NAS Device Recommendations

General Computing Hardware & Networking
1

I’m looking for a NAS device for file storage and backup at home.

Must have RAID 1 so my data is protected from disk failure. Gigabit networking not really required. Would be a bonus but I’m using 100Mb thoughtout the house. Minimum storage not really a problem as it’s mainly for documents, photos and music and CFD files. (Not for films, ISO’s etc - so if it’s a 250Gb limit, that’s not really any trouble)

SATA preferable. If IDE doesn’t matter to much. Doesn’t need any fancy gubbins like FTP server or bittorrent downloads (that’s what the webserver is for!) However it would be used as a network share for music.
Should be able to support linux and Windows shares. User control would be nice but not essential as I’ll be moving out of a shared house at the end of this year but it would be nice to have some kind of control over who can access the files until I move out.

Can anyone recommend one?

2

Linksys SLUG with two drives configured for shadow copy disk1-disk2
Does everything you ask and you will not get cheaper, if you want Linux to use native shares rather than Windows ones just unsling it and install /configure NFS

if you want one prebuilt Nanopoint/Icy Box now do one with two drives (NAS4??? from memory??) and this supports RAID. I have the single drive version NAS2000 and it does the lot for not much cash, has inbuilt NFS support too.

3

yup nas 4 http://forums.teamphoenixrising.net/showthread.php?t=48911:)

4

Used to own a Slug, before I sold it to DT.

Found it’s user/group support to be awful. Certianly setting up a user didn’t seem tro restrict others getting into it (very much like Vista shares). I also don’t know if it was very successful at spinning down drives to save energy either. Though I did like I could use any hard drive and USB port I wanted and I believe with a firmware upgrade it can have many more drives attached by hub?
Unslinging it was Ok but I don’t really need the extra stuff it gave me.

The Icybox one Preecey seems to suit the bill nicely but I had an IcyBox USB disk caddy and the build quality was shocking (compared to the excellent Coolermaster X-Craft caddy I have as well). Is the build quality good? Is there a internet based configuration?

It does look like the Slug is a nice cheap solution. Will take 3 plug sockets mind. Guess by the time I buy the hard drives though it might not work out as cheap. I already have a 250Gb hard drive so I guess I need another 250Gb HD and caddy (estimate I guess about £60 to £70 + £50 for a Slug = £130) whereas a different option would cost more. (Drives x 2 @ £40 and NAS @ £100 = £180)

Does the Slug shadow copy work well then?

5

The Icybox nas hasn’t got one bit of cheapness about it at all, is a superb piece of equipment :thumbsup: Made out of solid material all round and caries a fair bit of weight for a small box.

It’s basically a small *nix maching in a box big enough for 2 sata hard drives. The browser config is awesome. Going from simple config all the way up to user and group managment with quota settings. Raid options for 0 and 1 jbod and span. Most importantly it uses ext3 as the file system. Also does FTP file serving, supporting samba and NFS for sharing, can act as a DNS server, print server, torrent downloader and itunes Bonjour server.

if you have a look at the manual in the post preecey put up it shows you all the loverly bit of the browser config.

little beast is also resilient enough that should you loose a disk from a raid1 it will rebuild the array once you swap out a broken disk.

It is a very comprehensive little box for the cash I couldn’t be happier :slight_smile:

6

those at the lan could see we run three slugs in the office, all running gentoo on 4Gb usb sticks, doing it with gentoo means an easy way to get just what you want, and exactly what you want. So, yes, shadow works well :slight_smile:

We’ve not tried using a usb hub, but if it were a powered one I see no issue in being able to mount as many hd’s as I want :slight_smile: There is a good case for things that are all in one, but sounds like you want the flexibility to ‘tinker’.

DT.

7

There appears to be the beginings of a modding project at these two sites.
http://en.nas-4220.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.nas-2000.org/

8

Slug shadow works fine to me, makes a direct copy of the data so you will never lose a byte. User security works fine to me, perhaps you had guest account enabled???

3 plugs? Yes but with a total current draw of naff all. And you can put four disks on a slug, easy peasy. Hard to do that with a 2 disk enclosure.

