I am a home user looking for a good NAS that I can backup all of my music, videos, and other important files on. Right now, I have about 500GB of music alone, so I am looking for a solution that will give me, at a minimum, 750 GB (I would ultimately like 1TB+).
My basement is wired with Cat5e (this is where most of my computers reside). Anything upstairs runs off of my wireless "G" network. I have a wire closet in my house, so noise & air flow is not an issue. I am not looking to use a lot of the advanced administration features of any NAS I purchase. I am going to keep things about as basic as possible. I have a network printer, so I will not need the print server feature. I have both Mac & PC machines at home, and I plan on mapping drives directly to the NAS as opposed to using the HTTP client. I have zero Linux knowledge & I have no plans of ever putting any Linux boxes on this network.
For the N2100, the pro is that it is cheap, compact, and has received fantastic reviews. The con is that it is plastic & not metal, it only supports RAID 0 & RAID 1, & it only holds two drives.
For the N4100+ the pro is that it has 4 hot swappable drive bays, it supports up to RAID 5, and it appears to be constructed a lot better (metal case). The con is that it has received spotty reviews and it costs more (not only for the unit, but to buy 4 drives vs 2).
Right now Newegg.com has the N2100PM for $279.99, the N2100BM for 297.99, and the N4100+ for $409.99.
Based on everything I listed above, is the N4100+ overkill for home use? Is the $409 price on the N4100+ too good of a deal to pass up? Would I be better off just going with the N2100?
Also, is the "PM" & "BM" just the outside finish of Pearl or Black?
Thanks for your help!