which NAS device

[wesley]

hi i'm after a NAS device.

list of must have:

small size
quiet
ethernet
file server (files shared to MS windows/linux clients)
printer server (Epson R220)
web server
ftp server
group/user permission policy (dont want my gf see my pr0n collection )
disk quota (not very important)
1TB (750GB RAID 5)
good warranty
up to £600
MUST be able to connect NAS via webgui/webadmin from client and see shared files without any poo software installed on clients (like this rubbish netgear SC101)

found 4 NAS devices so far.

1) Buffalo Terastation (which model? pro or home?)
2) Lacie Ethernet Disk
3) Synology 406 cube station (cant find anywhere to buy in UK)
4) Infrant ReadyNAS (diskless but very very expensive)

Buffalo Terastation looks good but heard bad story about their customer service. Not sure which model to go for, good price, £500ish for 1TB model.

Lacie Ethernet Disk (OCUK), fairly big, not sure if i got enough room, not bad price but out of stock, no idea if its RAID5 with 4 hard drives, little info on lacie website. running by embedded XP.............any good? lol

Synology 406 Cube Station, wow, i only found out this morning, lovely looking, small, easy to manage to NAS via web. diskless, which is good so i can choose hard drives. but i cant find one in UK no idea how much its cost

Infrant ReadyNAS, i know very little about this NAS device, anyone experienced with it? £400 for diskless model

1) and 2) got hard drives, wondered if one of the hard drive died, will i have to RMA the whole box to get it fix under the warranty, any risk they'll format the RAID 5 array or they just send me new hard drive?

3) and 4) are diskless NAS devices, do i have to buy 4 hard drives that are EXACTLY same make and model? supposely a year or 2 later, a hard drive failed, i RMA it then they replaced it with larger size (maxtor did!), will it affect to repair the array?

i dont have any experience with RAID 5, can anyone explain how to repair the array without losing data.

thanks

 

[Bobbler]

NSLU2 (c.£50) + Unslung (free) + USB Hard Drives.
Done.

Size - Tiny - Size of a couple of fag packets. Plus your USB disks of course
Quiet - Not a fan in sight, completely silent.
Ethernet - 10/100
Fileserver - Samba out the box
Printer Server - would need to investigate Linux CUPS. Should be supported though as its a very popular model line IIRC
Web - Apache can run no probs.
FTP - easily installed via IPKG
Groups and Users and Quotas - all supported as standard
1TB - How many disks do you want to buy.
RAID - Doable via Unslung I believe from the wiki
Good warranty - whatever hard disk you choose - 3 years in most cases IIRC
Web front end file access - shows file list which can be downloaded straight from - alternatively just create your own page with the webserver?

Other additional plus points I can think of off the top of my head:
Expandability - add any old IDE or SATA drive to a USB enabled caddy and your good to go. Unslung also now allows USB2 hub support so you can add more disks as and when.
You can also add bluetooth support, second network connection (for making it a firewall), webcam...
Software - Massive amount of software packages available now for Unslung, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Media Streaming, Itunes support...

Seriously they are a fantastic little box. Couple of things go against them and expect they may detract from the idea (going off the NAS boxes you are looking at) - its not a single box solution and secondly you need to mess about a little for the additional things that Unslung firmware brings though its easy enough, finally the linux aspect may not appeal...

I have been running mine serving media to my LAN for about a year now and never given me a single bit of jip and its never switched off except for moving about my office layout the other month.

http://www.nslu2-linux.org for masses of info

 

[hybrid]

freenas.com too

 

[Sone]

NSLU2 (c.£50) + Unslung (free) + USB Hard Drives.
Done.

Size - Tiny - Size of a couple of fag packets. Plus your USB disks of course
Quiet - Not a fan in sight, completely silent.
Ethernet - 10/100
Fileserver - Samba out the box
Printer Server - would need to investigate Linux CUPS. Should be supported though as its a very popular model line IIRC
Web - Apache can run no probs.
FTP - easily installed via IPKG
Groups and Users and Quotas - all supported as standard
1TB - How many disks do you want to buy.
RAID - Doable via Unslung I believe from the wiki
Good warranty - whatever hard disk you choose - 3 years in most cases IIRC
Web front end file access - shows file list which can be downloaded straight from - alternatively just create your own page with the webserver?

Other additional plus points I can think of off the top of my head:
Expandability - add any old IDE or SATA drive to a USB enabled caddy and your good to go. Unslung also now allows USB2 hub support so you can add more disks as and when.
You can also add bluetooth support, second network connection (for making it a firewall), webcam...
Software - Massive amount of software packages available now for Unslung, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Media Streaming, Itunes support...

Seriously they are a fantastic little box. Couple of things go against them and expect they may detract from the idea (going off the NAS boxes you are looking at) - its not a single box solution and secondly you need to mess about a little for the additional things that Unslung firmware brings though its easy enough, finally the linux aspect may not appeal...

I have been running mine serving media to my LAN for about a year now and never given me a single bit of jip and its never switched off except for moving about my office layout the other month.

http://www.nslu2-linux.org for masses of info

Agreed NSLU2 is great, but it took me the best part of a weekend to get it working just the way i wanted (24hrs work ), and still failed setting up samba as a domain controller. I used a 1gb usb stick for setups etc and to run the email web server so it was silent. Turned on usb disk when needed

 

[philhoole]

You might want to look at www.thecus.com who have a variety of NAS products. I can't personally recommend them but the reviews have always been good.

A large NAS box is something I'm looking at. At the moment I have a 3 slot SATA hot swap rack in an old PC which works quite well.

 

[jimblowscash]

the lacie disc isnt a print serv and doesnt have raid 5 you can partision off the drive and set access for those partisions, on the plus side the 1tb has gigabit ethernet and runs fast! its 4 drives inside set as jbod but i guess you could config that as raid 5 with software??