Horses for courses, I use both slugs, NAS and full size Linux servers, each has their own strengths & weaknesses. If you want a single box solution the jury seems to be quorate…

9

I did have 4 drives hooked up to a slug, there were issues with file systems, you could only plug ntfs drives into specific ports, I’m now running 2 slugs with 2 drives hanging off each one, not using the mirroring though, I know I should but my drives are well over 50% full so I’d need more storage, I think 2.3 Tb of storage in the house is enough :slight_smile:

10

Just an annoying trend in my house this year that all rooms only have 2 plug sockets…So you can imagine what it’s like with 2 screen, 2 PC, speakers, printer, 360, TV, various chargers and clock in the room off two plug sockets:ghey:

So by sounds it’s a choice between the Icybox (anything else is more expensive!) and the Slug again.

Well I’ll have a thinky and see what I think. I’ll look online for some other reviews… Guess the best think about a NAS device is I can stick the think hidden somewhere in the house and have it happily do it’s stuff. And the Slug was quite a cute little device and it means I can use whatever caddies take my fancy.

Cheers.
Food for thought at least.:tiphat:

11

I just wanted to chime in here and let you know that I recently purchased a NAS . The model is Office NAS 350 or anas350 made by Airlink101

http://www.airlink101.com/products/anas350.html

After only 3 days or so with it , and only 2 real days working with it, I seem pretty satisfied. What I REALLY LOVE about it, is that although nothing is mentioned anywhere about it I was able to configure my Samsung ML 1710 Laser printer on one of the available USB ports and set up a LPR - TCP/IP port on the windows boxes. Easy as pie, but I am a little bit geeky.

Also note that the device DOES NOT support writing to NTFS formatted drives.

It does support SATA or ATA drive installed.

I have had some issues with windows authenticating to it when I choose the secure mode, but I have not devoted too much time to that yet either. Windows 2000 complains that the credentials supplied (to log into the NAS Conflict with another set of credentials. Admittedly , it has been a long time since I set up windows networking and there have been a few changes since.

I think I paid about $100 USD for it (in Mexico, so I am sure it can be had cheaper elsewhere) . That was a good deal considering that it saved me the cost of a print server as well, and I have already connected various External drives to the USB ports with no issues except when copying Multiple files from the NAS to the USB connected drive, I got an error stating the file already existed.

The one touch copy feature also works well and I backed up an entire 30 GIG USB drive while I turned my computer off and slept.

On an additional note yesterday I purchased a TVR Media Center ACU-MPE35

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Facteck.com%2F_es%2Fprod_detail.php%3Fid_prod%3DACU-MPE35%26cat%3DGabinetes%20Disco%20Duro&langpair=es|en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
(page translated by google from Spanish, which is all I can find on it) .

I ran into this thread looking for a way to make this latest unit Ethernet. You may want to have a look at

http://www.everythingusb.com/synology_usb_station.html

which is available in Canada at:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2329545&CatId=207

you may also try Tigerdirect.com for sale in the USA.

I also saw a 4 port model somewhere that was another brand. (maybe USBMan.com?)

If I had to do it over again., I would not give up the Office NAS no matter what, and Ill take the print server functionality as a free bonus!

Someone ought to make low cost single port devices to connect USB storage devices to ethernet. It seems even less challenging than USB print servers, so I am not sure what the issue is.

Mark

12

Cheers Mark but I’m after a NAS device that has RAID so I can copy my data to it and I have peace of mind knowing it’s completely safe (well more so than without RAID) so single disk NAS isn’t really what I’m after.

It looks like a nice NAS device though :slight_smile:

13

What u want is either one of these, with stupidly large hdds in:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=437050
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=608188

When I get my bonus this year …

*:sunglasses:

14

now that’s what I’m talking about!!!

/saves pennies!!

15

My reply was more directed to those using the Linksys SLUG, or anyone who finds this thread on Google as I did… I think this is a way better option. Over a year ago I began investigating NAS devices and did not purchase till I saw this Airlink101 office NAS 350.

16

Ah get yah :thumbsup:

17

A resurrection from the dead I know but I’ve just put the Twonky media server on my nas box. I can now stream music to my Xbox from the nas :smiley:

18

Me thinks a purchase I do spy… :smiley:

19

I tried Twonky on my slug, it couldn’t handle the ammount of music I had (over 100gb) so I gave up. would have been nice though.

20

we’ll it’s seems to work nice and easy to my xbox and no lag at all :slight_smile: best thing is the instructions are in the manual and a free 30day trial on disk :woot: