Home NAS - Hardware recommendation

[pardal51]

Mods not sure whether this is the right forum, if not can you please move it...

Hi all,

I am after suggestions/recommendations for a home NAS. It will be mainly used for storing backups, VMs, video and music. I am thinking of getting a model with 2x HDD slots so i can fit in 2x 1TB HDDs. It would be also nice to have option as print server too. Please silent (not too noisy)

So far I have seen these on Scan:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Icy-B...-Servers-inone

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Thecu...-RAM-and-4xUSB

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Qnap-...Gbit-Lan-3xUSB

I am sold on this one: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Qnap-...-2xUSB-2xeSATA but it is quite dear

Any recommendations????

Cheers,

[shaithis]

Well, they should all be of a fairly good build quality, I would therefore go with the cheapest one with the features you need. I would search around for any benchmarks though, NASes can vary wildly in performance.

[kmac]

Have a look here for reviews and leaderboard of performance

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

I built my own - you can have a look at it here:

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...-needed-3.html

[Singh400]

Might be better to build your own in the long term, have you thought about that?

[pardal51]

thanks for all replies so far...

I have thought about building own NAS, however space is a constraint at the moment. I think going the SFF route would be more expensive (not 100% sure though).

[kmac]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168130

Add a couple of 1TB Samsung F3 drives at circa £65 each and you have a pretty good NAS for just over £300 that will be more flexible and faster than a lot of the pre built NAs boxes. You would need a free OS such as FreeNAs but that OS takes up about 28mb of space so oculd run from the HDD provided by HP or even on a pen drive as mine does.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/in/en...4-3577708.html
Specs here

[pardal51]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168130

Add a couple of 1TB Samsung F3 drives at circa £65 each and you have a pretty good NAS for just over £300 that will be more flexible and faster than a lot of the pre built NAs boxes. You would need a free OS such as FreeNAs but that OS takes up about 28mb of space so oculd run from the HDD provided by HP or even on a pen drive as mine does.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/in/en...4-3577708.html
Specs here

Problem is space + noise. This would be great if I could max out RAM and use it as ESX for Lab training.
Having said that it is not discarded as a possibility.
Thanks for links

[mycarsavw]

Synology user here - DS408 (work server, CCTV server, 2Tb over 4 HDDs) and a DS209j (home server 1Tb over 2 HDDs) - can't rate them highly enough.

Qnap comes close, Thecus not so much.

[Barakka]

I've got a Synology DS-207+ with 2x1TB drives in RAID 1 and must admit, i'm well impressed.


I also have mine linked via a VPN to a RS407 Rack Mount version doing synchronised backups overnight of data.

[circuitmonkey]

I'm still running a Synology 106j and it's still going strong
Have been looking into replacing it with something faster though, that said this machine hasn't skipped a beat in the 4ish years I've had it

[kmac]

Problem is space + noise. This would be great if I could max out RAM and use it as ESX for Lab training.
Having said that it is not discarded as a possibility.
Thanks for links

Noise easy to sort out - just replace stock cooler with something from here:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_Heatsinks

and case fans with something from here:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article63-page1.html

Space is harder to solve which is why I made mine using a min-ITX board and this case:

http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=12632

The power supply included is made by CWT a respected OEM manufacturer but is only rated 68% efficient. It is super silent though.

The case fans will need to be swapped to keep the noise down though