Question Some decent NAS under $300?

[rogerdv]

Had an argument with my boss a coule of days ago because he insists in putting more and more hard drives inside the PC (9 hard drives+1 M.2), but I think that a NAS is a better solution. But he says that a NAS is above $500, which is a crazy expense, and he already invested in a really large case to put all those hard drives. Yet, he spent 300 in a weird tin removal pistol that only uses once in a week or less. Is there some reliable NAS under $200? I dont care much about RAID features, just need a box outside the workstation, that doesnt consumes more drive letters and doesnt produces random missing drives errors.

 

[gdansk]

You may be right it is a better solution but it's hard to find a decent NAS for that price. There are some 4 drive NAS for under $300. But I haven't used them.

In either case you should not have missing drive errors...

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, turning the PC into a NAS by switching the OS to Linux and using MDADM for raid would make more sense. Then it just becomes a file server and will perform better than any NAS you pick up.

I'm running mine and being able to put in whatever HW I want to makes more sense than messing with some cheap NAS. If I want to upgrade the NIC then it's a quick / cheap swap. More drives, no need to buy a new NAS to fit more drives. RAM / CPU swap as needed.

Point your boss in the more efficient direction instead of trying to change things to an inferior option. It doesn't take much effort to change the OS and convert the data to Raid w/o needing a raid card.

 

[jamesdsimone]

Just use the PC you have and install the server OS of your choice. I use Xigmanas and it works well.