NAS Server For Home Use

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berky

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I'm looking to get a NAS Server, as I like to keep EVERYTHING I download. I'm starting to get more and more worried about my drive crashing because I have A LOT of stuff stored and NONE of it backed up (well, maybe some stuff on cd's, but not much). Please note that none of it is critical information, but would take a LONG time to get it all back. So, I'm looking for a simple NAS solution, preferably about 1TB of disk space, and no more than about $1,000. I had found one on Newegg (fastora something, 1.2 TB, about $800 something), but it is now no longer listed on their site at all. Not even as 'out of stock'. I think this usually happens when they will no longer be getting more of the product. (ie. I was planning on getting an iRiver H340 portable jukebox, but when they went EOL, newegg stopped listing them on their site... so I had to get it somewhere else).

Does anyone know of a good NAS server to fit my needs? I will be searching google and the like, but would also appreciate any input from my fellow [H] members. Thanks in advance.
 
I think that you would be better off buying a few drives and adding them to your computer. Transfer rates would be much, much faster than over 10/100 Mbps ethernet (unless you have something faster), which encourages you to back up data more often.

If this solution concerns you, perhaps you could consider an external Serial ATA or FireWire enclosure or two. This grants you physical and electrical separation (mostly) from your PC, in case something goes awry, but is much less of a compromise than a NAS solution. It's cheaper, too.
 
well I employ an old KR7A as a NAS, it does have a promise SX6000 RAID 5 and an external RAID 5 array and it is on a seperate electrical circuit than my workstation, not that, that would do much in most senerios.

There is no substitute for hard backup, but having the same info in multiple locations is better than not having it in multiple locations :p
Especially when you can compare the files with checksum which can forstall loss through infection and basic corruption.

Id say any old box with alot of storage
brownie points for gigabit and a gigabit switch
and parity RAID

http://inventgeek.com/Projects/PoorMansRaid/PoorMansRaid.aspx
of course take it from me, powering and the other side of that coin cooling such animals is often easier said then done
there is only so much a 15A house circuit can take, and only so many BTUs a window AC can move when the temperture differential drops because its hot outside :rolleyes:
 
I think buffalo has a terrastation for about $900, its 1 tb of storage, and it looks cool like a storage safe too.
 
It's important to note here that no matter what solution you go with, you need to make sure it's redundant. I personally recommend something in the key of Raid5, but that's just me. YMMV.
 
Tyklfe said:
It's important to note here that no matter what solution you go with, you need to make sure it's redundant. I personally recommend something in the key of Raid5, but that's just me. YMMV.
Click to expand...
The Terrastation has options for different raid levels :)
 
yes, i will definitely use raid 5 or jbod (not sure what the pros/cons are of jbod).

also, i'm not concerned about the speed of file transfer. it will take a long time to get it backed up originally, but after that, i won't be sending much data.

thanks for all the suggestions. i might look into the buffalo nas that was mentioned. i like the small profile over buying a tower and a bunch of disks.
 
also, thanks for the link Ice Czar. I am looking into that solution also.
 
berky said:
yes, i will definitely use raid 5 or jbod (not sure what the pros/cons are of jbod).
Click to expand...
JBOD allows the use of mis-matched drive sizes - it just fills from the bottom drive and moves to the next when it's full. It's like RAID 0, but without the performance advantage. If a drive dies, the data on it goes with it, and possibly the entire stack. Stick with the standard RAID 5 if you want to survive the first drive failure..
 
If you really want more bomb proof then RAID 10 (or it's slighty worse associate 01 - sometimes known as 0+1 - only real difference is if the mirroring is done before the striping) is a much better solution than RAID 5 - it requires a lot less disk reads/writes and hence decreases disk usage. Stay away from jbod since this has the highest probability of failure (higher than single drive). Also remember that unless you have a decent server or workstation board that your PCI bus only has a finite throughput - and hence you would probably saturate this with a decent 100Mbit network connection and the associated IO activity.
 
cyberjt said:
. Also remember that unless you have a decent server or workstation board that your PCI bus only has a finite throughput - and hence you would probably saturate this with a decent 100Mbit network connection and the associated IO activity.
Click to expand...

Errm PCI = 133MByte/s
Ethernet = 100Mbit/s (12.5MByte/s)

PCI = more than 10 times the bandwidth of Ethernet.

edit: Gigabit ethernet will almost saturate a PCI bus (125MByte/s) but not 100Mbit ethernet.

==>Lazn
 
Agreed, but I was more refering to the overall PCI thoughput - 133 is the theoretical - never really achieved (and yes I know you are doing well to get 80% out of a 100MBit ethernet), but I was also taking in to acount the associated IO - and everything else the PCI bus is coping with at the same time.
The associated costs with gigabit currently do not give the often percieved and expected returns for a home network setup (although one realises that this cost is rapidly decreasing) unless you have a decent motherboard and IO subsytem that can cope, along with a decent switch and cabling (often the more important parts of the equation).
 
i went ahead and bought a fastora t4 NAS from newegg (it returned to their inventory at some point) (http://www.fastora.com/product_index.php?doc_name=nas-t4), but to my disappointment, did not include any hard drives with it. so, after me being pissed off had settled down some, I am now looking to get hard drives for it.

so, my question is thus: since the product says that it can handle 1.2 TB max storage, and also does raid 5 (which is what i will use), does that mean that if i have 4 hard drives at 320 gb, that it will be supported? i think in that case i would only have 960gb of actual space (320 for parity), correct? i'm thinking it will work in this case, and that the max i could have would be 4x 400gb drives (1200gb data, 400gb parity).

am i correct in these assumptions? i just don't want to buy too large of drives if they will not be supported. Thanks!
 
berky said:
so, my question is thus: since the product says that it can handle 1.2 TB max storage
Click to expand...
Most of the documentation for these devices were written when 300GB was the largest drive (4 x 300 = 1.2TB). The larger drives released since then should work just fine, but I'd check with the manufacturer anyway.
 
I was on to one of these until I found out the RAID-5 was SOFTWARE based.

-Larry

AtomicFire said:
I think buffalo has a terrastation for about $900, its 1 tb of storage, and it looks cool like a storage safe too.
Click to expand...
 
TechLarry said:
I was on to one of these until I found out the RAID-5 was SOFTWARE based.

-Larry
Click to expand...

i'm glad i didn't buy that one now. (i was also looking into that one)

zamboni, thanks for the info. i will try contacting the vendor to see what they say.
 
berky: Quick question. Does that Fastora interface with Active Directory? Or is it like the Buffalo and will only work with NT4 domains?

BTW, on a NAS, who cares if it uses software RAID? you will be limited to the speed of the Ethernet, so Software is fine, the CPU ain't doing much else anyways.

==>Lazn
 
You should build your own NAS. It's realtively simple, and won't cost much.


Cheap motherboard and cheap processor, i.e., Athlon XP + mobo, Sempron + MOBO, maybe 256MB of ram (probably could do it with 128). Make sure the motherboard has a gigabit network card on it, you will NOT like the performance you get from a 10/100 connection. Note, that if your switch only has 10/100 ports, you might consider upgrading, it is definitely worth it when transferring large files as your array will be more than capable of maxing out a 10/100 ethernet connection.

PCI Raid 5 card, SATA preferred, but to me it's just a matter of easier cabling than performance.

Linux Distro, take your pick, anything that will run samba. I personally like SUSE, don't ask me why, I guess I just have a crush on it.

You don't need a monitor or keyboard, once you have it set up you can just control it remotely via ssh.
 
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