Recommend a good, cheap NAS on GBit ethernet?

[fuddam]

Nothing too fancy. 2TB upwards. Don't have a lot of cash.

Seen a 2TB Seagate one on Scan for roughly £110, and a Buffalo 2TB for less than £100, but quality seems pretty suspect based on user feedback.

Don't really need web access, just backup.

Ideas?

Thanks

[shaithis]

Those are DAS's, not NAS's.

Do you need it to be a network device viewable by mulitple machines or is it just for backup of a single PC? If for a single PC, then any of the external drives will do the job (go USB 3.0 though). If its for multiple PCs, you will need something like http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-s...and-phone-apps - my personal preference is for Synology (or roll-your-own-with-a-microserver) but they are both multi-bay and cost a lot more.

[jim]

Suggestion from personal experience: if you're buying a NAS (I agree with shaithis on the 'what do you want' point), then get one without drives and add your own.

If you buy a box with drives, then you're hobbled in the future. Any upgrades will likely void the warranty, and if it fails under warranty, the NAS and your data will all go trotting off to the manufacturer in the post. If you control the drives independently of the NAS, then you control your data. Personally, I prefer it that way.

[fuddam]

yep, is for multiple machines, Pcs, laptops, ipads, ipod etc.

One of the reasons I'd considered built-in drives is the one-button logic, software etc. It's more expensive to get box + drives + software solution etc.

That Seagate one on Scan was a first choice.

[DanceswithUnix]

OK, some low cost options:

Do you have a broadband router with a USB port on it? Some can do basic filesharing.
Do you have an old PC? Installing FreeNas on an old PC and adding some disks will be faster and more flexible than any of the consumer boxes.

Otherwise, what is your budget for how much storage?

[jim]

yep, is for multiple machines, Pcs, laptops, ipads, ipod etc.

One of the reasons I'd considered built-in drives is the one-button logic, software etc. It's more expensive to get box + drives + software solution etc.

That Seagate one on Scan was a first choice.

The NAS units will already have the software built in, you don't need to worry about that. All you do is buy the unit, insert the drives (10 second job), and it formats them.

The software route is relevant if you build/buy standard hardware, i.e. not a NAS unit, such as the HP Microserver N54L.

[fuddam]

Do you have an old PC? Installing FreeNas on an old PC and adding some disks will be faster and more flexible than any of the consumer boxes.

Otherwise, what is your budget for how much storage?

Budget is around £100-£150

I have an old PC I could populate with drives, though the power draw will probably be a lot more than standalone NAS, right? My main PC draws around 120W while idling. I don't want that kind of power going 24/7.

Didn't know about FreeNas - will looksee

[DanceswithUnix]

Depends on the machine, power draw can be a bit high if you are going to leave it on all the time. I have an ATX motherboard machine with 4GB or ram, a power hungry Athlon 7750 and an old 500GB hard drive and that takes 65W from the wall according to my power meter.

My home server uses an AMD APU, so more like laptop tech and much lower idle power. Not sure how much it is drawing, but then it has a couple of virtual machines running on it as well as serving files.

Some people use an Atom motherboard to keep the power consumption right down. I went APU because the motherboards tend to have loads of SATA ports and I wanted a bit of grunt for other tasks.

[AndrewPoole]

The 2TB Seagate Central isn't too bad for the price. As you mentioned, it's small and low powered and you don't have to mess around with any software or configs. Dragging an old PC out to file serve can be more hassle than it's worth sometimes.

Even a half way decent NAS enclosure is going to set you back at least the £100 you would spend on something like that. If you pair it up with a wifi router, you can stream to your phone, TV etc as well.

If you do decide to upgrade at a later date, you always get a second larger one or take the disk out to build your own.

[Bonebreaker777]

Zyxel and DLink singe HDD NASes are pretty good for the price.

If you can stretch it, a Synology NAS would be something I would definitely suggest or recommend.

For reading I could suggest 27x 2-bay NAS devices tested. Very recent and can give you a image about the manufacturers. The price(s) is/are probably out of your budget range.

Zyxel NSA310 single bay NAS review £70ish

Synology DS112j Single Bay NAS review £120ish

Zyxel NSA310 Single Bay NAS review £70ish

D-Link ShareCenter Pulse DNS-320 Single Bay NAS review £55ish

D-Link DNS-320L Single Bay NAS review £60ish

The reviews and verdicts are pretty good about the Zyxel. I had a Dlink before but I was nowhere happy with it as I am now with my Synology. Choose based on your judgement but your budget would hardly allow something better that a Zyxel and a 3TB HDD, which should be enough anyway (£70 for the NAS plus £80 for 3TB HDD scraping your £150 budget limit).

