NAS servers

[immortality]

Hi All,

PB tech are having a big sale tonight so I thought it might be time to set up a more suitable storage system at home as we all have our own laptops and we seem to be passing around external HDD's/memory sticks to share movies/music etc.

Just need some advice as I'm not certain I'm reading this correctly.

Looking at something like this http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p ... yMail_3_24

Now, If I read this correctly I should be able to use my existing external HDD with all my movies on it with the NAS server using one of the USB3.0 ports? As well as the internal HDD in the NAS server (max internal HDD memory of 4TB but supports a total of 16TB memory)?

So than I hook the NAS server up to the router and then we should all be able to access all the data on the external HDD's via the LAN without ever having to move the HDD's around again.

Or am I looking at this wrong?

[Holden202T]

it does seem like that is how it reads....

its hard to know though, I thought the usb would be to connect it directly into a PC usb port, but I don't see why it would have 2 ports for that ....

also I am assuming from the price that it includes a drive inside it .... but I can't see where it says what size drive it has in it, only the max capacity!

[The1]

i use one of these at home, chuck a stick of ram in it and a msata drive, run linux or windows on it, usb3 external drive, gigabit ethernet, does my streaming and file sharing at home. My Home pc is a i5 version with 16gb ram.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?mai ... s_id=26495

[slewinson]

Synology NAS are supposed to be one off the better ones; my boss swears by his.

As a rule you need to supply your own hard disk for these units.

Simon

[immortality]

Yeah, definitely doesn't come with a HDD.

The specials email I received has it $100 cheaper than currently listed on the site (sale is only from 6pm to midnight tonight). I'll see what a 3 or 4 TB internal HDD goes for tonight to see if it's worth the coin.

[DanWA]

I much prefer reliability

So i have a HP Microserver, RocketRaid Raid Card, , 6x2TB

As for the NAS Software itself there is plenty but i am running windows 7 on mine with serviio and normal shares for file sharing around the house

If you want an out of the box NAS, keep away from Qnap and get a Synology

[The1]

Running same setup with Serviio on mine, works well.

What issues do you have with qnap? i run several box's on the enterprise for mirror backup systems and never had issues, even running in dusty dungeons. Though i dont use there fancy features.

[immortality]

Guess I'll find out how these work (NAS + 4TB internal HDD) when they arrive although I am considering wrapping em for Xmas so I have something to open when we go to the in-laws just to spice things up a bit.

i use one of these at home, chuck a stick of ram in it and a msata drive, run linux or windows on it, usb3 external drive, gigabit ethernet, does my streaming and file sharing at home. My Home pc is a i5 version with 16gb ram.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?mai ... s_id=26495

They had these for sale as well, fairly much the same price as the NAS. Things here in NZ are always a lot more than what you guys seem to pay for stuff.

I'm looking for a new battery for the Senator, I'm looking at a Optima but they are about $500 here in NZ for a red top 34/78 Vs AU$267-300

[DanWA]

Running same setup with Serviio on mine, works well.

What issues do you have with qnap? i run several box's on the enterprise for mirror backup systems and never had issues, even running in dusty dungeons. Though i dont use there fancy features.

Had one fail on me, also few colleagues have had them fail, saying that this is all home stuff, i wouldn't even consider one in a work environment

You get what you pay for to thats why the decent Synology's are expensive

[antus]

I'd recommend googling for reviews on the specific model. Some cant live up to the specs, eg my wifi access point has gigabit ethernet and usb3, and advertised files server capability but it could barely hit 12mb/s and high bandwidth streaming was a fail. I also suggest to try and find confirmation that 4TB drives are OK with it, and keep in mind that 4TB internal may function differently to 4TB external (the usb chip in some external drives rearranges the block sizes to get around some bios limits). I think the synology looks like a good one, but they are things to watch out for with that type of hardware.

Also this is not exactly the question but be wary of raid. In this day and age recovery can be a lot easier with 2 copies of stuff on a couple of large drives, and the savings by going raid 5 can give a false sense of security. If its a proprietry system you may have few recovery options. I have had similar failure - when 2 drives from the same batch are put in raid and have the same usage pattern at the same temp its more likely than you may think to loose 2 at once. In my case the ambient temp got too high in the middle of summer, and they were in a pc chassis next to each other so when the engine bearing grease started to bake the friction in the engines heated the drives up more and the heat transferred through the metal pc case from one to the other so 1 drive died, and the next was only about 4 hours behind it - before I got home from work. Fortunately they wernt in use so they didnt get out of sync in that 4 hours, and I was able to image the good drive, swap the PCB to the baked drives and of them one of them came back to life (though it heated up fast!) and I was able to eventually make a second image and get enough of the array back online. This was linux dmraid so I had options for recovery on a pc... I have heard of people having more troubles with obscure nas chipsets after the device dies where even if the disks are ok they cant find anything that will recognise the raid.