Can't decided on a NAS. Suggestions please

Currently going around in circles while trying to decide on what NAS to buy.

Intially I was looking at the TS209 II, ReadyNAS Duo and DS208+. At the end it was a close tie between the 209 and ReadyNas Duo. However this morning after talking to the wife I came to the conclusion that the 2 Bay NAS would not be enough due to the Video, Music, Photo's ......

Currently I'm looking at the Synology CS407 but I have heard they don't like the 2 Samsung 1TB F1 I have just bought. Anyone using this model is it any good?

Any suggestions would begreatly appreciated.

A cheaper alternative may be getting 2 of these when they hit the warehouse:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=756759

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Originally Posted by solar975

A cheaper alternative may be getting 2 of these when they hit the warehouse:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=756759

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They look like stanard external boxes. Really looking for the functonality of the Synology/QNap.

Thanks for the reply. :)

In terms of functionality, Qnap and Thecus produce good NAS boxes, 3 or 4 bay boxes are reasonablish in price. Another alternative is to build your own using an mATX board and a low power CPU, AMD have a 35W model, or an Intel Atom based board, but the northbridge power requirements are silly and I'm not sure you'll get 6 SATA ports on them.

Are you bothered by the file system used?
Do you need dual LAN?

A dual-bay NAS is not a major issue if there's just two of you as you can always add another.

If you just want loads of storage a 4 or 5 disk RAID5 box such as the Thecus N4100 is ideal. It'll also do RAID10 if you want fast and don't mind loosing some storage.
The 5100 adds a disk so hot-spare (for small-business redundancy) or RAID6 are possible for the more paranoid types such as me.

Do you plan to use the box for streaming to the living room as well as PC data?
If so a NAS with esata may be useful as you'll gain performance if you use the esata to link to your PC.

Another option would be a Buffalo Terastation II which also offer 4 disk support.

One thing of note is that in most, if not all of these they will not use the NTFS file system. The only issue with this is that if you take out a drive to plug into your PC direct the PC will not be able to read the data.

The only way I know to get round this in a Microsoft environment is to build/buy a Windows Home Server or Windows Storage Server 2003 box.
I assume there will be Linux alternatives to this, I just don't know what they are! :)

Power consumption, noise and the inbuilt functionality of the QNAP/Synology units was important to me. I did look at the Atom but the chipset power consumption was a joke and defeated the all idea. Lack of raid on the current Atom boards also put me off.

In the end I looked at the Qnap boxes. Had a 409 for a week but returned it due to noise and ended up getting a 209 II. I am very pleased with the 209 II. It works out of the box and was very easy to setup. Sips electricity, quiet and pretty fast.

I will take another look at the Atom once the new chipset is released.

Thanks for the input :)

I've heard other good things of the TS-209 II. You can install SqueezeCenter really easily and it runs really well too.

I have two Thecus N5200Pros and although they are really good, they are big and noisy. But then they do have 5 drives in them :)

I have an Asus WLHDD. It's not fast but it is quiet and very lower power. Requires laptop sized disks. I'd recommend it as long as you don't mind the low speed. Not sure you can buy them new any more though.