Any NAS Server Users With Comments?

jnmeade

jnmeade

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Jim Meade
I'm thinking of putting an NAS server in to provide storage for the 3-4-5 computers that tend to be running at my house. I bought into Windows Home Server years ago and it never was as easy to use and productive as I'd hoped, although it saved my bacon on a hard disk crash once.

I have a computer in my shop, one in my home office, the Surface Pro floats around and I have a laptop that usually floats around the living room/kitchen area. I'd like something the wife could use to access audio and video as well.

I'd like something that is more or less like a cloud in my own home. It looks like one is going to have to pay $500-$1,000 for the server and then add the hard drives, is that your experience?

I'd spend $1,000 in a heartbeat but $2,000 better really deliver. Any personal experiences or suggestions to share?

I've looked at C/NET reviews but otherwise have very little knowledge of them.

TIA
 
Synology and Qnap have pretty decent track records, I personally like Synology a bit better, but YMMV. I've heard mixed things about Drobo.

THe brand to outrigh avoid is Thecus. It might seem like a cheap alternative, but the quality is awful. I took one for the team by purchasing one a few years ago. Bare machine, added 4 2-TB drives in Raid 6. Started taking IO failures after a few months - the drive cables were bad (I suspect due to vibration). I fixed the problem with regular high-performance cables, a soldering iron & some heat shrink, but lost the hot-swap capability. They released about a dozen "add-on" modules (including email, Dropbox sync, iTunes server), but stopped adding more as complaints went up and sales went down.

Synology has more modules available & better functionality. It works pretty well. There are ways to do it with your own machine using Linux and some packages.
 
I've been using a Synology DS111 for couple of years and have enjoyed using it to "work" around the house and (once upon a time) while out and about. (Somehow, some settings somewhere got screwed up, and I've been unable to fix it so I can again have access when not on my home network. Some day, I'll get serious...)

Looks like the current model would be the DS112 ... $199 at new egg.com. Plus your choice of drive.
 
I had a similar problem and solved it with two 1TB WD "MyBook Live" NAS boxes. They were not much more than $100 each.

Advantages: Cheap, very compact, silent, excellent warranty service (I had an LED stop blinking and they sent an advance exchange replacement box so I could transfer my data).

Disadvantages: Slow transfer rates (I have never actually measured, though.), very slow browser control interface.

I use them for storing photos and for receiving automatic backups from the other computers in the house. I also save miscellaneous things, like disk images, once in a while.

I manually cross-copy between the two from time to time, essentially a manual RAID 1. They can also be configured as media servers, but I have never fooled with this.

For your backup needs I think this small, cheap solution would probably work fine.
 
A little late in my reply, but at home I've been using a LaCie 5big since 2009. Setup and use is a POC. I set it up in a RAID 5 configuration with a hot spare, so the 5 1TB drives yield 2.5 TB usable.
 
We ran the firm on a Buffalo Terastation for a couple of years, and it was zero drama. Everything worked as advertised.
 
Just bought my second Synology a couple months ago. Both are two-bay systems (DS211j and DS213j) with two disks in Synology Hybrid RAID setup. One has 2x 2TB and it's doing TimeMachine backup for our laptops. The other has 2x 3TB and has all our digital content. I use an Apple TV with XBMC and a Raspberry Pi as clients to stream movies. The first one is up and running 24/7 for more than two years now, without a single problem. One of the disks failed earlier this year, but was still under warranty so WD replaced it without any issues. No data was lost, the RAID config did what it was supposed to do.
Additionally, they are very silent.
 
Interesting this thread should pop up today. My Buffalo is full (close enough) and I'm fiddling around doing research on what to either replace it with or upgrading it.

To upgrade it, I have to back the whole thing up to something equally large (USB external is simplest and it has a USB port built in for the purpose) and then replace both drives. Apparently there's some drama where you may also have to TFTP boot it to a tool that will reinstall the OS and boot sectors which aren't stored in flash internally but are actually written to the drives.

So I've been toying with just getting a Mac Mini for the home office. And other ideas.

I really like the concept of the expandable on the fly proprietary RAiD schemes on things like Drobo (overpriced), but hate that you just can't yank the drive and read it if you need to, like the Buffalo, which is just Linux software zzz RAID under the hood. Anything hardware RAID really means you need to own two of them.

Hmmm. Thinking.
 
... hate that you just can't yank the drive and read it if you need to ...
Click to expand...
Yeah. That's why I have always been partial to RAID 1/Mirroring. In the bad old days when disks were expensive, one could argue against mirroring because it's not as storage efficient as higher RAID levels, but these days when a TB is a hundred bucks I don't see efficiency as being all that important. I guess those with a jillion movies might have a different opinion, though.
 
