Comments on: What’s the best NAS right now?

By: Keiron

Keiron — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:30:38 +0000

I still get lots of referrals appearing back over at my blog from my original comment on this thread, so thought I'd pop over and provide an update! I went off building my own for a variety of reasons and now have a natty little MyXerver that fulfills most of my needs. I say most as I'm still ironing out an issue or two with the backups and file permissions!!! That said it's a very stylish and swish piece of kit (especially when coupled with another USB drive).

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:03:47 +0000

I am a technology product researcher. There is no competition in the NAS sector against Synology. They are the most reliable and offer the most flexibility. For your concerns I would suggest the DS509 for hot-swap capability.

http://www.synology.com/enu/index.php

Jason Allen
Conetica IT Research Manager

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:22:19 +0000

Matt, did you make your decision already? Post back with information please!!

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:37:45 +0000

I put together my own 16 drive NAS soon to be diskless booting SAN using a recently released Windows Open Source AoE driver.

Below are the components I used:
OpenFiler – I have had permissions issues with this that weren’t resolved using the control panel and required assistance from a Linux using friend.
Enlight TSTCOM ESR-316 16 Drive Server Case

Dual Intel Xeon Socket 771 Motherboard with 2 Onboard Gbe NIC Ports
1 Intel Xeon Quad Core Processor
2GB FB-DIMM DDR-RAM (Soon Replacing with 12GB of RAM since 4GB kits are so cheap now)
16 500GB Western Digital Drives (Could probably buy 750GB or 1TB drives now)
2 – 2.5 Drives in RAID1 for the OS installation
1 – Intel PCIe Quad Port Gbe NIC

For storage controllers I used the onboard SATAII ports, onboard Mini-SAS ports, and an add-on PCIe SATAII controller. A dedicated controller for all the drives might be faster, the slowest controller seems to be the Highpoint add on PCIe SATAII controller.

I have it set up with software RAID10 and software RAID5 across all 16 drives using 2 partitions on each drive for each RAID array.

The slowest link in the chain is the CPU usage on the client PCs accessing the NAS using Windows file sharing. Using AoE as much as possible to connect to the server should significantly reduce CPU usage issues.

The biggest downside to the system are the 2 Delta 120 mm fans in the case. They are about 160cfm each and make an incredible amount of noise. A server closet or somewhere that is noise isolated is a bit of a necessity. I thought about swapping them out for low noise Panaflo fans but didn’t want the ensuing temperature increases which would decrease the life of the drives.

By: Stuart Brainerd

Stuart Brainerd — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:01:37 +0000

I favor the idea of reusing the older desktop machines lying around my office which are too old to use as a primary desktop and too new to throw away. I have considered FreeNAS and will try this out next but decided to go first with Windows Home Server (available for purchase online for reasonable $$) on an Athlon 64 box with a decent 600 W power supply. It is a version of Windows Server 2003 though the initial install feels somewhat like the Vista install. I threw in a cheap SATA controller and a bunch of mixed size SATA drives, and have been very happy with the overall functionality and ease of use. There are a growing number of add-ins including a freeware version of Tivo Publisher to store your video files for playing on your home network.

I have heard good things about the SYNOLOGY appliances as well.

By: damian

damian — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:37:47 +0000

hi matt

i’ve got the lacie 500gb home edition as can be seen here:

http://www.lacie.com/se/products/product.htm?pid=10994

now i know its not what you were looking for but all i’m going to say is stay away from lacie. buying the product is okay but support is horrible … seriously – the support is some of the worst i’ve experienced in a long time

By: Howard

Howard — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:41:28 +0000

I have the drobo (DAS) and just bought the ReadyNAS NV+ 2 days ago. So far, speed is what’s killing me, on both of them. One of the previous user comments pointed out the max read/write of these NAS are average mostly around 15MB/s. Although it may not be an issue for regular users. When I was moving a portion of backup data to another NAS (about 900GB+), so I can reformat one of them, it’s a pain… It’s gonna take hours and maybe days. When an error popped up saying there’s some permission issue on one of the PDF files in on of the, I don’t even know which, folders. It interrupted the entire process forcing me to redo the whole copying. Also drobo only do SMB and ReadyNAS have some flaws with the AFP support (ie. wasn’t able to save the file attributes). I decide to save up and get a XSERVE RAID (like 5 grand) in the future and never worry about storage again.

By: Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:29:10 +0000

By the way, a friend pointed out these two links to me: The QNAP has now got a four-bay version.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/30/qnap-gets-official-with-ts-409-pro-turbo-nas/
http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=85

By: Gauntlet

Gauntlet — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:53:11 +0000

Have a look at the Storevault S300, it can do iscsi, nfs, cifs and offers quite a bit. Is very quiet.

By: Valerio

Valerio — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:08:07 +0000

it’s a mistake!
the correct url for synology web site is: http://www.synology.com/enu/products/index.php