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Best Home Network NAS
jammerjam writes "My WD 120GB drive got its MBR scrambled so it no longer mounts in my W*ndoze box (I can recover the data so I know that's intact). But now that's made me realize I need to implement my data backup plan. Scouring the Internet I can't find a reliable resource for home NAS solutions. For every positive review I can find a negative that refutes it. My first choice from what I found starts at $1200...I've got $500. Anyone have a suggestion? I'm not looking for enterprise-level storage here — but I do want reliability."
Buy a couple of 500 GB SATA HDDs. You can build a box with a SATA RAID controller for probably ~$200 or so and throw OpenFiler on it. You still won't do this under $500, though. Probably under $750, though, for sure, if you're careful.
/mbr. That should fix it.
As for the botched MBR, boot an MS-DOS or even a FreeDOS boot disk and do a fdisk
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Last year I ditched the file server at home for the DNS-323. With the current firmware, it's been rock solid for me. At the time, it was $300 for the unit and two 250GB drives. It's iTunes server works well enough for me as well.
As a bonus, it's debian based, so you can hack the OS as well to server up things light lighttpd, upgrade samba, or run subversion.
$179 for an Airport base station, $321 for three 500GB USB drives and a USB 2.0 hub. Should be enough for a serious porn collection, and you get wireless N for free.
Try the freenas server. It works great. :)
I use a old beat up computer with 3 500 gig external usb harddrives in a raid 5 which gives me a terabyte of storage
www.freenas.org
If you do it with OpenSolaris and ZFS, you make it very simple for yourself. The amount of administration needed using Linux and *iSCSI is huge. While OpenSolaris provides iSCSI/NFS on the fly. Including snapshots of snapshots. So you can have 'raw' volumes, and managed data. I'm using OpenSolaris now to boot my Xen Linux Nodes now from OpenSolaris NFS. Yes I know xVM exists, but it is not as mature as the Linux version. Use the best tool for a problem.
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I'm using a Linksys NSLU2 as a NAS. I've wiped it of the original Linksys firmware and installed the officially supported ARM version of Debian Linux on it. Debian is installed on a 2GB USB Memory Stick, and I have a 500GB External USB HD attached via a tiny USB hub. I also have an HP F380 Printer/Scanner attached.
I'm using the box as a Samba server for file sharing, SANE server for remote scanning, CUPS server for remote printing and a Twonky Media server for steaming audio and photos to my XBox 360. It all works really well.
Not a bad NAS (or really a complete Debian Linux box) for about $250 for the NSLU2 and the Harddisk.
--- I'm sure using a computer was fun back in the 80's. *sigh*
he said mirrored - so probably he meant RAID 1 :-)
The DriveStation Quattro is in your price range and provides you with 750GB of storage using RAID 5 and it's in your price range.
I just got a 2TB buffalo terastation pro II for 1K and it's awesome. Here's a review of the 1TB model. They offer other options, but this seemed like the best one for me based on price, capacity, and reputation. True reliability means you probably want RAID 5 and that means 3 or more drives. If you don't want to fight with raid cards and configuring it from scratch, then this is a great option.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I've had good luck with the two Ximeta NAS devices I've bought in the last couple of years. They have a proprietary architecture that allows you to put a standard low cost, high capacity drive onto your home network for file sharing via either Cat5 or USB (through a PC). The network connection provides superior performance. I've used these drives in Windows & Linux environments succesfully. I believe you can pick up the external enclosure (that only needs a drive; already contains power supply and interface hardware) at Radio Shack for ~$60 and then put whatever compatible drive you want in it. Read more at: http://ximeta.com/
I've read a LOT Drobo looks like an EXCELLENT choice, but there are two things to consider:
1. It isn't cheap at $499--without drives.
2. It is not a NAS as such. Drobo is a USB-attached external drive system. Yes, its volume(s) can be shared over a network, but it is not a standalone, network-connected device.
Now, if Drobo had a gigabit Ethernet connection, I would seriously consider saving up for one....
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Understand that for the $500, it will hold NOTHING, because out of the box, it comes with no drives. Your limitation on space is in how many drives you install (up to 4) and what capacity drives you install. Using their Drobolator page, you can see how capacity is affected by the number of drives and capacities. For example, installing 4 1TB drives gives you 3TB of protected storage.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I second that suggestion.
I just completed a very extensive review of both the hardware and software for Windows Home Server. It is a fantastic backup solution and you can build a machine for very little cost. Not only do you get a great backup solution, but you also get a lot more. Windows Home server has a built in web server that will host all your files online for free. From the website you can also Remote desktop into any of your Windows boxes that support remote desktop. You can also stream all your media content from the Home server to any machine on your network. There are some problems with the Media Streaming, hopefully those will be fixed. Last but not least you have the ability to use add-ins which can add tons of extra functionality.
The biggest limitation of Windows Home Server is that it will not backup anything but Windows machines, but that does not mean someone won't write an add-in that allows other operating systems to be backed up.
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My 'dream NAS' would support 3.0 Gb/s SATA transfers, support RAID 0-6 + JBOD, use a Linux-mountable filesystem on the drives (ReadyNas uses EXT3), have iTunes and DLNA media streaming support, firewire 800/USB 2.0 connections for the currently-direct-connect-only OS X Time Machine, support and use 1 GB transfer speeds.
The Thecus 5200B is sinfully fast, but doesn't have the iTunes or DLNA servers (it is a SMB box, not a home server, after all).
Opinions?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The easy way to remember this is:
How many drives can you afford to lose?
RAID0: you can lose 0
RAID1: you can lose 1
RAID5: if you don't remember this one, you're hopelessly lost anyway, so sure... you can lose 5.
RAID6: RAID5 with an extra pairity drive.
RAID0+1: you've added RAID1 to RAID0.
RAID10: you've added RAID0 to RAID1.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.