Recommend me a NAS

[churin]

I am looking for a NAS. I am considering the following but your comments or recommendations are appreciated.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822122069

[Arvald]

Expensive for what you are getting (only 2 bay but reviews say fast controllers)

If you give us more information on what you want to do with it and what size (physical footprint and storage capacity) you are looking for then we will be able to give good advice.

For example are you willing to build your own with WHS or freeNAS that would have greater expandability but bigger physical size?

[Chaseme]

I had a d-link DNS-323, it was OK but thoroughput was pathetic (3-6MB/s). I rolled my own with a PC and OpenMediaVault and it's terrific.

I have a few years experience with QNAPs at work, overall not bad feature and performance wise but we retired them and I can't really recommend. In our case too many files and the entire system becomes more or less unusable (many million files). Disks die, RAID wont rebuild onto new ones etc. Hell even previously listed compatable disks get removed from the compatability list later on then support wouldn't help us.

[sid1089]

Have you considered recycling an old PC to use as a NAS? I recently found myself a low-end C2D box for $60. Loaded it with a couple of 2TB drives. Works pretty well so far.

[satchmobob]

HP Microserver with whatever disks you want plus Freenas booted from the internal USB port.

[churin]

Thanks for your replies.
This is for my home network to share all kinds of files. Two 2GB hdds is in the NAS and will be used in RAID 1 configuration. I want it be low power device as possible but its physical size is not so critical.
I am willing to assemble it as I did many PCs(but not WHS or NAS) in the past. Reason why I am considering off-the-shelf unit is that I am not sure whether I can achieve that low power using the components currently available. On the other hand the power consumption may not be so important if the NAS is turned on and off remotely.

[churin]

Have you considered recycling an old PC to use as a NAS? I recently found myself a low-end C2D box for $60. Loaded it with a couple of 2TB drives. Works pretty well so far.

What motherboard and cpu are on the machine? Are the two 2GB hdds configured as RAID 1? If so, is it software or hardware RAID?

[MaxTheLimit]

I had a d-link DNS-323, it was OK but thoroughput was pathetic (3-6MB/s).

Damn. I get between 11-12MB/s.
Were you running old firmware?

[Chaseme]

I had a d-link DNS-323, it was OK but thoroughput was pathetic (3-6MB/s).

Damn. I get between 11-12MB/s.
Were you running old firmware?

Could of been ya, really don't remeber. I sold it a year ago and didn't pay attention!

[cynan]

You could go with the ARM version of the Netgear for about half the cost.

Though the user interface isn't quite as polished as the more expensive and favored Synology NASes, for example, these newish Netgear ARM platform NASes are pretty good bang for the buck. I have the 4-bay version (ReadyNAS NV+ V2) that I was able to pickup for $300, minus a $100 mail in rebate promotion that Netgear had going last summer. It has performed pretty well, and comes with USB 3.0 and, due to the ARM platform, very good transfer speeds (like 25 MBytes/s to 90+ MBytes/s) (the large range for the 4-bay version is due to variation in transfer speed by RAID array type and number of disk - 3 disks in RAID 5 being the slowest). FYI, this review reports 50 Mbytes/s writes and 100 Mbytes/s reads for the 2-bay version with 2, 1TB disks in RAID 1.

The only reason why you'd need a faster platform for a simple home NAS would be if time rebuilding arrays in event of failure is critical for you.

The only issue I've had over the past 6 months with my 4-bay unit is 2 random disk failures on the same disk (I have 3, 2TB Seagate Barracudas (st2000dm001 in RAID 5). But removing the disk, powering down, inserting the same disk and letting it rebuild the array overnight has worked both times. I have no idea if the issue is due to the disk or the NAS, but those Seagates aren't known for the best reliability...

[anotherengineer]

I got this bad boy, and it's probably way overkill for me, however dumping files to it at 80 to 110 MB/s brings a smile to my face.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822108090

If you want more NAS info check out smallnetbuilder.com

[cphite]

I just recently got a WD MyBookLive and so far I am really happy with it. Throughput is nice, the interface is easy to use and works well. The media server works great, is easy to use and very responsive... my previous NAS used to lag quite a bit sometimes when I tried to play on wireless devices (PS3, TV) but this one is very snappy. And it actually reads the tags correctly, so the songs are in order

It comes with a software client that I actually find somewhat useful; but you can access the NAS without it.

It comes with backup utilities but I don't use them so I can't speak on how well they work.

[churin]

Everyone, thank you very much for your help.