[crossy]

Zyxel and DLink singe HDD NASes are pretty good for the price.

If you can stretch it, a Synology NAS would be something I would definitely suggest or recommend.

I'd be a bit wary of the Zyxel and especially the DLink NAS's - there's been quite a few complaints about them either delivering poor performance or failing badly. And DLink's support seems to (according to reports) be very suspect.

If you're looking for a simple plug-n-play NAS, then the Seagate range is probably as good as any. But have you thought about a Western Digital device? Like Seagate they make drives too, so it's a one-stop-solution. I've got an old MyBookWorldEdition and I've had that 1TB drive hooked up to Windows, Linux and lord knows what with little in the way of problems, despite it being covered in fluff, dropped and generally abused. Just checked PC World and you'll get change from your £150 budget for a 3TB (non-mirrored) device from WD.

The "My Book" devices seem to be basic one (backups and central file storage), whereas the "My Cloud" ones seem to be up against stuff like Dropbox, although the ability to extend the storage with a USB 3.0 drive is a nice touch I wasn't previously aware of. My MBWE came with WD "SmartWare" which seemed to be a rebranded version of Memeo backup - it's great for file-based backups, but I wouldn't be happy recommending it as a "DR" type solution.

Unfortunately, I'm now in the position of needing to backup a quorum of machines - most of which have a lot of files. I was originally looking at a Drobo (plus Acronis True Image), but came to the conclusion that a QNAP or Synology box was not only cheaper, but also more full-featured. So when funds permit I'll be thinking about 3x3GB WD Red's and probably a Synology DS413j, (or the equivalent QNAP).

Would love to "do" a FreeNAS box, but couldn't find a decent case (want it as small as possible and 4-bay), all the ones I saw were either large or had noisy fans and/or PSU's.

[Woodentop]

I love my QNAP but they are far from cheap.... Synology are also good.
Just make sure you dont skimp on disks for a NAS that will be powered on 24/7

[herulach]

Honestly any 4 bay NAS device is going to be outclassed by a microserver for performance/cost. Either Freenas if its just a nas device, or ubuntu server etc if you want a more flexible solution (or need it to run in a graphical mode). You also get a bit more flexibility with positioning by having a pci-e slot. I've got a new machine to act as a htpc now, so I'll be getting another pce-ac68 to throw in the microserver so it can go in the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs.

[Bonebreaker777]

Microserver and let alone any 4-bay is out of the question with the proposed budget.
I had Dlink and beside the performance (tops 10-15MB/s sequential) I had nothing to complain about.
Still maintaining that the models suggested will be adequate.

EDIT: I had Dlink DNS 323 before my Synology and did everything I could him ask for (beside the modern functions of a Synology). > http://dns323.kood.org/

[crossy]

Honestly any 4 bay NAS device is going to be outclassed by a microserver for performance/cost. Either Freenas if its just a nas device, or ubuntu server etc if you want a more flexible solution (or need it to run in a graphical mode). You also get a bit more flexibility with positioning by having a pci-e slot. I've got a new machine to act as a htpc now, so I'll be getting another pce-ac68 to throw in the microserver so it can go in the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs.

Microserver - at least the off-the-shelf ones - will also be a LOT noiser and also larger than the equivalent 4-way NAS. Personally, I was going the microserver route then I'd sure as heck want to build it myself so I could use a high efficiency, modular PSU with a temp-sensitive FAN ... probably a Corsair or Enermax. And the size issue is a big one for me - I don't live in a mansion!

It's probably a dumb thing to say, (but wouldn't be my first or last), but the thing that put me off about FreeNAS was that the documentation and forum hardware recommendations were very much geared at a business use. So it was Xeon processor, fancy server-grade Supermicro mobo, ECC memory, multiple NIC's, etc. Costed their "recommendations" and it was the top end of £700-800! No, I was gived to wondering out loud "where's the config for a home user?".

If I could have found a case to suit then I would have been tempted by one of the low TDP Xeons - at least those can be cooled by quiet fans.

[barry2811]

I use NAS4Free (fork of older FreeNAS, and much lighter) on a MSI E350DM-E33 motherboard (with CPU built-in). Idles at a very low power usage and supports 6 SATA drives out of the box (I have five in there currently). I powered it with a SeaSonic Gold PSU to get the most efficiency but that is probably overkill.

As well as serving media, I also use if for backup (rSync), a web-server (which I use with a PHP script I wrote to allow me to perform Wake-On-LAN for my network from anywhere), torrents (Transmission), as well as FTP and Dynamic DNS.