Whichever NAS way you go, best you build in redundancy, using RAID 5 or RAID 1. To lose data through a disk crash is a horrible thing, especially when the data concerned are family photos/videos. Or if you use a one-disk NAS system and say you are going to perform backups, then be sure to schedule those backups!

As the saying sort of goes...:"There are two types of computer users: those who have lost data and those who will lose data"

I'm of the first type

They already have. My LG TV has a host of Linux based apps for such as that above.

NAS Barebone GBP66 ( No RAM, no HDD )

http://linitx.com/product/12408

Would be a good box for FreeNAS

D-Link NAS GBP59 at Amazon

There's an offer on this model at Interdiscount now. CHF 449.00 for a Synology with 4TB seems a pretty good deal.

The drives aren't included. 2 x 2TB drives would add 300CHF to the price. It is advertises as 2 bays, with each bay having a maximum capacity of 2TB. 3Tb drives may fit but are not supported. Users have reported no problems with the 3TB drives from Seagate and WD.


But Synology are excellent NAS devices. Am chuffed to bits with my 1511+


Also, anybody running a NAS should consider Enterprise 24x7 drives. Cheaper in the long run , around 2 years onwards , when home drives start to fail. The beauty of Synology's is that they run for ever silently and reliably. People forget about them, they sit all day long downloading , sometimes at a trickle , but enough to keep the drives spinning and to prevent sleep. Owners of NAS such as the one above should consider a shutdown schedule once a day for 8 hours. Home drives are prone to failure long before the advertised MTBF. Also, put the NAS low on the floor , a few degrees lower operating temp (30 instead of 34 deg) will extend the life of the drives considerably. Invest in good fans, consider replacing the original installed fans with the best of breed. Drives running at 40+ are running hot, and will fail prematurely, despite the claimed 70deg maximum operating temperature.

Buy low spin speed drives. It wont make a difference to performance, ensure they sleep and try not to use RAID 5 , which will keep all drives spinning. Use a seperate drive for each purpose , one for videos , one for photos , one for music.The largest capacity drives are best value , you will use up all free space quickly. Invest in a 5 bay if possible, RAID 0 is best , RAID 1 is asking for trouble as it doubles the failure risk. SMART monitoring is your friend. Replace the drive immediately on a SMART warning. If you can afford it , double up on your NAS and use one to backup the other , even better backup the NAS to a cloud. Use EXT4 where possible , Most NAS do not have an NTFS write license and can support TFS on external only in read only mode - check this before you buy. Use iSCSI to create drives for windows to map to , avoid using shares. iSCSI is supported by Windows Backup for imaging backups , network shares are not supported by all Windows versions.
iSCSI has the best performance, ensure your NIC settings are optimised.

Before you buy, join the forums and search for the model you intend to buy, avoid bugs and loss of features you need before you buy. Thecus and QNAP are worthy competition for Synology, avoid Netgear , Buffalo , and WD NAS usints - dire performance and features.

Make sure your NAS has DLNA if you want to serve up video and music , ensure your libray formats are supported. There are issues with Playstations , Samsung and Sony TV's etc - DLNA may be a standard , but it is implemented differently. I have problems with WMV and MKV's , I have to transcode using FFMPEG before they are playable. Dump the Synology Media Station and Download station in favour of Transmission and Serviio.

DSM 4 is in beta mode for the Synologies. It is not stable and has many issues , as per the warnings before installing. DSM 3 is a fantastic interface to the NAS , it is Windows in a Web page covering all functions , it is feature rich and makes Synologies a wise choice for Novice and Expert alike.

Those feeling brave will feel at home on the Busybox implementation of Linux on the Synologies, cron jobs , shell scripts , hacking / editing config files , direct access to the Postgres and MySQL databases.

You will gain very little upgrading to 3GB on some models , but for an extra 35CHF, is is worth it , as I increased memory allocations for Java and Database processes.

Enable auto-ban - I have 5-10 attempts daily on people trying to get into my NAS , all from China. Scary , but Web capabilities are awesome on the NAS , click on a file download link in your iPAD browser and it gets downloaded by the NAS automatically.

DLNA does not work reliably over WAN , do not expect your cloud to be fully available. Bespoke Apps are needed , popular apps are not supported.

Have fun ! My NAS is great fun, web server , mail server , file server , iSCSI provider , ftp server , SMB file shares , database server , media server , teh list is endless with user written packages.

