Best Price / Performance / Reliability NAS???

[Schnieds]

I want to get a NAS for my home network. I would really like to get a 1TB version and not spend more than $300. Is that possible? What do you recommend?

Thanks!

 

[oynaz]

I am very satisfied with my Synology DS-106j. You can see a review of the newest version, called DS-107, here:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30157/75/

 

[JackMDS]

If you have an old computer (P-III 1 GHz or above), or you can find/get etc.

Windows Home Server (WHS) can provide an excellent overall solution for NAS, Printer, Web. http/ftp, Streaming, and much more.

WHS by it self is about $180.

Or one can get a 4 months Trial version of WHS (cost $5.99 for shopping).

http://www.microsoft.com/windo...wshomeserver/eval.mspx

 

[Madwand1]

At this level, the price of the OS can be a big factor. The consumer NAS boxes all use a variant of some free OS -- often Linux. You can do the same with your hardware of choice. The benefit is that you get more control and hardware that will potentially perform much better than the low cost embedded hardware that typical consumer NAS box use, at least at the gigabit level. You can also use an unused XP or W2K or whatever license. A file server is not rocket science. It's pretty much marketing which makes "NAS" seem to be a new class of product with special requirements, while the basic requirements are much the same as for any networked computer.

 

[Schnieds]

Thanks for the input so far.

I hadn't really thought about an old computer as my server, I will have to put some thought into that. Maybe something from eBay or a super-cheapy black Friday jobby.

The big thing is that I really don't want to spend any time administering it, I just want it to work in sharing my files between computers and handling backups.

After doing a lot of research today I am interested in the HP Media Vault MV2020, which goes for around $350 for 500GB and has a spare drive slot.

 

[oynaz]

The problem with using an old computer as a NAS, is that it often uses a lot more power. This will often mean that any price advantage turns into a more expensive solution in a year or so.

Windows Home Server? That is overkill IMO. Why spend money on that when better, free alternatives are avialable, such as FreeNAS, FreeBSD or Linux?

 

[Madwand1]

I have an 11-drive DIY NAS which draws about 10W at the plug most of the time. How did I get this amazing power consumption you ask? Did I use super-low consumption semi-secret technology? Did I personally hack the hard drives to defeat the world-wide power utilities energy-sucking devices?

Well, maybe I did. But turning it off and using automatic sleep / resume might have helped too.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: oynaz
Windows Home Server? That is overkill IMO. Why spend money on that when better, free alternatives are avialable, such as FreeNAS, FreeBSD or Linux?

"Better" depends on what you need. If you're trying to do automated backups of Windows boxes, you're going to waste a LOT of time getting a non-WHS solution to work like you want it to. If you just want a big old file share, Linux is fine.