NAS recommendation for home use?

[mroz]

I'd like to give our home network some centralised storage, mostly for audio & video. I was hoping to start out with a couple or three 1TB drives, maybe Samsung Spinpoints in a bare NAS box, with the intention of taking this upto five drives in RAID 5.

I want a reliable & fast solution but being mean am looking for perhaps the impossible as I was hoping to spend no more than £500 on the initial box & two drives. At £75 per drive that leaves me with £350 for the box.

The Thecus N5200 looks like it would do the job nicely but is a bit pricey.

Any other suggestions?

I could use an old spare machine with linux & software raid, but nothing I have available would be small, quiet or particularly low power. It will sit in our living room under an adsl router.

[handscombmp]

If you willing to spend up to £500 you could probaly build a small quite pc to put freenas onto.

[CaptainCrash]

If you willing to spend up to £500 you could probaly build a small quite pc to put freenas onto.

Yup, with that budget you could spec a nice little low-power, low-noise server which would blow any off-the-shelf NAS box into the dust for performance, features and expandability.

The popularity of these overpriced purpose-built NAS enclosures remains a mystery to me, unless simplicity of setup is the one overriding concern...

[PeteSmith]

If you are looking for a NAS box instead of building your own i recommend the Synology DS-408, feature rich, low power, low noise and well built. The cheaper 2 bay model 209 is also worth considering if your don't need 4 bays. I haven't had a single problem with mine and i'm much happier leaving that turned on 24/7 than having a pc doing the same.

[Blastuk]

If you are looking for a NAS box instead of building your own i recommend the Synology DS-408, feature rich, low power, low noise and well built. The cheaper 2 bay model 209 is also worth considering if your don't need 4 bays. I haven't had a single problem with mine and i'm much happier leaving that turned on 24/7 than having a pc doing the same.

was looking them up and saw this for £253
http://www.xspo.co.uk/product.php?pid=8591

looks cheap

[mroz]

If you willing to spend up to £500 you could probaly build a small quite pc to put freenas onto.

Ooh, FreeNAS, that's a new one on me. <goes away & reads> Oh god, I feel another project coming on. Cheers

BTW Wife reading this - her face dropped & she uttered a tired 'oh no...'; no faith in me - reckons it'll take me about 300 years to complete.

[mroz]

Thanks for the off the shelf solutions too - I'll look into these shortly, but for now have to finish cleaning our pet rats cage or Cheryl (wifey) will beat me again

[Jay]

I have an ITX atom based system with FreeNAS that didn't cost that much.

[Singh400]

If you willing to spend up to £500 you could probaly build a small quite pc to put freenas onto.

Spot on. I built mine for just a tad under £500.


(click to make bigger - click here if you can't see the picture)

Those are my specs, with todays prices. I also bought a Samsung 80GB for the OS, but Scan don't do that no more. Anything similar would be fine.

[Jay]

that is a little over the top, the running costs would not be worth it IMO

[mroz]

If I go with FreeNAS & don't use an old box, I'll probably underclock & use a decent heatsink which will be usable without a fan, I hope. My main concern with self-build, apart from ever getting it done, is keeping power consumption low. FreeNAS would probably be installed to compact flash or some such. Anyone have experience of (cheap) SATA to CF adaptors? I'm hoping a quiet PSU & maybe two case fans will be the only sources of noise outside of the drives themselves. I'm not too constrained by physical size, so heat won't be a problem from that perspective. Also, from what I read 512-1024MB should be enough RAM, along with maybe a Sempron that will underclock itself when load is low.

[edit] OTOH the Synology systems do look nice & low power... decisions, decisions.

[Singh400]

that is a little over the top, the running costs would not be worth it IMO

Lets have a look at your specs then. Always looking for more interesting projects

[Barry]

I've never understood people spending so much on something so simple.

[aidanjt]

I've never understood people spending so much on something so simple.

Perhaps because it's not "so simple". There's a large array of factors involved.

[mroz]

Anyone know if the Synology DS-408 will work with 1TB Samsung HD103SI EcoGreen F2, in particular if the drives will correctly spin down after the configured inactivity time?

In the absence of an answer, a question for Scan: would you accept a return on the drives if they aren't compatible?

I need to know as a main attraction for me is the 20W consumption when spun down.

[PeteSmith]

Apologies for not replying sooner, i use 4x 1GB Samsung F1 Spinpoints in my DS-408, they do spin down after the desired period, but you do have to be sure nothing is accessing the drive (obviously). Thats kinda a no brainer, what i mean is if you host a website on it, or have a media extender, or FTP, mail server etc running, then the drives may remain active for a variety of reasons, due to different devices or users connecting to it. HTH.

Also i have noticed an annoying clicking noise when they spin down, if you experience this its nothing to worry about, it doesn't necessarily mean the drives are failing.

By the way the CS-408 is the earlier model, less memory and slower processor, so do take that into consideration.