First NAS

I

IM [H]ard

Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2001
Messages
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I have a few external drives and I find that all my data is just all over the place on all my drives, too disorganized. I was gonna build a file server but my friend told me about the wonderful world a NAS can bring to you and u don't have to administer at all the time and consumes less power. He was showing me the dlink models, very cheap but for the $ hard to beat... I would be willing to spend a little more for incresed functionality and more storage capacity. I stumbled across this (http://habeyusa.com/StorageArray/ns520.html) on ebay for 300$... is it worth it??

Any other recommendations for a nas that has all the bells and whistles for 300$ or less??
 
Well, I ran a stand alone file server for several years and it ran ok. But my storage needs were not that great, and I switched to a NAS mainly to save some money on electricity. The rates are very high in Northern Illinois in the summer.

I shopped around, and tried and returned several of the cheap 1 and 2 drive models that the big box stores carried, and finally settled on the Hammer Storage Myshare. Small Net Builder is the best source for reviews and performance specs on Nas systems. His charts are fantastic.

I was running the TB model of the Myshare in Raid 1 mode, so I quickly filled it up. I then shopped around and settled on the Thecus N5200. I love it, and currently have 3 X 1TB WD GP drives in Raid 5. I will fill the other 2 slots when needed.

That one you are looking at has some decent specs and a good price, but dig around the net and find some thorough reviews on it before committing your money. In this instance you certainly get what you pay for.

Don
 
How about one of those MIS wind PC barebones and add your own drives.
That would be about 300 and you can make it do whatever you want.
 
There is always a trade off when you go with cheap, off-the-shelf NAS devices. It could be speed, reliability or compatibility (as in removing drives to read from a PC just in case). Sometimes it's all three.

Just beware and do your research.
 
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I <3 FreeNAS. Obviously it's still a PC, but you can have it go into power-saving modes when it's not being used and such. Mine is an old PC from work for free, $10 for a 1GB MicroSD and tiny USB adapter, plus whatever drive(s) you want for data storage.

A lot of the cheap NAS units from the retail chains aren't really full NAS. They use a proprietary driver to load up a fake drive in Windows or weird stuff like that. I'd be very wary of "home" NAS units and go for a good "pro" model if you go that route.

P.S. We had an old Dell NAS (PowerVault 745?) from work that we adopted. We ran it for a month, until we got the power bill for double what it had been. The old P4 desktop running FreeNAS with power-saving options is definitely much better on the power meter, as we don't have a lot of heavy, constant access.
 
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