Decent cheap NAS?

G

gibber

Gawd
Joined
Jul 16, 2007
Messages
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I've been looking around a few websites, looking for deals, trying to find a decent but cheap NAS. Both the Seagate Black Armor 220 and D-Link 321 seem to have gobs of horror stories, permission problems, corrupted files, disk baking ovens, heinously slow speeds - ugh.

Is there a 2 bay NAS enclosure thats: reasonably fast, cool quiet and somewhat reliable, has RAID 1, and inexpensive? Under $200 (w/o disks) or close to $200 (w/disks)?

:confused:
 
Looks like that model is discontinued? At least it's listed as "unavailable" at Fry's and Amazon... I'll keep looking into it though.

Budget is up to ~ $200. Need minimum of 2 bays w/RAID 1. More bays with RAID 3/5 would be even better (if it's reliable and not too slow). RAID 6? I hadn't seen that before, more reading to do... They all seem to be slow if running RAID (other than 0/1) :(

D-Link seems popular - I haven't been thrilled with D-Link quality in the past, but maybe it's decent?
 
If I stretch my budget up to ~ $400, then the Synology DS210 (or upcomming new model DS211) look good. Next t research is if it's worth paying over $200 more than the D-Link (DNS 323?).
 
Dark Prodigy said:
Lian Li EX-30

I have my eye on the 5-bay EX-50.
Click to expand...

Looks ok. Doesn't support RAID 3/5 though. RAID 1 is good for 2 disks, but more than two and I want to use RAID 3/5/10 (still didn't read what 6 is).

I see there is a DS210 (the "j" version not the "+") for $199. Will read more about that one.
 
I just did a bunch of research on NAS units and after comparing features and reading numerous user reviews, I'd say the Synology DS210J is worth the extra money over the D-Link units. I considered the EX-50 that Dark Prodigy mentioned, but it's not a true NAS. The price is good, though.

I ended up going with the DS410. The DS410J also looked good for significantly less money, but I decided not to skimp because my data is extremely important to me and I didn't want to feel as if I was compromising anything.
 
The D-Link DNS-323 is a very decent NAS (I have two, would have gone for the 343, but it wasn't out then). It's a 2 bay version (firmware supports 2TB drives, still being updated). 343 is a 4 bay version. 1 gigabit ethernet port (I think it supports jumbo frames), 1 usb, runs some kind of Linux.

There is a custom package called fun_plug (http://www.inreto.de/dns323/fun-plug/0.5/) which adds functionality to the existing firmware (read more at the unofficial forum: http://forum.dsmg600.info/f3-General-Discussion.html). This is probably the best thing going for this hardware right now. Currently I'm using it to run Transmission BT client, SABnzbdplus for usenet, bip for an IRC bouncer, lighthttpd for some random webserver stuff. I've yet to setup my bitlbee service. There are many packages to choose from including optware. You can even opt to put debian on this machine.

The only cons are the processor is a bit slow (it's not intended to run all these services).

I swore off of D-Link products, but this is really an exception. If it wasn't for fun_plug, I'd have bought something else.
 
I got a Zyxel NSA221 because it was only $79 for a new one. I stuck 2 2TB Seagate drives which were on sale for $89 each at Microcenter today.

I wanted to go with the WD 1.5TB "Green" drives, but, a few people said they'd heard lots of problems with those + RAID and the clerk said they'd had lots of customer returns on that model due to RAID problems (but not much otherwise) - said I really should go with the Seagates.

The mirror is "resync"ing now - seems like it takes about 10 - 11 hours! I guess some people skip this step with new drives? I was out all day so I'm just letting it go.
 
Update after a few months of use: I've heard about all kinds of problems with both Seagate and WD disks in RAID, but, it's been running without problems for me since then (w/the Seagate disks).
 
+1 for Synology, could even go with a 1-disk unit and plug in several USB HDD enclosures
 
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