My PC now sleeps, I offloaded all my functions to the NAS. My NAS runs 24x7 at low power wattage , drives sleeping when not in use, fans spin down when not needed 30-250W usage compared to 1200W on my Dual CPU, Dual GPU workstation which wakes me when it backups up in the morning. I love my 1511+

/geek mode off

Upthehatters basically said it all. I have a synology NAS for 2 years now and I love it. But you need a certain level of geekiness to get it to be really functional.

The drives ARE included.

How do you know ? I read that advert 3 times, no mention of drives, no mention of drive type or manufacturer...

It mentions 4 TB capacity, not 4TB populated. Huge difference. You may be right, you may be wrong. There is no where on that advert that backs your claim up.

I made the salesman open it. He even had to use a screwdriver to remove the casing (it's a bit of a letdown, actually, as some other NASes allow to get the drives without even switching it off, let alone unscrewing the case). There are 2, I think WD Green drives. I was myself surprised as the device is surprisingly lightweight - just 0.94 kg as they say on the box. But the drives are there for sure. And, in fairness, the ad does imply it "Synology NAS 3.5" 2x2TB DS212J 2bay Giga NAS".

What about a Drobo? Much simplier RAID setup, and does NAS etc.

http://www.drobo.com/products/profes...o-fs/index.php

Pricey, mind you.

>Also, anybody running a NAS should consider Enterprise 24x7 drives.

IMO, not worth it for a home user. Probably cheaper to buy for 3-5 years worth of capacity and upgrade drives every 3-5 years before the warranty runs out.

>Owners of NAS such as the one above should consider a shutdown schedule once a day for 8 hours.

Disagree with this. The spin-up is the most stressful part of drive operation. Drives which keep going are less prone to failure than those which spin up and down a lot. Heat and vibration are the other big killers. Isolate the drives from vibration (in particular from each other) and keep them cool.

>RAID 0 is best , RAID 1 is asking for trouble as it doubles the failure risk.

You have your RAID numbers the wrong way around. RAID0 doubles risk (assuming 2 drives).

Home drives fail a lot quicker than that at 24x7, Enterprise drives have a much higher MTBF and are far less prone to RAID dropout. Most SOHO NAS mnfrs are reducing non Enterprise drive support - have a look at the cuts to QNAP's supported drive list.

Home drives are far more aggressive at spinning down...

My advice stands, through years of experience.

Yeah, got the RAID numbers mixed up- always doing that.

manufacturer MTBF figures are bollocks.

failure rates for consumer and enterprise drives are the same - if you are buying enterprise drives purely for better MTBF stats, then you are wasting your money.

Well i've tried a few and finally settled on the QNAP TS-219 II

Sadly, I now find out that despite their advertising, you can't put your iPhoto Library on it, as it must be on an HFS file format and QNAP only supports EXT3 and 4 for the Internal HDDs in it.

It was working at first, but now playing silly buggers and won't even give proper access rights to an HFS external drive mounted through it

(this is my problem here: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=57218 )

Oh well, hopefully one of their techies will sort me out, or failing that I suppose I'll have to make a virtual disk or an iSCSI thing to host the photos...more layers of complication!

Alternatively, I'll sack iPhoto off and upload everything to Picasa or similar...any suggestions on alternatives to iPhoto for getting photos onto an iPad (locally) or online storage places like Picasa?

Lightroom or Aperture ;-)

Online-storage - don't. Unless you still have local copies (which is the point of iPhoto et.al....)


Face it: some stuff is better done locally. The latencies in home-networking are just too large and there are too many sources for errors.
Just attach a local drive.

I wouldn't touch iSCSI on the home-network....

Do Lightroom / Aperture need to make a Library style file on an HFS+ formatted drive? If not, sounds good, if so, back to the same old problem.

I don't know about Lightroom, but Aperture is most likely behaving like iPhoto, it being its big cousin.

As in the Windows-world, it's not a good idea to try to swim against the flow in Mac-land, either...

oh. and do make sure you set up a monitoring system. my server just emailed me to tell me one of the drives in the RAID array failed.

this gives you time to keep all your data safe.

I'm not trying to swim against the tide...I bought the best raincoat and umbrella as advised by the Met Office, but it turns out there's going to be a flood, not heavy rain!

I have considered getting a NAS unit for some time now, but have always concluded that there is no real advantage for me. The killer criterion for me was that NAS systems don't (at least don't usually have media centers or software or processing power for streaming built in). If you want to stream media then you will likely need a server running on your computer.

Then there is the cost of the bloody things…you can simply buy a few TB of external disks for much cheaper than a NAS. For me, an external WD MyBook was more than enough –Cheap, portable, reliable, fast. That coupled with online backup sorted me out.