Spec me a NAS!

Meatball · 30 Mar 2009 at 13:06

My Freecom 1Tb NAS is running low on space so it's time for an upgrade. Can anyone recommend a NAS? Must have features:

2Tb space or more
USB Access (Firewire is a bonus)
Gigabit ethernet
iTunes server capability
DLNA so I can stream to PS3
Remote access
Dual-drive (Raid 0 or 1)
No more than £400 (Unless I can get 4Tb for just over £400)

Tomsk · 30 Mar 2009 at 13:43

Build a PC.
A NAS may well have a gigabit ethernet, but it won't run a gigabit speeds - ~15Mbytes/sec max.

Barebones PC + CPU + RAM + 2 x 1TB HD = £310ish + OS

Meatball · 30 Mar 2009 at 13:58

Tomsk said:
Build a PC.
A NAS may well have a gigabit ethernet, but it won't run a gigabit speeds - ~15Mbytes/sec max.

Barebones PC + CPU + RAM + 2 x 1TB HD = £310ish + OS

I never thought of doing that. The one thing that puts me off doing this is nas will be on 24/7 and I assume the power+noise+heat of a basic PC will be worse than a NAS

.

garylouden · 30 Mar 2009 at 14:49

Tomsk said:
Build a PC.
A NAS may well have a gigabit ethernet, but it won't run a gigabit speeds - ~15Mbytes/sec max.

Barebones PC + CPU + RAM + 2 x 1TB HD = £310ish + OS

That seems a bit low, i get a constant rate of 30mb/s and burst upto 40mb/s on my Readynas Duo.

I have to recommend it. Its fantastic. I set it to turn off at midnight and back on again at 6.45am. I can access my files via http and manage my torrents.....yes it has an in built bittorent client from any machine with an internet access. It has lots of third party add ons and can stream to xbox/PS3 and has a itunes server. It uses xraid (netgears own format) which is based on the Linux Ext3 file system and works the same as raid1.

I was going to build myself a pc but this done everything I needed and has some features a pc couldn't deliver on. Plus its very very small and completely silent.

Meatball · 30 Mar 2009 at 14:51

garylouden said:
That seems a bit low, i get a constant rate of 30mb/s and burst upto 40mb/s on my Readynas Duo.

I have to recommend it. Its fantastic. I set it to turn off at midnight and back on again at 6.45am. I can access my files via http and manage my torrents.....yes it has an in built bittorent client from any machine with an internet access. It has lots of third party add ons and can stream to xbox/PS3 and has a itunes server. It uses xraid (netgears own format) which is based on the Linux Ext3 file system and works the same as raid1.

I was going to build myself a pc but this done everything I needed and has some features a pc couldn't deliver on. Plus its very very small and completely silent.

Fantastic, thanks for that mate I'll have a look at the Readynas Duo

. How well does the iTunes server work?

garylouden · 30 Mar 2009 at 14:55

I have never used it. You should read up on it as some of the features such as the itunes server and PS3 streaming as I have never used them. I have however streamed to my xbox360 flawlessly and use it daily for streaming video to multiple machines and there is never a stutter even when downloading torrents and copying files over. Oh and it has a nice backup feature. You can set dates/times for specific directories or full drives. very useful.

Meatball · 30 Mar 2009 at 15:12

garylouden said:
I have never used it. You should read up on it as some of the features such as the itunes server and PS3 streaming as I have never used them. I have however streamed to my xbox360 flawlessly and use it daily for streaming video to multiple machines and there is never a stutter even when downloading torrents and copying files over. Oh and it has a nice backup feature. You can set dates/times for specific directories or full drives. very useful.

I think I've found my NAS drive, reviews seem to come back positive. I can buy the diskless Readynas and shove two 1Tb drives in there for £340, sorted!

garylouden · 30 Mar 2009 at 15:27

Im sure it has been confirmed on the readynas forums that the 1.5TB Seagate works in it. With 2x1tb drives they will run in mirror standard but I'm sure there is a way of making them intendant so you get 2TB of unprotected space if you require that.

Tomsk · 30 Mar 2009 at 15:54

garylouden said:
That seems a bit low, i get a constant rate of 30mb/s and burst upto 40mb/s on my Readynas Duo.

You do mean MegaBytes and not millibits?

Capital 'M' = Mega, small 'm' = milli in SI units

Capital 'B' -= bytes, small 'b' = bits - unofficial but usually recognised as such.

