Cheap(ish!) NAS solutions?

scotsblood

Anyone had experience of NAS enclosures, specifically either the Thecus Yes Box N2100, or the D-Link DNS323?

hc25036

I've no experience of these of these, but I'd recommend the Synology NAS enclosures anytime! Find them at http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=14&sortby=nameAsc&subid=707&mfrid=

Best for me is that they go into sleep mode quickly but also fire up again in no time when accessed.

Cobi

I've used the N2100 without a problem for a while now - no problems at all.

MercilessKiller

For NAS I fully recommend Netgear's NAS Solution which is about £100.

Its just a casing with 2 SATA Hard Drive slots. Allows fora ll sorts of raid, or just large storage, intelligent power management, external access, backup scheduling applications,... A brilliant well supported box.

odowdchr

hc25036 wrote: »

I've no experience of these of these, but I'd recommend the Synology NAS enclosures anytime! Find them at http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=14&sortby=nameAsc&subid=707&mfrid=

Best for me is that they go into sleep mode quickly but also fire up again in no time when accessed.

Me too..they're just bloomin fabulous and the user forums and support are about the best i've seen.
They're a lot more featured than the standard NAS enclosures and more expensive, but include iTunes server, print server, can host photo galleries on PHP, forums, websites on Apache, web access, user access groups, multimedia servers..and they have great power saving. Well worth the dosh.
You can get them a little cheaper on Ebay with full guarantee.

bob_a_builder

Its just a casing with 2 SATA Hard Drive slots. Allows for all sorts of raid,

Are you refering to one of their SC101 products or something else.

I think you might be based on price quoted.

If so its does't have all sorts of raid - it has disk mirroring (raid 1 or is it 0 ) - well the PATA based one I have does.

And whilst Netgear do seem to have tried to make a fresh start with the box support wise, for us early adoptors they were a complete shower (so much so they just shut down the support forums for almost a year) , the firmware was as flaky as hell, and a lot of people lost a lot of data.

But not lately .... touches wood quickly !

scotsblood

hc25036 wrote: »

I've no experience of these of these, but I'd recommend the Synology NAS enclosures anytime! Find them at http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=14&sortby=nameAsc&subid=707&mfrid=

Best for me is that they go into sleep mode quickly but also fire up again in no time when accessed.

Thanks, hadn't heard much from users so hadn't researched Synology.

Looking at the synology range I would want the ds207 to give the protection of the raid 1 capability, anyone have one?

Seems with most of the low end nas solutions that heat is an issue, how is this one?

MercilessKiller

bob_a_builder wrote: »

Are you refering to one of their SC101 products or something else.

I think you might be based on price quoted.

If so its does't have all sorts of raid - it has disk mirroring (raid 1 or is it 0 ) - well the PATA based one I have does.

And whilst Netgear do seem to have tried to make a fresh start with the box support wise, for us early adoptors they were a complete shower (so much so they just shut down the support forums for almost a year) , the firmware was as flaky as hell, and a lot of people lost a lot of data.

But not lately .... touches wood quickly !

Sorry yes I'm talking about the SC101T (Sata Model).

And you are right it does only do Raid 0 or 1 I apologise! Luckily they're the most common and used so that's ok

There were a lot of known faults with firmware for the SC101 and Netgear recognised this and upgraded it all for the new SC101T model. A lot of people complain about the filesystem which is ZFS, and can't be read through any device except the Netgear box. However ZFS is a much faster file system, perfect for external storage, and though this box is more of a SAN than a NAS (technically), it's still a very very very good solution.

A lot of the problems experieneced in the old models has now been corrected.

And people complaining of very slow transfer speeds, this is usually because of the Raid function. With this off for the inital transfer, speeds are much faster.

ABH_3

Fwiw, this is the Synology support forum: http://www.synology.com/enu/forum/ where you can ask your questions, there's a lot of information regarding their product range in there. It will take you weeks to read it all, I know I'm half way through it

There are also a number of users of NAS devices here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=315 using a variety of nas products.

HTH

scotsblood

ABH wrote: »

Fwiw, this is the Synology support forum: http://www.synology.com/enu/forum/ where you can ask your questions, there's a lot of information regarding their product range in there. It will take you weeks to read it all, I know I'm half way through it

There are also a number of users of NAS devices here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=315 using a variety of nas products.

HTH

Good grief, you weren't wrong, the forum really would take weeks to read!
Having read just a few bits however I seem set on the DS207. It seems to have few vices and loads of spec.

So next question, anyone used xspo.co.uk as this price and offer appears good?

http://www.xspo.co.uk/product.php?pid=5021

epz_2

unfortunatly the clheapest and most flexable solution if yo want anything more than a disk on a network then an old pc like a p3 a sata card and software like freenas, works for google.

im planning on building a 4 disk hotswap system and just the case costs over £500 while i could throw together a passivly cooled box with a LOT more flexability for well under £100 + disks.

if asus do bring out their flash based desktop eeepc i may even get one and use exhernal usb drives, slightly less tidy but really handy.