Recommend me a NAS

[sub]

My home NAS, used for a repository of kept recordings, ripped DVDs, downloads etc, seems to have toasted itself. It was a QNAP TS-109. It performed well for several years, but started getting flakey a few weeks ago, and finally today shows no sign of life. Luckily I backed up everything when the problems started happening.

So... I now need to get a new NAS. Has anyone bought a cheap one recently that they were happy with and could recommend? I'm not going to be using it for critical stuff, so I dont really need to have multi-drives and raid etc. I'd only need 1TB or so of disk, which should help keep the cost down.

[johnsonx42]

If I were to ever need a NAS, I'd throw together some old hardware and use FreeNAS (http://freenas.org/). It's not a value proposition if you have to buy new hardware for it of course, but it runs on any old crap you have laying about.

[sub]

If I were to ever need a NAS, I'd throw together some old hardware and use FreeNAS (http://freenas.org/). It's not a value proposition if you have to buy new hardware for it of course, but it runs on any old crap you have laying about.

Unfortunately I would have to buy a few bits of hardware for this, so not really practical. I'd also rather have something small, low power, easy to use, and not totally ugly to look at.

[whurlston]

I don't have one of these but I've been eyeing them: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822319002





$200 USD and it includes a 1TB drive and a DVDRW. For $250, you can get a BD-RW but you have to supply your own hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822319007

[martint123]

I've got a couple of d-link DNS-323's that take up to a pair of sata drives each.
Work fine for me as a dumping ground and as a second backup for "stuff". USB socket for adding extra storage if needed, stick or drive.
Runs some form of linux and this is easily accessible if you have any need to play around (I have one running web, php and mysql for a web based jukebox for my mp3s).
They are often fairly cheaply available on ebay over here. Disc formal is standard linux formats so if any hardware failure, not too bad to recover data on something else if required (unlike my HP nas with its "modified" reisser FS)

[stustunz]

dont you have a popcornhour your not using ?
or is the data transfer to slow

[mvallevand]

The best reference I've found is on smallnetbuilder's list. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component...Itemid,190

That LG isn't bad but my rule of thumb is you need 8MBs for HD streaming and 6MBs for HD writing. If you don't have a GigE network it probably doesn't matter

Also you might want consider a "cloud" solution for backup.

Finally the PCH shouldn't be considered a NAS it won' even scan for disk errors after a power off, and the speed is slow you probably couldn't get 6MB with a Windows share.

Martin

[steeb]

My home NAS, used for a repository of kept recordings, ripped DVDs, downloads etc, seems to have toasted itself. It was a QNAP TS-109. It performed well for several years, but started getting flakey a few weeks ago, and finally today shows no sign of life. Luckily I backed up everything when the problems started happening.

So... I now need to get a new NAS. Has anyone bought a cheap one recently that they were happy with and could recommend? I'm not going to be using it for critical stuff, so I dont really need to have multi-drives and raid etc. I'd only need 1TB or so of disk, which should help keep the cost down.

Boring though I am I would tend to stick with 'what you know'. I've been running a QNAP TS-101 since they 1st came out. I actually use it in a critical situation by running a back end HDD off it via USB as mirror RAID. If you don't even need that critical part it still performs brilliantly. If your 109 only just gave out after years of good usage why switch? The QNAP products are still aggressively priced in the market place, their product support is brilliant considering their costings, you get to choose the manufacturer of the HDD/s you want, eminently configurable. I'd stick with QNAP!

[steveum]

I too use a dlink dns-323. It seems to be quite popular with a lot apps available. See http://wiki.dns323.info/

[sub]

I did end up going the Freenas path. I had to buy some bits, but it ended up being half the price of other options.