NAS for home use

Sxotty

Legend
Anybody have any personal experience/suggestions?

I want a NAS for SATA drives, preferable to have two drives so I can do RAID 1. Then I can make it as big as I want. I would want it to be quiet itself. I have read a few reviews that suggest some are very noisy the fans are crap in them apparently. I can by drives that are quiet, but the actual enclosure I don't know about.

I know D-link makes one (323). There is the ZyXEL NSA-220.

I did find this site http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/blogcategory/50/75/

Anyway if anyone has suggestions I would like to hear them. It would be very handy for me to have all my files and media in one location since I have multiple computers I work on.

Also is there any temperature sensitivity to these things? Do they keep themselves warm if it is cold or will the FDB in the HDD get to thick and ruin the HDDs if it is cold?

edit:
Perhaps this is all foolish and instead I should upgrade my HTPC to act as a NAS, but from what I understood before file transfers will actually be slower like that.
 
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Sxotty

Here is my experience as some of my work might be applicable.

I decided on building a server for my home. I have 5 computers networked throughout my house. Went beyond NAS as I had other thoughts for future.

I Purchased an OEM copy of Microsoft's Home Server and built a low power small server to allow automated backup of all my families and my business computer (home office). I started with a small case AMD/IGP setup and had 3 hard drives for about 2TB storage.

Worked great (not withstanding a corruption bug which did not affect me but is about to be fixed by Microsoft and is in testing). But then I had grandiose plans - rip dvd collection to HTPC (not built yet). Guess what?

The case I had was too small and did not really help to let me expand storage. I suspect the 2 drives you talk about may soon not be enough as you discover how nice it is to have common storage. Lots of stuff starts to fill up drives. SO I did search for a solution for my perdicament.

This solution is excellent even if you do not built a NAS/server but add to your HTPC. I found this...

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=27856&vpn=DS-2350S&manufacture=American Media Systems

A hot swappable case for SATA drives... comes with everything needed including a special card to link it to your existing computer. So it just can be moved to a newer computer if required. I have 2 500GB drives in ther now and have spots for 3 more drives which are targeted as 1GB ones . (waiting for corruption bug fix to be released and 1GB drives to drop in price). Its really really small and cute and really is flexible in that you can expand and its hot swappable.

I have my eyes on 2nd one in future if it is required. I run Vista64 and I did not even have to install with CD provided as it booted up first time.

Hope that helps. It took me a long time to find something like that on internet.

Valzic
 
I am looking at building a storage depot now and have looked at the D-link device you mentioned (crap) and the Zyxel (better but still limiting) among others (Infrant - very nice, Drobo, QNAP, etc).

In the end, I think I'm better off with something that I build myself using an Areca RAID card. More extensible, higher performance, but more of a pain in the ass to get up and running.

So I guess it's all a matter of what you want to get out of it.
 
Building one for the motel too. I think Im going with a striped down pc and just install a nas based linux os. Havent gotten very far with it, worth considering.
 
Building one for the motel too. I think Im going with a striped down pc and just install a nas based linux os. Havent gotten very far with it, worth considering.

Yeah, but it seems to make more sense to integrate it into my HTPC setup instead of make a new box. The HTPC is already setup to be low power and quiet so this would fit in well. I would not have a good server software installed though. I can get Vista cheap but right now it is medice center based XP OS on it.
 
My separate box for the drives was because I did not want to replace my new Server box which was a small form box.

However if I was to rebuild a new server, I would look at the boxes designed for hot-swappable drives. I like the concept a lot and have now discovered a variety of uses for common storage.

I have 200-300 dvd's that I would like to rip and place on my server to use with a separate HTPC box. I never would have dreamed of wanting to build a drive farm before but I can see a lot more uses now.

Sxotty, I looked at the unit you pointed out but my case precluded me using it. So I was forced to look for a stand alone unit. There are 2 fans so it is OK in terms of how quiet it is. Its like having a second PC.

However, my furnace in the basement does not mind the noise and the rest of us in the house hear nothing. :) I agree with you with the tack you have taken with HTPC --- quiet. I will just stream to that unit which I want to build with a HTPC case and something like a 780G MB and 1 small quiet drive. Storage will be in my basement room server.

Adding to your existing HTPC box might start making it much more noisy than you might want. As the drives numbers increase with all that wonderful HD contact we wll will be storing at some point, the case I would assume would get hotter and noisier.

Just a few thoughts.
 
Thanks for your input. That box seems like a pretty sweet deal, I will probably end up with one, but it may be a little bit before I get it.
 
I recently bought a Synology DS-207+, and it's a pretty nice NAS solution. I put two 750GB disks in it, in RAID1.

The box has good performances, and the management interface is pretty nice. Since the latest FW upgrade, it communicates well with all my media devices in the house : PS3 (using DLNA), Xbox 360 (Windows Media Extender), my PC and my Archos (UPNP).
 
How fast do these really go?

I have been transferring files between my computers through a DLink DiR-655 and was only getting like 8MB/s between my computers. That is way to slow IMO. What is the speed cap about for a NAS with decent HDDs? Or do the HDDs really even matteR?
 
As I was saying, that's the problem with the lower end solutions, their performance is crap. Even Buffalo Terastations are a$$tastic.

"RAIDing" performance is so strongly tied into their IOP (if there is one to begin with!!!!).
 
I've heard people have a fair bit of luck with OpenSolaris + ZFS on VIA CPU based machines.

I found a review somewhere and it seemed that a linux solution actually did better, but I can't remember where it was, nor if it was rigorous and accurate, or biased to show a certain result.
 
If it's just for serving movies use what you are most comfortable with, it's not exactly performance sensitive.
 
I wanted to back up all my data though. Now I just have two HDD in the same PC.

I guess my important stuff is already backed up enough though.

It is on flash, 2 HDD in pc, HDD in HTPC, HDD on 2 laptops.

It can get confusing though :).

I thought a RAID 1 NAS might simplify my life as I could always just synch to it instead of the merry go round I have now. Of course I just got the new laptop so that will go back to 1 in the future as the other I will quit using.
 
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