new NAS box

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kilobyte

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2005
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186
so was just wondering if anyone used any synology products? i been looking at THIS and just looking for everyones feed back.
 
well you could also look at building a low power box and run freenas, depending on your box you could put in more then just four drives too, havn't used that product though
 
those nas boxes are way overpriced for what they offer, they usually also only offer raid 1,0 or jbod, file server should be raid5, I suggest you build a spare computer and run FreeNAS on it, cheaper and better.
 
I'm not saying it's bad product, but at $650 for just the box without drives it's bit pricey.
Also 1tb drives are still expensive, the most cost effective drives are 500gb atm.

For the price of the box + 4x 1tb drives you could build a nice freenas box with 7x500gb and have a lot of money left over.
 
freenas is a great program, id stay away from pretty much any manuf nas because they are going to be well overpriced if you are looking at 4 plus drives
 
People say they're way overpriced, but look at one for $625-650. You don't need to pay more than that for a 4-5 drive NAS. That is not overpriced. It is a bit more expensive, but far from overpriced. I have the Thecus N5200, and in my opinion, I'd much rather have that, than a self-built computer that would take up way more space and not even have a gigabit switch on it. The drives are independent of the NAS box, so when you compare the prices, you are comparing:

NAS box vs. (mobo + case + PSU + processor + any other utilities)

Now, to me, the only REAL advantage of a self-built computer is how much power you have, in terms of hardware capability, although it's really up to you to decide if you need that kind of processing power. You also have more software flexibility as you can install whatever you'd like (although some NAS boxes will also allow you to install modules so it depends), however, what it all comes down to is... do you need this? What are you going to be using your box for? If it's just a file server with user permissions, then I'd suggest a NAS. If you're going to be running databases and other complicated things that you know how to configure, I'd suggest a PC.

Finally, in comment to a person above who said most NAS don't have RAID 5 -- are you kidding me? Any NAS worth its salt will have it. I will suggest you two to take a look at: the original Thecus N5200 BR (not the Pro, as it's too expensive), and the Infrant ReadyNAS NV+.
 
ok what happens when you buy one of those nas boxes for $650 and 3 months down the road you find out you need more storage? your sol, you have to buy another $650 box and instead of having 1 volume your have 2. With building your own file server the beautiful thing is your space expansion capability is only limited by the amount of hard drives your case can hold, and any mid tower+ case can hold more then 4. On top of that the initial cost of the storage is lower with self build server compared to nas box with equal amount of storage.
 
axan said:
ok what happens when you buy one of those nas boxes for $650 and 3 months down the road you find out you need more storage? your sol, you have to buy another $650 box and instead of having 1 volume your have 2. With building your own file server the beautiful thing is your space expansion capability is only limited by the amount of hard drives your case can hold, and any mid tower+ case can hold more then 4. On top of that the initial cost of the storage is lower with self build server compared to nas box with equal amount of storage.
Click to expand...

Well, there's a niche for everyone, I guess, but I think it's pretty safe to say that if you need more than 3 TB of extra storage, then a NAS box is NOT what you want anyway. Unfortunately, the OP does not mention approximately how much storage he needs, so it's a bit difficult to make this decision.
 
On the subject of "expansion", While boxes with tons of HDD's may be the most efficient in terms of cost, they are also the biggest single point failure out there. You are still assuming that the PSU will fail or protect in such a way that a HDD does not see the failure event. While low...it is still too high for my tastes.

I currently run a RAID5 array w/ 3 drives give me 1TB of usable space. However, I also have an external 1TB drive that backs up the array once a week as an exact copy w/ verification.
 
I personally run a synology 406e (economy model) and love it. I had to sell my 6 hard drive c2d 8800gts box and got a C90 and this because I am moving across the country.

For the space it takes up its incredible. The 406 does up to 500 gb drives, and larger ones with a new power brick. I can also attest that their customer support is near perfect. Every issue I have had I have gotten a same day response back by the same person. In my case a HDD failed and then the Raid 5 was giving me some issues. He sent me the larger power brick for free and told me what to trouble shoot. The thing is back up and running and I couldnt be happier.


Edit: I should also note that this thing will download your bittorrents for you, run an I-tunes server for your mp3s, mysql, the thing is stacked with fun features
 
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