NAS Drive, any reccomendations?

[beatjunkie]

Found this on PC World eBay seems really cheap but will it be old and slow?

Its a WD My Book World Edition 1TB for £50?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Western-Digit...K_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item19c691ac72

I want to run itunes server on it and hopefully connect to ATV too.

 

[Mot!]

Qnap or Synology are the way to go for decent home NASs

If you get a single disk you'll soon find yourself wanting to upgrade it or RAID it so that you don't lose all of your media.

So maybe look at getting a 2+ bay..

 

[Adam.]

What he said tbh.

2+ disk. Or atleast buy one with more bays and add an extra hard drive when you can afford it so it keeps your data safe in case of drive failure.

 

[PinkoCommie]

I have a Drobo. Great little device. Decent support as well. I had the external PSU brick die on me, which took out the unit as well, they replaced it within a week.

I have the older version with the seperate DrobopShare, but they've now integrated it into one unit. They don't use real RAID as such, it is a proprietary RAID5 alike thing that allows you to use different sized disks and you can start an array with 2 discs and when you start to run out of space, just jam another into the enclosure and it grows the volumne, no messing about. If you're fully populated then all you have to do is pull the smallest drive and replace it with a bigger one and it just automatically rebuild the data onto the bigger drive and then extends the array.

I started with 4 * 25GB drives in mine a couple of years ago, and now have 2*1tb and 2*512GB, and have never had to reformat or remove data from it or anything, just pull a drive and replace.

 

[beatjunkie]

how about this one? Netgear Stora...

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/15751464/Netgear-NG-MS2000-Stora-Network-Attached-Storage-External-USB-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-Free-500GB-Drive-Via-Claim-Form/Product.html?searchtype=PCSH&searchsource=0&searchstring=stora&urlrefer=search&strefer=PCSH&searchfilters=s{stora}%2bc{420}%2b

 

[PinkoCommie]

Again, that just seems to be an Network Attached Enclosure. Yes it can take two drives, but it only mirrors them.

As with the WD one above they're like USB hard drive enclosures, just attached to the network instead. Ideally you want something that has the ability to take 3+ drives and RAID 5 or 6 or similar. That way you can have a larger than a single disk array of storage with redundancy built in so that if you lose a disk you lose no data.

Otherwise you might as well just go for a USB drive enclosure

 

[Padso]

I picked up a Buffalo Link Station Duo with 2 x 500GB drives after the external USB drive we were using started to die. Have it set up for RAID just in case a drive ever dies on us.

It took a bit of time transferring everything across then setting up the RAID but now its working perfect and any computer on the network can link into it.

 

[ChrisR]

Again, that just seems to be an Network Attached Enclosure. Yes it can take two drives, but it only mirrors them.

As with the WD one above they're like USB hard drive enclosures, just attached to the network instead. Ideally you want something that has the ability to take 3+ drives and RAID 5 or 6 or similar. That way you can have a larger than a single disk array of storage with redundancy built in so that if you lose a disk you lose no data.

Downside is as soon as you go for 3 or more drives the enclosures tend to go up in price quite a bit.

Personally I'd go for something like a Netgear Readynas Duo or one of the Synology 2 bay units. If the guy is looking at the products he's already mentioned then he's not really after anything high end.

Stick 2 x 2tb disks in a mirror and you've got a pretty nice setup.

Otherwise you might as well just go for a USB drive enclosure

If it really is only ever going to be accessed by one machine then yeah maybe look at a usb twin drive thingy, but having a nas over a usb device does bring other little advantages with one being access by multiple devices on the network. Can also run software on them and leave them chugging away without having to have your machine on etc unlike a usb connected drive.

 

[Dink]

i'd steer well clear of the first one you posted

i used to have one and it would only write at 5MB/s and read at about 6MB/s

 

[beatjunkie]

Yeah cheers for the comments, definitely gonna go for a 2 bay drive when funds allow! That first WD drive is mega old did some 'google' research

Max i want to spend is £150 i suppose!

 

[Dink]

i still recommend building a pc for it

i think i spent 170 building a 4TB nas pc back a few months then if something dies like the motherboard it's an easy fix

 

[beatjunkie]

i still recommend building a pc for it

i think i spent 170 building a 4TB nas pc back a few months then if something dies like the motherboard it's an easy fix

Have you got any links or info on this as Ive just revived an old PC from the death, and seems to be running great now!

 

[Dink]

here is some software that i've used before (although i use ubuntu on my nas now)

you just install it and then set it up via a web interface from another pc.

you don't even need a decent cpu to get good throughput

 

[dk]

this is the business, they do smaller ones too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004SEMPS4/?tag=cliospnet01-21

 

[beatjunkie]

Cool, cheers Dink ill check that out and try get it up and running, nice one

 

[cava83]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253305

Not as much size as the StorCenter, but huge expandability, £100 cash back and other benefits.

 

[Dink]

yeah if you got a spare pc then you might aswell give it ago

then you only need to get the hard drives (the ones i got are only £112 on scan at the mo)