It's why I usually write 'Mbytes' to avoid confusion.

garylouden · 30 Mar 2009 at 15:59

Yes of course, I didn't expect anyone to get confused over that...... :eek:

Tomsk · 30 Mar 2009 at 16:09

garylouden said:
Yes of course, I didn't expect anyone to get confused over that......

Well, my 'confusion' was an extreme example.
The more common assumption would be 'mb' = mega bits.

I knew the ReadyNAS were quicker than most SOHO NAS solutions, although I didn't realise they were that quick. I might have got one for myself but I had 9 1TB+ HDs lying around so I built a WHS instead.

Meatball · 30 Mar 2009 at 16:16

garylouden said:
Im sure it has been confirmed on the readynas forums that the 1.5TB Seagate works in it. With 2x1tb drives they will run in mirror standard but I'm sure there is a way of making them intendant so you get 2TB of unprotected space if you require that.

That's where I have a problem, ideally I would like 4Tb but have it in a raid 1 set-up so I have 2Tb of usable space that's backed up. It's all my media on the NAS (Pictures, music & videos) so and my current backup routine is slack so it would be ideal to safe guard myself. I don't know if I can justify the cash to buy 4Tb :eek:

.

garylouden · 30 Mar 2009 at 16:17

Tomsk said:
Well, my 'confusion' was an extreme example.
The more common assumption would be 'mb' = mega bits.

I knew the ReadyNAS were quicker than most SOHO NAS solutions, although I didn't realise they were that quick. I might have got one for myself but I had 9 1TB+ HDs lying around so I built a WHS instead.

When you need that much space there isn't any other affordable option. I'm running my readynas on a gigabit switch and stock gigabit onboard NIC and the whole network is using CAT6 cables (I know CAT5e can handle it but they are so cheap now). I might get a Intel Pro and see if it increases speeds any more.

I ripped all the fans out my old AMD machine and install WHS on it with my old hdd's and it worked very well. The problem I had is that with 5 hdd's the case was sort of humming on and off which drove me crazy due to the drives being so close together and screwed to the metal case(cheap).

djay · 30 Mar 2009 at 16:50

Garylouden, what gigabit switch are you using just out of interest as i need to buy one myself. Also my ReadyNas duo will not poweroff or on when i set the timer, have you seen that at all before? Other than that it's superb.

hernaldo · 30 Mar 2009 at 16:54

garylouden said:
That seems a bit low, i get a constant rate of 30mb/s and burst upto 40mb/s on my Readynas Duo.

I have to recommend it. Its fantastic. I set it to turn off at midnight and back on again at 6.45am. I can access my files via http and manage my torrents.....yes it has an in built bittorent client from any machine with an internet access. It has lots of third party add ons and can stream to xbox/PS3 and has a itunes server. It uses xraid (netgears own format) which is based on the Linux Ext3 file system and works the same as raid1.

I was going to build myself a pc but this done everything I needed and has some features a pc couldn't deliver on. Plus its very very small and completely silent.

You just described a basic entry level NAS except for the transfer speed. Congratulations.

ian|Squared² · 30 Mar 2009 at 17:21

i run freenas on an old dell box.
got 500gb storage on there i might upgrade mine soon im running low on space aswell!

craptakular · 30 Mar 2009 at 17:30

FreeNAS - totally awesome.

can run torrents and usenet also.

Upnp to 360 and ps3 is also supported.

oh and itunes server all built in too

garylouden · 30 Mar 2009 at 17:39

djay said:
Garylouden, what gigabit switch are you using just out of interest as i need to buy one myself. Also my ReadyNas duo will not poweroff or on when i set the timer, have you seen that at all before? Other than that it's superb.

Im using http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-102-NG&groupid=46&catid=419&subcat=

It seems to work well but others seem to have problems with it.

To allow the NAS to power off and on to the schedule you cant turn it off/on on your own or it stops the schedule. If you just leave it alone it should do its thing. If not post on the readynas forums.

dchristey · 31 Mar 2009 at 18:49

Memory upgrade

If you want to go down the ReadyNas router you may want to consider giving it a memory upgrade...

http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=83

Zarf · 31 Mar 2009 at 21:54

FreeNas is what you want, you can put together a stonking AthlonX2 machine for next to nothing, which will let you do RAID5 at good speed.
I went the other route, building a PC with Hardware raid via a Perc 5/i because I wanted a fully functional windows server for other things, but I'd still recommend FreeNAS.

On my server i get something like 900Mb throughput over gigabit, and i'm not even using jumbo frames. This makes it feasible for me to install and run apps directly over the network using iSCSI.