270W SFX PSU (active PFC).

Spyhop · 15 Mar 2009 at 20:11

The QNAPS do look good and IIRC get mentioned as being good quality quite often.

smids, what OS are you running for your box?

What kind of share do NASs typically provide anyway - is it SMB/CIFS/NFS/...? I'm not sure I fully understand the differences and implications.

smids · 15 Mar 2009 at 20:17

At the moment, I use CentOS. This is proving quite disk space heavy, though very light on the RAM. Might look at ubuntu merely because different filesystems are supported natively, like UFS etc - haven't decided. I'm doing a reinstall tonight though, as I only recently built it. I did use openfiler for a bit, and have tried freenas, but both were limited in that I might as well simply use a full OS.

Most NAS's are linux and will be using SMB to work in a windows network and will use a filesystem like ext3.