Best prebuit NAS (minus HDDs)?

Looking to finally create a centralized backup for all my household computers instead of having a bunch of external hard drives.

I just purchased these 3TB HDDs cause it was on sale, got 4 of them for $400 for a total of 12TB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149396

Now I just need a good prebuilt NAS like a synology, any suggestions?

I heard good things about OpenNAS but havent done my own research on it. Are there any prebuilt NAS that can run OpenNAS?

Im going to use crashplan on my computers to upload the backups to this NAS, so it has to support crashplan.

Also if it matters this wont be a 24x7 NAS, I will only turn it on overnight during backups and turn it off after its done.

bump

If you're looking for a prebuilt, I would recommend Synology: Very easy to use.

just to update I picked up a Acer Easystore H340 from ebay, with the intentions of installing Nas4Free on it.

Theres somework arounds to get NAS4Free to run on it, but I read up on it before pulling the trigger so Im confident I could get it running.

Another question, would it be better to run the HDDs as JBOD, RAID0 or Spanning Volume?

I'm a big fan of Synology. I have 4 of them and they work great. You can run Crashplan on the Synology boxes.

synology +++

i don't mean to hijack this tread, but those that mentioned synology... do you use a specific raid setup or do you use synology's hybrid setup that they recommend? i just ordered a two bay synology unit and two WD nas drives.

I just got a Synology DS411Slim from work that they got in by mistake.

I stuck 4 x 1TB WD Red's into it and let it do its Hybrid Raid for about 2.7TB usable space, and the thing is amazing for how snappy it is. I've got it syncing my image libraries and some HD videos to stream to other spots in the house for now, but hopefully long term I'll find some better uses for it too.

I dont love the web based UI that much, and the sheer amount of options the thing has is daunting to the point of confusing the hell out of me, but I dont regret snagging the unit instead of letting work send it back.

If I were going to grab another NAS of any kind, I'd certainly give Synology a look based on the requirements I had.

The Synology is going to be slower than a build-your-own. I get about half the transfer speed to and from my Synology DS42j as I do from computer to computer. This is true of all my NAS. I also have a couple of Zyxel and a Thecus.

Deadjasper said:

The Synology is going to be slower than a build-your-own. I get about half the transfer speed to and from my Synology DS42j as I do from computer to computer. This is true of all my NAS. I also have a couple of Zyxel and a Thecus.

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While this is correct for the "j" models, it's not correct for the entire Synology family. If you actually spend some money and get the + versions, the speeds are fantastic. The J model is garbage.

I've used tons of Synology's over the past few years and I've loved every single one of them. All the way from the measly DS411+, to the rackmounted monsters. It still far and away destroys all competition because of the badass interface.

Yes, the J is the budget model. The higher ends do great.

I don't do their Hybrid setup since I usually fill them up immediately so I just pick the RAID level that I want.