Tech advice please

[andrewducker]

If I was buying a new NAS box (buncha hard drives attached to the network) then what would be the best one to go for?

_I do not want to build my own_.  I want a small box I can plug into the network and the power supply and have instantly running.

Ideally it should "sleep" when it's not being used so that it's not eating up too much power.  And it should support both windows file sharing (SMB).  UPNP is nice, but not required.

Edit:
It's for home use - just something to dump some files onto. Basically, Julie's hard drive has become full, and having somewhere to put the files would be good. I was torn between picking up a USB2 external HD or getting a cheap NAS-box. External HDs are £75 for 1TB, and I was wondering what the price premium was for something that could be stuck under the router rather than having to be physically plugged in.

Comments

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I am given to understand that Drobo boxes are rather nice.

(Ok, it's basically AutoRAID in a wee box, but still.)

[andrewducker]

I should have specified "cheap" shouldn't I?

A Linkstation is £130, including drive.

A drobo is £400 without drives or network addon...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Buy one of those, then.

I have to admit that I've been badly spoiled by learning to drive Netapps and playing with ZFS.

I'd like a home NAS box, but it's not worth the hassle until the kit gets a lot better than my current, lashed-up with bits from the scrap-cube at ex-work, BSD machine.

(I think that the 'gets a lot better' point is when ZFS on BSD hits production.)

[andrewducker]

I've not been best pleased with Buffalo stuff in the past (I have a Terastation) because they don't ever go into a lower power mode, even when not used for hours, so I was hoping there was a cheap alternate.

I just found www.smallnetbuilder.com/ so I'm now reading their reviews...

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Drobos are fuckin' awesome (I have one). However, they are not, in any sense of the word, cheap.

[andrewducker]

I fell in love with the concept when I first saw one on video. It's just waaaay outside of what I could justify paying.

[dreema.livejournal.com]

we've been using the buffalo terastations at work, they seem to have adequate functionality, don't know about their power saving stuff

[andrewducker]

I really should have specified "cheap", shouldn't I?

A terastation is rather overpowered for what I want - what with the RAID and all. Also £450 for one, versus £130 for a linkstation.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Make sure you get something with gigabit Ethernet -- a lot of the lower-budget NAS units are 10/100 Ethernet only. Forget about RAID; unless you spend a lot of money on dedicated hardware it adds an extra failure mode to the system and data and tempts you into the paths of unrighteousness and failing to make backups. Look for an NAS that can be supplied with no hard disks fitted and then add your own as your future budget allows for it.

I presume this is for a home or small office (SOHO)? If you need a 24/7 high-uptime file server then that's a different kettle of fish and your 130 quid will not suffice (unless you go to the second-hand market for an old rack server which will eat power but otherwise suit your needs).

[andrewducker]

Cheers for the pointer about gigabit ethernet - my router is a dlink wrt54g - and so only has 100 ports itself, but I'm sure I'll upgrade at some point.

It's for home use - just something to dump some files onto. Basically, Julie's hard drive has become full, and having somewhere to put the files would be good. I was torn between picking up a USB2 external HD or getting a cheap NAS-box. External HDs are £75 for 1TB, and I was wondering what the price premium was for something that could be stuck under the router rather than having to be physically plugged in.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Can't recall where I saw it, but someone was selling a dongle-type NAS device. One end plugs into a USB2 external drive and the other is a RJ45 providing 10/100 Ethernet connectivity with a simple Web-based configuration front-end like a router usually comes with. Along those lines here's the venerable NSLU2 from Linksys which interfaces to two external USB2 drives but from what I understand it's a bit fussy about drive types and other things. There is a dedicated user community for it though, even absent the Mad Hackers who have got Linux to run on it.

Going the external USB2 route for a NAS you can choose low-power laptop drives if absolute capacity is not a requirement which should help reduce power consumption and noise levels.

[andrewducker]

aha! Something like this:
http://www.kenable.co.uk/product_info.php?referer=froogle&products_id=1835

That's quite tempting...

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

How reliable are the dongles? Because I've always assumed that they are great short term solutions, not long term.

[andrewducker]

Not very. Better off, by the look of things, going with a disk in a box that has a network connection built in.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/addonics-usb-to-nas-adapter-all-your-external-hdds-now-networ/ ?

[andrewducker]

Oooh, cheers. Having read the reviews there I'll be avoiding that like the plague!

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Intrigued at your aversion to building your own and also your description of NAS as a 'buncha hard drives'. Surely a buncha hard drives is RAID and although you get Raid NAS devices the costs you appear to be budgeting for are definitely not going to be RAID NAs but single drive only. As for building your own - NAS caddy and an internal HDD - at most one cable and four screws then plug and play.

Or another possibility, are you getting too Big Bang Theory orientated on this one and not considering just sticking a bigger HDD in the laptop/desktop that's running out of space?

[andrewducker]

I already have one NAS box, so adding another one would make it plural hard drives attached to the network - thus "buncha".

And what I don't want to build is a whole home server. Most times I see this question asked someone says "Why not build a whole PC and put a hard drive in it, the install linux?"

I'll probably go with the caddy...