Does anyone own a NAS

[insider]

This was my dream machine 5 years ago and it was quite expensive at that time, now it's affordable but there are many negative reviews on NAS drives to be slow, both for Seagate and WD.
I mostly only buy Seagate drives for all my home PC's and my current Desktop is full and I may only be able to add another hard drive perhaps a 6TB later on but that will be it's final upgrade.
I need a NAS to share work files between my 2 home PC's and also act as a backup copy.
Does anyone own a NAS or can you recommend one, I would prefer a 4 bay but 2 bay would also work just fine.



http://www.engadget.com/products/seagat ... r/nas-440/

[Transporter]

I've build my own NAS a few years ago. I use a Point Of View ION mainboard with Intel Atom 330 (http://www.pointofview-online.com/showr ... &site_id=2) and 2 GB RAM. The board has 4 SATA-II ports for hard drives and a very low power consumption.

[spacegaier]

Yes, I am using a Synology DS214+ for my backups. Does its job.

[Zonder]

I also built my own using this case http://www.fractal-design.com/home/prod ... x-nas-case. I don't actually use it any more and has 6tb of storage in it!!

I also use an Atom DTX board in there which is passive cooled can't remember which one.

[insider]

Building a NAS drive sounds like a great idea, I hand assembled my 3000$ Rig and hand picked everything from the Processor, Cooling Fans to the Fan Filters
Well we don't exactly need an i7 for a NAS so what is the minimal CPU / RAM config that should last me atleast the next 3 years, I ll be adding increments of 4TB Drives that should give me 4x4 TB of storage assuming 4 SATA ports.

@ Transporter Thanks for sparking the idea.
@ Spacegaier What is the average temperate inside the Synology, is there a provision to monitor it hardware/software.
@ Zonder Why did you stop using it any particular reasons.

@All What would be the price difference between a Branded and Assembled one, huge or more or less the same, Spacegaier's drive costs 430$ here with 2 bays.

[spacegaier]

I will have to check once I am back home from my business trip. And BTW: 214+ is old (the 14 stands for the year 2014). There are newer models now. DS 215+ seems to cost ~300 USD on Amazon.

[insider]

This one looks like something from a Sci-fi movie, Synology Diskstation DS2415+, don't bother googling the price.

[Transporter]

@ Transporter Thanks for sparking the idea.

You're welcome! I build my own NAS because at that point it was cheaper than buying a comercial solution. If you buy a complete Solution you don't have to take care about the OS. On the other hand if you install Ubuntu Server LTS (for example) you'll have updates for many years. Also, you can create a system which perfectly fit to your needs.

[Kojack]

I have a QNAP nas (single 3.5" sata drive). Fairly old now and I rarely use it. It was a little too inconvenient to do things other than just file storage (it's running a customised arm linux, adding apps was annoying).
I'd prefer to set up a custom small pc.

I do have an Asus VivoPC that I use as an ip security camera server. It's a full pc rather than just a nas, but it's a tiny box with a network connection so it's not that different. I went with the VivoPC instead of the more powerful Intel NUC because the VivoPC can take a full size 3.5" hard drive (got a 3TB Caviar Purple in it).

[Zonder]

@ Zonder Why did you stop using it any particular reasons.

It just became redundant used to store dvds on it when I bought them I now generally stream everything and don't buy dvds (I don't mean illegally I use netflix and such). Started using online code hosting and backups to the cloud as well so just had no need for it.

[EricB]

Build one, it's cheaper...

Mine:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157594
2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product (You can find HDD's on sale)
2x 1TB drives I had laying around
$50 case/psu
$40 2x 4gb ddr3

4gb flash drive, install FreeBSD onto the flash drive. ZFS the hard drives. In my configuration I mirror the two 1tb drives, and the 3tb drives are in their own pools. Slap on ftpd and just use your filemanagers to connect when you wanna use your nas...

So for <$350, I have 7tb of space, 1tb of which is mirrored.

Spend a little more (~$160) and you can raid across 4 3tb drives for something like 9tb of space...


(Added benefit of ZFS, automatic file compression, snapshoting, and very easy to set up and recover raids)

[Gaiha]

I have my own NAS / SAN... I have it configured with Samba, as a file sharing / data storage center. Asus AM1A-M board with the Athlon 5350 2 Ghz APU. then added 8GB of ram and a 2TB HDD with the space to add another if I need. I built 16 of these machines giving me 32TB of space to use/deploy/redeploy/allocate as I need... Not a bad way to spend $7500. I control read/write/execute access in and out of the array, with nothing more than SSL using public & private signature keys.

Smoochies

[insider]

Well okay you guys have officially bribed me with ideas to build my own NAS, it'll be an interesting project and I no longer need the hassle of filling my desktop with hard drives, my Computer can take 6 and I already have 4 HDDs, so that's enough of internal storage for me. I also have around 10TB of external storage in 5 external HDDs taking it already to a total of 10+10 = 20TB and it will be full by this year end, so NAS is what I need and I shall have it, estimated cost around 1000 USD total with a single 4TB first, I 'll keep adding one every month until it's 4x4TB, + 10TB internal + 10TB external, in 2006 when I bought my first PC it had 40GB and that looked luxurious, my harddrive space has increased 500 times in 10 years excluding the NAS, wonder how much space I' ll have in 2026 , 10PB ?

And Kudos to all for bribing me

[Zonder]

wasn't the intention! but it's a fun project.

Have a look on here they have some great cases http://www.mini-itx.com/store/nas

[insider]

wasn't the intention! but it's a fun project.

Have a look on here they have some great cases http://www.mini-itx.com/store/nas

And my hearty congrats on your 1000th post.

[Gaiha]

And Kudos to all for bribing me

Bribery? I prefer the word Extortion... lolz (jk)

Having a NAS array is what I consider to be a MUST HAVE if doing any amount of Development, no matter how big or small. Another benefit of having your own NAS / SAN, is that you can configure it as you see fit and not rely upon some 3rd party software to accomplish your storage medium set up. My personal opinion for a good set-up is creating your own Cloud and/or a local GIT repository. Just be sure to set up a proper firewall to keep intruders out and all your data safe from malicious software with a good V-scanner. The Bonus to this particular type of configuration is all your data can be accessed from anywhere, whether local or remote. I use a pair of signed public and private SSL keys using the x509 protocol, loaded on a USB stick to accomplish this.

What I consider to be a reasonable cost effective custom NAS can be assembled for less than $300 (Mother Board, Processor, Casing w/power supply, heat sinks & fans... excluding hard drives). I would recommend increments of 2TB for HDD as most BIOS don't recognize anything larger than that size, without some extra software to allow you to format the drives greater than 2TB. Being relatively cost effective, a 2TB HDD runs about $100 CAD.

Smoochies

[EricB]

I would recommend increments of 2TB for HDD as most BIOS don't recognize anything larger than that size, without some extra software to allow you to format the drives greater than 2TB. Being relatively cost effective, a 2TB HDD runs about $100 CAD.

I haven't ran into anything x86 in the last 6 years or so that would prevent you from running hdd's larger than 2tb. If they do exist, proper research should eliminate them as a choice.

That being said, formatting hard drives is soooo 1990. Proper selection of OS will come with file systems that are specifically designed for hosting files. ZFS on FreeBSD/FreeNAS/NetBSD/Solaris/etc, HAMMER on DragonflyBSD, and possibly btrfs on GPL shit (Not entirely sure, I try to avoid GPL/Linux when possible.) All don't require formatting since they're software based file systems with software raid and many other features.

ZFS is seriously the way to go. And if you need someone to hold your hand in implementing it, FreeNAS is your best option: http://www.freenas.org/