Nas Boxes
Any recommendations.
I`ll be looking at getting one once I`ve finished building my new PC.
I`ll be looking at getting one once I`ve finished building my new PC.
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Thanks, its just there are so many to choose between 
Synology regularly come top in the NAS category in PC Pro magazine, although I've never used one myself.
I had a Seagate Black Armor 110, which I got on fine with, it just depends on what you want to do with it, and whether the installed software will allow you to do it. The Seagate worked fine as a network drive and FTP server, but I could never get the media service to work.
Eventually I bought myself an HP Microserver, which was £189 and HP were doing a £100 cashback offer... I stuck some extra 2TB disks in there and I can control what software I use (there's a nifty thing called FreeNAS that you could use, but I use Windows Home Server). I can run other stuff on there as well as my FTP and media servers (eg. webcam monitoring software).
I had a Seagate Black Armor 110, which I got on fine with, it just depends on what you want to do with it, and whether the installed software will allow you to do it. The Seagate worked fine as a network drive and FTP server, but I could never get the media service to work.
Eventually I bought myself an HP Microserver, which was £189 and HP were doing a £100 cashback offer... I stuck some extra 2TB disks in there and I can control what software I use (there's a nifty thing called FreeNAS that you could use, but I use Windows Home Server). I can run other stuff on there as well as my FTP and media servers (eg. webcam monitoring software).
Many NAS boxes use a non-standard format for the stored data, even when the RAID mode is a simple mirror. This might complicate data recovery in the event of a major failure.
Quote:Synology regularly come top in the NAS category in PC Pro magazine, although I've never used one myself.
I had a Seagate Black Armor 110, which I got on fine with, it just depends on what you want to do with it, and whether the installed software will allow you to do it. The Seagate worked fine as a network drive and FTP server, but I could never get the media service to work.
Eventually I bought myself an HP Microserver, which was £189 and HP were doing a £100 cashback offer... I stuck some extra 2TB disks in there and I can control what software I use (there's a nifty thing called FreeNAS that you could use, but I use Windows Home Server). I can run other stuff on there as well as my FTP and media servers (eg. webcam monitoring software).
Thanks up until now I have just been using a spare external hard drive connected to my router but its not all that great, it picks and chooses when it wants to work properly
Someone suggested that since I`m building my own PC this time around to simply get a few extra drives and set up a rad but its not something I really want to do.
A Nas seems the proper and most useful way to go, I notice you can save quite a bit buying just the empty boxes and adding my own drives.
HP Microserver? - One of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR3.TRC0.A0.Xhp+microserver&_nkw=hp+microserver&_sacat=0&_from=R40
They were £150 odd new with cashback - Google you'll find lots about them.
If you have an old copy of Windows stick that on, or try FreeNAS
They were £150 odd new with cashback - Google you'll find lots about them.
If you have an old copy of Windows stick that on, or try FreeNAS
I've been using a Synology DS413 for nearly a year now. It's a great bit of kit. Reliably sits there doing it's stuff. Primarily I use it as a back up server preferring faster thunderbolt disks connected to my main machine for file storage. I also use it for backing up to Crashplan, as a movie server, a minecraft server, time machine and cloud server. There's a bunch of mobile apps and you can use synologies ip service so you have a fixed address for accessing remotely. It's got a lovely built in download station application, so I download directly to the NAS and then stuff is available to any machine connected. You can also direct downloads from the mobile apps so you can kick of downloads when you're out and their ready when you get home. There's a bunch of apps I don't use like Glacier for backup to Amazon Glacier servers, Audio streaming, itunes integration, dozens of web, wiki, blogging servers etc.
I bought an empty box and then filled it with my choice of hard drives. It's got four bays, so I have two pairs of mirrored disks.
I bought an empty box and then filled it with my choice of hard drives. It's got four bays, so I have two pairs of mirrored disks.
Quote:But if you are building a new PC why not re-purpose you're old system and turn that into a NAS
Yeh I could, I have plenty of spare parts, I recently stripped two old PC`s, but I`m going to have this dell going spare once I`ve finished my build.
But do I want all the bulk sitting around, ready built Nas units are tiny in comparison and consume very little in electricity.
I`m trying to avoid getting cheap parts for my build so its going to take me a few more months before I have all the necessary parts.
Its slow progress buying one or two parts a month
Electricity is worth considering - roughly for a device on 24x7, your looking at a £ per watt per year - so a 60W bulb on all the time will cost you £60
A NAS may take say 30w, less if drives power down when not being used, whereas an old Pentium 4 might use 120w.
Over 5 years, that's quite a saving, enough to justify new hardware.
And that was before all this news this week about %%%% price increases on utilities.
A NAS may take say 30w, less if drives power down when not being used, whereas an old Pentium 4 might use 120w.
Over 5 years, that's quite a saving, enough to justify new hardware.
And that was before all this news this week about %%%% price increases on utilities.
Quote:Electricity is worth considering - roughly for a device on 24x7, your looking at a £ per watt per year - so a 60W bulb on all the time will cost you £60
Yes it certainly is, I believe some of these Nas boxes consume no more than 30 watts, one heck of a lot less than using a PC in its place.
Its also the space, the PC I`m in the process of building will be about half the size of what I am currently using so adding a nice little nas box makes a lot of sense.
I purchased the Western Digital 'My Cloud' a few weeks ago. Simple set up and the whole family are using it.
