Choosing a NAS, what do i need?

Fightsback

HappySeagull wrote: »

I ordered a Synology DS215j ......

Google XPenology, no purchase necessary

Only for those who know what they are doing.

forgotmyname

Been tinkering with some old computers and gone off the idea of building a NAS from them. Shutdown with nothing running expect a single LED on the motherboard and they are pulling 18 - 23 watts. switched off...

Made me wonder about my own setup, PC pulling 19 watts when powered off, monitor pulling 7 watts even though its off and the speakers pull 4watts whether on or off.

I think a proper NAS will use much less power, anyone know exactly how much your uses? Or what di the specs say?

Thanks. (except Kev the spammer)

S0litaire

my d-link dns320L only pulls around the 20W mark when in use and only 9w in sleep mode.

Lot less than a standard PC setup

Mr_Toad

I've been keeping an eye on this thread as I'm beginning to think it's time to replace my main NAS with a new one.

I'm currently running an HP Media Vault MV2010 and while it is working fine it is at least 10 years old now. It has never let me down and I don't think it's been turned off for more than a few minutes, during disk upgrades, since I bought it.

It could keep going for years but as costs have tumbled replacing it won't cost me the earth.

I also have a WD NAS that just stores my music, there were shortcomings with the HPs built in DLNA media server and although installing a better one was possible buying the WD was easier and at under £100 worth it.

I'd be happy to find another NAS that will be as good as the HP has been. :T

Strider590

Looking into NAS myself, but they're too expensive, so i'm either going to buy another laptop to setup as a NAS or i'm going to build a mini-ITX box, fit a load of 1TB drives to it and NAS that up instead.

If I used an install of Windows it'd be capable of so much more than just network storage.

NAS is expensive because they sell to people who don't know their options or simply don't know enough.

System

Strider590 wrote: »

NAS is expensive because they sell to people who don't know their options or simply don't know enough.

Said by somebody who doesn't really understand what NAS actually is.

zarf2007

Strider590 wrote: »

NAS is expensive because they sell to people who don't know their options or simply don't know enough.

Come back again when you spend endless amounts of wasted time configuring your home made setup, oh and post your electricity bill at the end of the year....

Synology will blow away anything you can build yourself. Smart people would know that.

Doshwaster

Strider590 wrote: »

Looking into NAS myself, but they're too expensive, so i'm either going to buy another laptop to setup as a NAS or i'm going to build a mini-ITX box, fit a load of 1TB drives to it and NAS that up instead.

If I used an install of Windows it'd be capable of so much more than just network storage.

NAS is expensive because they sell to people who don't know their options or simply don't know enough.

So what's your plan for managing data replication in your home-made NAS? Are you planning on fitting a RAID controller?

Any decent NAS will provide far more than "just network storage".

tronator

Doshwaster wrote: »

So what's your plan for managing data replication in your home-made NAS? Are you planning on fitting a RAID controller?

Any decent NAS will provide far more than "just network storage".

Why do you need a raid controller? It's almost trivial to set up software raid under Linux.

And before you tell me your Synology has a (hardware) raid controller, no it has not.

RobTang

Strider590 wrote: »

Looking into NAS myself, but they're too expensive, so i'm either going to buy another laptop to setup as a NAS or i'm going to build a mini-ITX box, fit a load of 1TB drives to it and NAS that up instead.

If I used an install of Windows it'd be capable of so much more than just network storage.

NAS is expensive because they sell to people who don't know their options or simply don't know enough.

There are not really any good consumer cases for NAS usage and none anywhere near the same size as dedicated box. esp if you want 5+ drives you really need a mini-tower but even my midi tower only has 8 drive bays, the comparative 8 bay NAS is a 1/3 of the size of it.


Oh pretty much every NAS box you can buy today is more than network storage, Synology has loads of one click installs packages for server software (https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/app_packages/all_app) really while they are called NAS boxes they are more like turnkey SOHO Servers.