Please help me find the ideal NAS unit!

[ManUtdFan]

Hi all,

Recently I suffered yet another hard drive crash (a Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB USB2.0), and I have now decided that I want to purchase a NAS storage unit on which I can store backups of my important data to be accessible throughout the household (no business application whatsoever, just my own personal use). It will be used for mirroring the contents of one or more hard drives.

My requirements:

- Must be at least 300 GB
- As cheap as possible but I'll pay almost whatever it takes bar extremely expensive enterprise solutions
- Should preferably have FTP support
- Should preferably have a solid backup function or software (however, you are also most welcome to recommend third-party stuff as well!)
- Has to have a fast Ethernet interface, as I have seen many NAS units that were extremely slow in this regard...
- Should preferably have some sort of power saving mode it can enter, as it will probably be on 24/7...

Right now I am looking at units like Maxtor's Shared Storage Drive, and other units from Seagate, Iomega, Western Digital etc. I would rather not purchase an enclosure for installing an internal drive myself.

Please guys - any recommendations, ideas, personal experiences etc. are most welcome!

Thanks beforehand!

 

[Vegito]

As cheap as possible does not come with RAID. If you're still going to use single drive nas, you'll suffer crashes as well. Sounds like you need RAID enable NAS

I suggest http://www.buffalotech.com/products/pro...detail.php?productid=97&categoryid=19#

Mirror or RAID 5 mode

 

[ManUtdFan]

I would have run RAID inside my computer but seeing as it's a Shuttle SN41G2 with no RAID support (and only space for 2 disks) it's hardly a viable option... The idea to "survive" crashes, at least in part, is to have one disk inside the Shuttle and one NAS mirroring its data.

I will take a further look at the Buffalo unit as well, looks very interesting - thanks!

 

[Vegito]

The ximeta nas/usb 2 allows you to connect 2 units on the network and do mirroring

its cheaper than buffalos but not as big.

I meant running raid on the NAS not your PC

 

[Vegito]

I own this.. i think its good enough for a home user.. but depends on what you do..
http://www.ximeta.com/technology/ndas/i...ESSID=d5abe916b1433a4be054155d9aeed03e

 

[NYTRIDR]

either the above mentioned buffalo or WD NAS devices look like they would suit ur needs well.

 

[JeffBlair]

Or, you could just get an older PC, and put Linux on it. You could even get a hot swap cage for the hard drives. Do either hardware RAID via a card, or software RAID and LVM.

 

[imported_Goo]

www.infrant.com