Suggest good NAS for Home

[Abhishek kapoor]

I am looking for basic NAS for Home use. Currently I have 2 External HDD (small storage - 250GB).

My requirements:

1. Minimum 2-3 HDD Slot. For Pure data storage only. (No usage for Backup)

2. Could connect wireless or by ethernet cable with my Belkin N150 Basic Wireless router.

3. Simple plug and play setup where the drive shows up as networked drive under Windows No need to install extra Software for accessing that NAS.

4). Would be good If brought HDD's and Enclosure Seprately.

Is there nothing that can fit such small requirement criteria?

[TFindley]

Personally I'd take a look at Synology Diskstation or Nethear ReadyNAS products. I used to use a Synology about 5 years ago for a single-disk NAS. I recently upgraded to an 8TB 4-disk NAS. I'm not going to suggest specific products as its really down to your specific requirements and your network layout.

Dont bother looking for a wireless one though - Performance will be dreadful compared to Wired 1GB connection.

[neo1911]

QNAP TS-212

I have one and it's working fine. It's 2-bay and comes with gigabit ethernet (No Wifi)

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

You could buy a HP Proliant Microserver, it has 4x drive bays and you could put a 5th drive where the optical drive goes.

I use one of thise as a Nas running Windows Home Server, you could easily install FreeNas on it too.

Not sure howmuch they are in India, however in the UK at the moment you get ?100 cashback, so mine cost ?120 in total and i could put what ever drives i wanted in it.

Also when i visit the link in your sig i'm told:

tech-supports.blogspot.co.uk contains content from www.madwahm.com, a site known to distribute malware.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah the HP microservers are pretty good choice to be honest. I am currently running N40L as my file server - plus a lot more! I put esxi on it, and run my "NAS" as a VM with raw access to 3 of the 4 disks in the box. So I get my NAS, and I get my router as virtual, my linux box is a VM, my test window and servers, any linux distro I want to play with, etc.. I just fire up a VM. Now I did bump it to 8GB vs the 2 it comes with and added an extra nic - but cost was min.

And you can actually do 6 drives total - you can fit 2 drives where the optical drive should go if you wanted to.

[RichardK]

Synology DS212+ or DS712+ (If you want the option to expand to more disks later). These can do wireless with a USB dongle.

[Night Prowler]

I use the ReadyNAS Duo version 2 and it is perfect for basic home use. I have two 2TB drives mirrored and it does everything I could possibly want from streaming to storage (raid 0/1 only). The great thing is; you can get it populated with drives, or buy it bare using your existing drives.

Check out the reviews online. I think you will be very pleased. I did a lot of review reading prior to buying, and I have yet to be disappointed.

[Guest LiquidCrystalMeth]

My preference, and a lot of other peoples who have in the past used a vendor built NAS, and then found it hard to get their data back when its gone pear shaped, is to avoid vendor built NAS boxes. It locks you into their ecosystem. For the same reason a lot of people now prefer to avoid hardware RAID cards.

I would NEVER ever buy a vendor built box again, and i would never allow a client to buy one, if they choose to, i wont support it...simple as that. Too much drama when it goes horribly wrong, and it will, even if it is eventually. And usually when the client has long since let their backup of the RAID lag as they have allowed themselves to be lulled into the RAID false sense of security thing. Then the lock in to a vendor or RAID controller chipset will bite you in the ass.

Instead i, and a lot of others, prefer to use something like FreeBSD, FreeNAS, NAS4Free etc and take advantage of software RAID, using filesystems like ZFS, on which you can implement things like:

* ZFS RAIDZ (Single Redundancy - Equivalent to RAID 5 - Data survives 1 bad drive)

* ZFS RAIDZ2 (Double Redundancy - Equivalent to RAID 6 - Data survives 2 bad drives)

* Snapshots

p.s. ZFS RAIDZ/RAIDZ2 does share the caveats of its equivalent RAID 5/6 when it comes to growing your storage (upgrading drives to larger drives)

ZFS is insanely easy to set up and administer, and common across software RAID based implementations (FreeBSD/FreeNAS/NAS4Free/Linux) if you system dies, youre not locked to a vendor/RAID controller chipset, you can literally take the drives off a dead MB and plug them into another FreeBSD/FreeNAS/NAS4Free/Linux system, and inn some cases the storage pool will be automounted, if not, a few simple commands and your data is back and accessible.

See these sites for more info:

ZFS started in Solaris, but as the evil people who took over Solaris killed OpenSolaris sometime ago, its probably best to skip it nowadays, even the community based replacement OpenIndiana isnt developed at a pace where id trust my data on it. Thats leaves you with the following most popular choices for ZFS:

FreeBSD:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS/

http://wiki.freebsd....QuickStartGuide

http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSTuningGuide

NAS4Free is probably preferred over FreeNAS, as FreeNAS is now built on NanoBSD

http://www.nas4free.org/

FreeNAS:

http://www.freenas.org/

Linux:

Of course Linux can do its own version of software RAID. Dont be tempted however to use the ZFS inmplementation under Linux, it is FUSE (or in other words the filesystem runs in user space, which should be enough warning by itself). But using the standard RAID implementation is fine, and using mdadm to admin it is easy too.

Ubuntu guide:

http://ubuntuforums....ad.php?t=408461

Oh, and i forgot to mention, i'd much rather spend my money on building my own box with moderate specc'd components and good drives and not on some vendors diskless box, which will leave you lowering your quality when it comes to disk choices as the bloody box cost a small fortune......

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

My preference, and a lot of other peoples who have in the past used a vendor built NAS, and then found it hard to get their data back when its gone pear shaped, is to avoid vendor built NAS boxes. It locks you into their ecosystem. For the same reason a lot of people now prefer to avoid hardware RAID cards.

