[Closed] Recommend me a NAS?

Just got a Synology one off of someone on here and added a couple of drives.

Seems pretty good so far and the setup was easier than the Seagate one I have.

Looked at those £100 HP servers but by the time you get the rtecommended memory for the NAS OS and drives they get quite expensive.

had a few of the qnap systems now and love them and when we go for something that holds a bit more itll be another qnap system!

Just set up a QNAP TS-420 at home - seems very good. No complaints so far and no problems as I've pulled disks out to check it's OK.

Avoid Drobo though.. I had one - a disk died and the whole thing bricked. It went in the bin and I bought the QNAP. Luckily I had a backup of the Drobo contents so only thing I lost was a few movie rips for iTunes and I still have the DVDs.

QNAP seems to do a hell of a lot - media server etc, backup destination for TimeMachine - also going to set up a Subversion server so I can bin the old Mac Mini in my garage :). Underneath, it is a Linux computer with a nice web front-end on it. Very impressed! 🙂

I use quite a few Synology ones and love them but I've heard good things about QNAP as well. I would avoid WD and Buffalo as they don't work as well but they are cheaper so that may sway you

Was going to do a (yet another) Linux box with shared drives etc.
Then decided that a NAS using 20W max power, and needing barely any sysadmin made more sense. Plug in, setup once, point everything at it.

Synology, Qnap, the other one (but not Drobo). All much the same imho. All have so many features now, that you'll probably leave most disabled or unconfigured.

Mine's a 2-bay Synology with WD Red drives (which are supposedly designed more for NAS use).

I've had two QNAPs, they both broke after about a year and trashed the RAID. Also found them to be quite underpowered if you're trying to use it as a mini server (though these were the the old 209.)

I've now got a Lacie 2Big NAS. I like it. The discs are easy to swap. The interface is fairly simple and it works. It doesn't do too much (can serve media and do torrents if you want). Has NFS, CIFS. Works well with TimeMachine. And it doesn't allow you to mess about with it nearly as much as the QNAP one did.

Having tried the NAS as a mini server thing and never really being happy with it, I now just use it for storage (mostly backup) and have a mac mini as a mini server. Better choice and variety of apps, decent power, low energy (~10W when idle). I back it all up to the NAS using TimeMachine. Have both hanging off an APC UPS.

dumb question from a pc ilterate - can i not just take an old pc and stuff it full of hard drives, instead of getting a NAS?

Another happy Qnap user here - I have a pair of them, one of which gets a lot of use, the other as a remote backup.

[i]can i not just take an old pc and stuff it full of hard drives, instead of getting a NAS? [/i]

yes, although they tend to use more power and make more noise.

as mentioned in the OP there are Linuz derivative OS's that you can load that effectively turn the PC into a NAS server.

I've been on the verge of buying a Zxyel 325 v2 NAS for a few days now.

It seems to get good reviews and has lots of features for the price. Even the interface seems to work well.

Probably worth reading the specs to see if it'll do what you want it to do; I just want it for storing photo's music on and eventually streaming my music to a networked media player (once i have saved up for that!).

can i not just take an old pc and stuff it full of hard drives, instead of getting a NAS?

yes, although they tend to use more power and make more noise.

... but the flip side of that is that you'll likely have a much better choice of stuff to run on it, if you actually want to run it as a mini-server rather than just pure NAS. You'll also probably have more processing power and more memory so stuff will generally run better (e.g. if you're transcoding media on the fly or serving multiple streams.)

dumb question from a pc ilterate - can i not just take an old pc and stuff it full of hard drives, instead of getting a NAS?

depends on whether or not you can be arsed messing around or not. this part

from a pc ilterate

Cool, thanks all. Porter_jamie: I did that very thing for a few years, but its clunky, uses a lot of power and can be noisy. Dedicated low-draw NAS is better.

Microserver + unraid ($69 licence) is a good option.

I've just moved to a Drobo 5N though which I'm happy with.

Can't go wrong with Synology / QNAP really.

I've gone down the HP Microserver route (they have a £100 cashback deal on currently) and put XPEnology on it (basically the Synology OS but free as Synology have to release their source code under open source licencing).

Isn't there one of these threads a month now?

Synology or QNAP if you are not puter literate. £200+
HP Microserver if you are. £130+ (+£30 MS Home Server 2011)

My HP Microserver uses less power than my ReadyNAS and the HP is a hell of a lot more powerful and that is with 3x drives in the HP vs 1 in the ReadyNAS.

Hi Milkie- your HP Microserver uses less power than an embedded-type NAS does? For sure?

It'll be a couple of tens of watts difference. Don't think it's really worth worrying about.

That might also be worth a look, in that case. I'll need to populate it with a couple of 1TB drives, of course. And FreeNAS, as it doesn't come with an OS.

I'll price the options up vs a QNAP/Synology, and see what's looking good. Ta all.

Yup it did. It was averaging around 32-34w, the ReadyNAS was 34w . I have now added another drive, an extra 4gb of ram and a decent Asus soundcard for recording the 1's n 2's.

As Mr Blobbby has said, we aren't talking a lot of money here, you are porbably looking at a couple of quid a year!

I've got the V1 Zyxel NSA 325. I just put one 2TB hard drive in it. I haven't bothered with RAID.

It does the job. The fan is a tad noisy but the drive is in cabinet under the TV so you can't hear it. The power button LED is very bright but I just put a sticker over it.

I've got all my iTunes ripped onto it lossless. My SONOS accesses this as well. I've backed up a few of my DVDs and it streams those to my TV via DLNA fine.

I backup the NAS to a 2TB USB hard drive plugged directly into the NAS.

I'd recommend it or the v2 one.

Hi all,

so- recommend me a NAS?

Would like:
-at least dual-bay, as I need to do RAID1. It would be nice if it came with some drives...
-low power
-one that doesn't mind being abruptly switched off? (Is there such a thing?)
-probably CIFS, DLNA
-Torrent client, if poss?

.....or should I just run up an old PC with Linux- any good NAS-centred distros?

ddin't understand any of that......

thread title should come with a NERD ALERT warning.

And the reward for least helpful, most pointless post goes to....

I am a Thecus fan, Have 2x 5500pros (5 bay) and 1 N2800pro.
Picked them both for speed, These run to support the main file server which has a stupid 10GB for RAID5 on SAS drives. And the Thecus units are not that slow. The 5500s run duplex as well. so transfer speeds are good.

The N2800 supports a monitor via HMDI, keyboard and mouse and is great for SOHO use, videos music etc. ours is used for backing up as its got a snazzy dropbox feature for syncing everynight.