NAS Advice

[Steve B]

Hey folks,
i'm sorely tempted by the Thecus N4100+ because of its uber-features.
I'm in need of some advice regarding NAS. Do you think it would be better to construct my own, or buy a prebuilt solution. I really like the fact that the Thecus comes in such a small package. So far, i've not been able to find any cases that are small enough to sit nicely and still take 4 drives.
It'll be populated with 4x500GB drives, in some form of raid configuration that i've not decided upon yet I'm obviously looking for some advice on that subject as well!
Cheers in advance,
Steve

[aidanjt]

If I had the money laying around I'd probably get the Thecus box, it's a nice little package that packs a punch. On the flip side my P4 box running Gentoo can do all that and more, I'm soon to order 5x500GB (1 for spare) disks because my 3x160GB are filled up and reiserfs hates that.

[DR]

The thing with the Thecus (or any dedicated NAS box) is it's just that - it does one job really well - being a NAS Box

I wouldn't build your own - then you have a PC which is a NAS box and has more things which can go wrong - barebone is there for a reason

It depends if you want a box which you can hack about with and use as more than a NAS Box or a small thing - which to be fair is VERY small to use specialist NAS

Personally - I use a 5200 Thecus loaded up - I had a fileserver before but it was more hassle than I thought it was worth

[Steve B]

the more i look at it, the more i love the 5200. Only, if i was to buy that, i wouldn't be able to afford any hard drives

[DR]

.... You don't have to fill it with drives from day 1

[vinnyT]

the more i look at it, the more i love the 5200. Only, if i was to buy that, i wouldn't be able to afford any hard drives

You could use it as a mouse house, untill you can afford the drives.

[DR]

Or a door stop?

[Steve B]

i've got a few 160GB drives to put in it, but i still need to sell the media PC and the dell before i can afford it

[DR]

So hit the FS forum

[Steve B]

its going on loan to someone who's in need of a PC, but wants a mac
hopefully if he messes around with the 24", he'll figure a PC is much better for his money, and buy it off me instead