Oh, and i forgot to mention, i'd much rather spend my money on building my own box with moderate specc'd components and good drives and not on some vendors diskless box, which will leave you lowering your quality when it comes to disk choices as the bloody box cost a small fortune....

i have a synology NAS. ive had it for 4 years and it's rock solid. when questioned, Synology has told me that my data will be safe if the unit dies. whether or not it locks you into their ecosystem, idk.

before i bought my NAS, i spec'd out a unit i could build myself. it cost the same, or more, than my NAS. i wasnt saving any money by building it myself. also, you have to invest the time to build it and mess with NAS software... also, a homebuilt NAS is most likely going to use more power, is going to be physically bigger, and make more noise. w/ the Synology, you just put in the drives, plug it in and configure your raid set. there's no extra software to install.

[Guest LiquidCrystalMeth]

i have a synology NAS. ive had it for 4 years and it's rock solid. when questioned, Synology has told me that my data will be safe if the unit dies. whether or not it locks you into their ecosystem, idk.

before i bought my NAS, i spec'd out a unit i could build myself. it cost the same, or more, than my NAS. i wasnt saving any money by building it myself. also, you have to invest the time to build it and mess with NAS software... also, a homebuilt NAS is most likely going to use more power, is going to be physically bigger, and make more noise. w/ the Synology, you just put in the drives, plug it in and configure your raid set. there's no extra software to install.

Im glad youve had a good experience, i hope it continues, synology is definitely better than most. Of course all NAS vendors will tell you that your data will be 100% safe if the unit dies :)

Ive been in IT support for about 30 years, and i remember the days when you had NO choice but to buy vendor RAID, and ecstatic the day i no longer had to, ive seen countless vendor RAID setups fail in my lifetime (most recently dealing with a tearful ReadyNAS owner who hovered over me and sobbed when after 5 hours of fun, starting by tryng to TFTP rescue the array it ended with transplanting their drives to a similar backup unit i had only to find that their original box had completely blown the array away forever, out of the bounds of all current RAID recovery software...and some people say a simple mirrored RAID setup is just fine and dandy and bag us multiple redundancy freaks:) ), im determined it wont happen to me, hence the self build. I know each component thats put in there, from the power supply to the grommets on the hard drive mounts. I more faith in my build than i have in a mass produced little box that sometimes is a reconditioned unit presented as brand new (*cough* Netg^%$ *cough* The*$s)...seen that happen more times than you would guess...no, really.

For me in Australia, where we get gouged on pricing on everything PC related (people have to take out a mortgage here to buy a full (non OEM) Windows license), my self build cost me way less than even a 4 bay diskless vendor NAS box would have cost. A lot less. As for power, my box is in a home situation and not on 24/7, and again i have more faith in a full size properly rated and engineered, and efficient single 12v rail power supply than one in a vendor NAS box.

Would i want to run my 6 drive ZFS RAIDZ2 array in a vendor box, i think you can safely tell im going to say No....

[Guest]

I have been using a dns-323 in a mirror for years and it works great. In windows it shows up as another computers on the network, there is basic user management on the device and you can setup new shares as well. Simple and its does the job.

[FiB3R]

I have a ReadyNAS NV+ that I intend to sell very soon, if you are interested.

[+BudMan MVC]

"a homebuilt NAS is most likely going to use more power, is going to be physically bigger,"

Depends on what you use - if your using a desktop tower and MB and PSU - then sure. But you can buy pretty much the same stuff that the prebuilt stuff is using as far as parts. They might have custom case, etc. And parts might be modified to fit there case, etc. But you can get a ATOM or such stuff, you don't have to run an I7 for example - you sure and the hell don't need a desktop type video card, etc. Same goes for what types of disks you put into, those can make a big difference on what your power/sound level is.

So you can clearly build or even buy low power boxes to use as your NAS. The N40L I am using is whisper quite and draws almost nothing and tiny little thing for the ability to have 6 disks in it and 2 addon cards. I can check the killawatt its plugged into when I get home - but I do believe last time I checked it was drawing like 50 to 60 watts while running 3 VMs at all times (router/nas/linux box). That is with 4 disks in it.

Is it easier to just buy a dedicated nas box - sure, but to be honest there does not have to be a lot of dickering with it to get a rock solid/low power very quite box built that can do pretty much anything you would want it to do. And quite possible for less dollars. The nas OSes he mentions are very straight forward, designed for get online very quickly with minimal fuss. Now if you doing it from scratch with a generic bsd or linux then sure your going to have to spend more time with it. But the mentioned freenas or nas4free are pretty much turn it on, add your disks, create your shares and your up and running. If you want to run a windows based os - WHS not a bad option.

So for example - quick look on the unraid forum for budget builds, here is a 6 drive case that is only 13.58" x 8.94" x 10.71" -- freaking tiny. And very sim looking to the N40L case. The size of the N40L is 10.5 x 8.3 x 10.2

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811112265

On the unraid budget build section you can build a 12 drive system for Less than $500. Where you going to find a pre-built box with 12 bays for anywhere near that price?

[Dutchman01]

A homebuilt NAS can use more power but also can use lesser power, all depends on the hardware you buy and put together.

Also most users have build an even more powerful NAS than the known brands are currently offering.

 

from NAS4Free webpage:

It's nice to have an expensive store-bought box. In practice with many commercial solutions, you're not sure if you're buying a great solution, or just a shiny box, and maybe a slick interface, where what is underneath isn't really what you were looking for.  And with many things, once you've bought it, good luck getting upgrades. NAS4Free keeps going where many commercial box solutions stop. Your customized NAS4Free solution will likely be cheaper, more powerful, and more custom fit to your needs than many commercial NAS boxes offer.