*luke-HOT!* Netgear brings NAS (zSAN) to market about $100

[Devistater]

Its going to be difficult for any of these mini things to have full NTFS support. Being as MS is very protective of the details, people have to reverse engineer the filesystem. So far as I've seen, all the *nix implementations of NTFS are beta/read only (not write). The majority of these mini nas/san boxes run on some flavor of unix/linux, not windows, so they have a hard time implementing the NFTS. The only full NTFS implementation I've seen actually is a wrapper that goes around the actual NTFS files from a windows install. The problem there is that you have to copy them from an existing windows install, its not legal to distribute the windows NTFS drivers. So again, the companies selling these boxes cant easily do the NTFS wrapper either.
And if the box can do a full up windows, its going to be a lot bulkier and expensive, not only because of the windows liscense (linux is free, which is why these companies like to use it), but because its going to need a lot more hardware.

Perhaps with something like the linksys NSLU2, they will be able to do the wrapper, since I know people are working on modding the firmware for that one.

The best compromise I've seen so far is the ones that do the linux filesystem as well as FAT32, but that still doesn't serve everyone's needs.

It might be more expensive, but I imagine a shuttle box (even an older one to save on costs) would be pretty good as a file server if you need NTFS, etc.


I agree that gigabit and SATA would be nice though

 

[RideFree]

DiskStation 101+ is one solution but a lot more expensive - 2½ x as much.

 

[kyzen]

The problem with running an actual computer 24x7 as a file storage device is the power draw; this device probably uses considerably less power.

That being said.. I want NTFS

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: RideFree
DiskStation 101+ is one solution but a lot more expensive - 2½ x as much.

$250. still, not bad at all for SATA and gigabit.

 

[PsychoCrazy]

Originally posted by: prochobo
Also, these things need to come with GIGABIT interfaces. 100mbps is too slow.

For real.

 

[superflysocal]

solution for which problem? the SATA or lack of NTFS or both?

 

[superflysocal]

Originally posted by: RideFree
DiskStation 101+ is one solution but a lot more expensive - 2½ x as much.

solution for which problem? the SATA or lack of NTFS or both?

 

[mikeford]

Running even a low power PC 24/7 is going to require a LOT more power, but you get huge flexibility and a host for other than just storage tasks. Sure bet is this is a rapidly changing product area, whatever you buy now is going to kind of suck in 6 months.

 

[nekote]

ditto, with NTFS, SATA, SATA II, multi, multi - hard drives too!

Originally posted by: prochobo
Also, these things need to come with GIGABIT interfaces. 100mbps is too slow.

 

[bgovanlu]

Ok. I retract my previous statements. I ended up returning the damn thing to CC to get my money back. After about a week of using it, there were so many negative quirks to it that I begged to have a simple file server. Going back to work on that now... Sorry. Not Hot. Even witht the "sale" pricing this week.

 

[SuperSix]

Originally posted by: bgovanlu
Ok. I retract my previous statements. I ended up returning the damn thing to CC to get my money back. After about a week of using it, there were so many negative quirks to it that I begged to have a simple file server. Going back to work on that now... Sorry. Not Hot. Even witht the "sale" pricing this week.

Yea - these things are crap. The support forums @ Netgear.com are full of complaints.