Good low-cost NAS with resilience (RAID5 ?)

[R1Dave]

I'm not an expert on hardware by any means but i have a reasonable idea of what i want. I'm looking for a reasonable amount of disk space for video (about 3TB) with backup (so RAID something). I'm thinking a 4 disk NAS would be a good option. Does anybody have any recommendations? I don't want to spend a fortune. If it's too pricy, i'll just go for a couple of single disk NAS's and periodically back one up to the other.

[skippy_nz]

i have a netgear ReadyNAS NV+ - the RND4000 model so it had no disks - i bought 4x 1tb drives and configured them in Raid 5 and it works quite nicely. my only gripe is the network transfer speeds are not what i expected but then again that could be my router that is slowing things down. All my network hardware is rated at 10/100/1000 but i never see the speeds i would expect for the gigabit connection. i have been told that the routers etc on the market to private use will never get that sort of speeds so i havent worried about it. With all that said i can stream tv recordings etc over wifi with no issues from this NAS so im happy with it.

HTH

[martint123]

I got one of the HP microservers with £100 cashback - like these http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant...m=products It looks like the cashback offer is still on.


Now with 4 2tb drives inside. I shoved W7 on it in the end after playing with Esxi and some linux raid software.
Now it also has DVB-S2 and DVB-T2 usb dongles on it for HD recording!!

[Lao Pan]

+ 1 for the HP Microserver
Mine running UnRaid OS with 2 x 2TB (One for Parity Drive) + 500GB Drive (It was in a draw doing nowt) 3 is the maximum for free OS.
It took a while to set up -fairly steep learning curve. But I moved house in August plugged it in and havn't touched the OS since just sits there purring slightly

[jcjefferies]

I think most of the cheaper NAS units have 2 drive bays. This would give the ability to add the capacity of the two drives to give one large partition but at the expense of reliability as you could potentially loose everything if one disk fails. The other option is to use RAID 1 which mirrors the disks which does nothing to increase capacity but improves the reliability as the data is still available if either disk fails.

If you want to increase the capacity and reliability then you need an array of at least three disks. If you look at the DABS web site and search for “NAS” you will see about 470 products. Have a look at "QNAP TS-419P+" which is a 4 bay NAS which supports RAID and JBOD but is about 400UKP without disks. See also "Verbatim PowerBay Databank 4 Bay NAS" for about 190UKP. Both cheaper than the Microserver. However because of the floods in Thailand now is not the best time to buy hard disks as the 2TB disk I bought in the summer has doubled in price.

[R1Dave]

Thanks all, i will have a think over Christmas.

[Lao Pan]

I paid £234 for my micro-server and received £100 back 30 days later which is still the price (ebuyer) although you now get a better cpu and 2gb ram - £134 for a proper server - includes 250 GB hard drive - is definitely a bargain.
Big problem at the moment is the price rip off for hard drives, The rain in Thailand had hardly stopped falling when the price in the UK shot through the roof - although they seem to be coming down a bit now.

[ACTCMS]

I got one of the HP microservers

+ 1 for the HP Microserver

What did you guys do for a DVD/CD drive?

Alex

[martint123]

What did you guys do for a DVD/CD drive?

Alex

I don't I have a slimline external USB dvd drive, although all my installations were via a USB flash stick - and my ESXI experiments were booting from USB flash where a stick just fits nicely inside on the motherboard.

[Lao Pan]

[HTML]What did you guys do for a DVD/CD drive?[/HTML]

The microserver has a 5 1/2" slot for cd drive but I am running UnRaid OS on a firefly mini usb stick plugged in to the onboard usb slot.
5 1/2" bay may one day house No 5 hard drive (8TB storage and a parity drive)