You guys have cost me a bunch of money!

Per post #6 I had a perfectly adequate solution to my backup problems and also, subsequent to the post, I set up one of the WD boxes as a media server and it worked nicely in that role as well.

But .. the comments about Synology led me to investigate them a little bit. Long story short I am now about $400 into a very nice Raid 1 Synology box with dual hot-swap 1TB drives and lots of nifty software options that I didn't have with my dual WD boxes. It set up like a dream and does everything that the WD boxes did at only twice the cost!

I will make use of the CloudStation to reduce what I keep on Dropbox, however, and will probably find other plugins to play with. Isn't creeping elegance fun?
 
Don't waste any money on a iomega istore.
 
We've been running a DroboFS (now the Drobo 5N) at home for a few years now and have been very happy with it. We have two Macs and an AppleTV and occasionally iPads which we stream video to. I also do my TimeMachine backups to it.

You do lose some control over the RAID configuration with their proprietary software but drive upgrades are simple. We've had 1 drive failure which the device handled perfectly well. The speed is good enough for what we need but could be better at times (this may be fixed with the 5N, which supports gigE).

All in all, we're happy. We can stream more than one video at a time without a problem, and file copies are acceptable. If I had the ca$h, I'd upgrade to the 5N for the faster speeds.
 
I run a ReadyNAS Duo with 2x1TB. Just changed out one Seagate for a WD Red and should do the other soon. Had it about three years now and am happy with it.
 
I should have added, we have 3x3TB and 2x4TB drives for a total of 8.1TB of storage. We have Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm drives. This setup allows us to lose two 3TB drives and we won't lose any data. If both 4TB drives go...well it's not our day.
 
Second the recommend on ReadyNAS.


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On the Mac side, strongly recommend G-Raid.


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You missed the point. RAID 0 has a purpose, and it's not backups or redundancy. (It increases your chances of complete data loss with each disk added to the stripe.)
 
Agreed the OP would need to decide what he needs. Redundancy needs something besides 0, unless you are backing it up with something else. G-Speed would work with R5.


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denverpilot said:
You missed the point. RAID 0 has a purpose, and it's not backups or redundancy. (It increases your chances of complete data loss with each disk added to the stripe.)
Click to expand...

The particular unit pointed to is designed for max data transfer rates over USB 3.0 and not redundancy. The company also seems to have some nice offerings with other RAID levels.
 
I run a Cisco NSS 326 that runs RAID 6 and has been great. It came with 1TB drives. Somewhere along the line one failed. I bought a 2TB drive swapped it out and it rebuilt everything in the background and keeps right on chugging along.
 
alfadog said:
The particular unit pointed to is designed for max data transfer rates over USB 3.0 and not redundancy. The company also seems to have some nice offerings with other RAID levels.
Click to expand...


I didn't look. Anything that "pretty" had the Apple tax added on. Heh. Hard disk/storage for home changes so fast a cheap plastic case is plenty. Some folks just run bare drives with adapters if using USB. A Tupperware container works fine. Heh.
 
Synology, hands down there is no better option for an out-of-the-box RAID storage solution at its price point.
 
I see the Synology DiskStation DS1513+ was one of CNet's "highest rated products of 2013". Buffalo Diskstation got mentioned, too.
 
After way too much review, I want a Synology bad.

But since I'm cheap I just bought a 2TB USB disk and shoved it in the USB port of the AirPort Extreme instead for $80. ;)

The Buffalo is still full. Ha.
 
Really late here, but what the hell:
  • I like ZFS, so I'd go FreeNAS or NAS4Free on a box by default. But I'm willing to devote the time to try and do it right.
  • I've got a ReadyNAS and it works fine, though I'm not as comfortable with X-RAID2 as I could be. No problems other than it seems to think 40^C disk temps are fine, but I can't get it to cool them down more than that. Of course, there are 6 drives in the case, but still - I'd be much happier at 30^C. (This assumes the information is being reported correctly - it saying they're 40^C / 95^F. That's not correct.)
  • Synology would get the nod over ReadyNAS for me, because it has support for Amazon Glacier. Cheap off-site backups are a really good thing in my opinion, and this looks like the best way to go.
 
Well, I was one the same boat back in Nov. ended up with a Synology DS413 with 2x3TB drives that are hot swappable IIRC.

Of all the apps (from plex to proprietary), I only run a few and can tap into them from my iThingies or web pretty much world wide which is convenient.

Synology products aren't the only solution, nut they worked for me. It helps that my IT guys is a plane and gun guy, too so we have a lot in common. That could have swayed me instead of the usefulness of the box.

TC


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