NAS Recommendations?

[BertRoot]

Looking for a NAS ideally to hold a couple of SATA drives at least. So looking for recommendations.

Not really looking to spend shitloads as I will need a couple of drives to go in it if not included. Happy to buy used but ideally with no drives if used.

Also if I get one without drives what drives are more suitable. It will be mainly used for streaming 1080p content to the Popcorn hour and music to other things.

[chesser]

Hi Bert

I had until recently a QNAP 209 with 2 x Samsung 1tb spinpoints, very reliable and very quiet, good config and quite lo powered...

Chesser

[prezzy]

Check the QNAP's out - I recently got the TS-219P at £228 and on the back of that my m8 went straight and got the TS-210 for £143 really are quality bits of kit I have mine streaming to ps3, 360 and revo and I can't fault it at all. also use mine as print server, itunes server, ftp server etc etc.

I have 2 of the Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5TB drives in mine.

[Spennyboy]

Bit overkill for your needs most likely but I have a QNAP TS-509.

http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=104

Cant recommend the QNAP unit's enough - especially if you use the advance features and like to tinker.

Massive community support;

http://forum.qnap.com/

[crashtestmac]

Another vote for QNAP.

Works faultlessly, can do a lot with it with all of the QPackages.

THe only thing i would point out is that my 209 Pro when fast forwarding or rewinding HD stuff it stutters and can take a while..!!

May be better in the newer models.

Crash

[fanni]

I've got a qnap ts410 and honestly can't think of anything bad to say about it

it does everything I'm ever gonna want it to do got 4 1.5tb samsung Eco green harddrives in it and eveything connects to it with out any hassle at all


The web interface is excellent an very very easy to set up

[Northernbloke]

Cheap old PC and download FREENAS to run on it - thats what I'm using and it's cracking - uses up your old hardware as it really doesn't need lots of memory or a super fast multicore CPU etc..

I've got mine running on an old AMD 3200 cpu 1Gb Ram and installed FREENAS onto an old XBOX1 10Gb HDD (or you can just leave the cd in and it'll boot from CD each time you start it up - stuck a couple of 1Tb drives in there and thats it - cheap as chips, doddle to set up and very satisfying. Serves my PCH-A110 very nicely indeed

[Spennyboy]

We been any help Bert?

Was looking at one of these also for a smaller, cheaper alt: http://shop.xtreamer.net/categories/eTRAYz/

Ultimately wanted more space though hence the qnap.

[BertRoot]

Still umming and aahing at the moment as I need to think forward and make sure I get something that will serve my needs for a good while.

[supraman54]

QNAP all the way.. me and Blaggard swear by them...and that is after trying the competition..

supe

[Sanj[UK]]

Avoid the xtreamers, my mate did some beta testing for them. Buggy pieces of shit. Can sabnzb be installed on the qnaps?

[ruggie_uk]

Hi, I've had a Qnap TS-201 for years now with 2x 750gb Sata's, All still running perfectly with never a bit of trouble. By far the best units, just not too cheap or I wuld have upgraded to newer models a while ago(Network speed for uploading is poor).
I've set up Thecus units and a cheap copy of the Qnap for someone. The Thecus is ok but not as user friendly as the Qnap. The Cheap one was fine for storing files but there were bugs with the DLNA and BT software on t. Can't remember the name of them they were just called 2 bay Nas or something and were about £69. Did the job for basic use though.
And Sanj, Sab can be installed on the newer Qnaps as you can terminal in and enter whatever you want.

[Spennyboy]

Can sabnzb be installed on the qnaps?

Can indeed and is officially supported.

[QPKG] SABnzbd+ 0.5.2 official release

[Hodge20001]

i have a HP Media-Smart Server EX-490.

Runs windows home server, its the absolute bollox, upgraded the proc to a dual core... its boss. highly recomend it like

[pheonixsingh]

For future expansion possibilities I would definatley recommend bulding something yourself.

You can easily build a low powered dual core machine that would have much more features. Either use an Intel i3 or amd 240e with AMD 7xx Chipset. Or even an intel atom (however the mini-itx motherboard usually has limited expansion possibilites).

And for data parity if you want to backup data which is not modified very often (e.g movies etc) check out flexraid. Al you need is one Drive for parity and you can have any number of different size/make harddrives and they will all be essentially backed up. Also the drives only spin up when you need to use them.

I run windows 7 with flexraid and currently have about 10tb of storage. with room for more if I wish.

My setup has been running stable for about a month now, never needed to touch it, it downloads all latest tv shows automatically when released, sorts them, renames them, grabs metadata so within about 5minutes of a completed download its ready in media center to be viewed.

I also have an account setup using orb and I can stream my movies,tv shows etc to anywhere with a net connection and to my iphone.


For ease and simplicity a qnap is very good, but if you like tinkering etc then bulding your own is the best bet.
And did I mention it would probably cost less too

[Over Carl]

I set up an openfiler box using a p4 2.8 and a rocketraid card (fake raid), was a piece of cake apart from linking to our ad which I'm guessing you won't wanna do at home. Xfer rates were so bad we just scrapped the pc afterwards.

I bought a few samsung spinpoint drives when everyone on here was going on about them, but apparently they turned out to have a high rate of returns. The drive I would recommend is the hitachi 7aks2000 - can be bought in 1 or 2 tb. Has 136 years mtbf and is a proper raid class drive so is less likely to totally drop the raid in the event of a drive going down.

[Conkers]

I built a little atom system... it runs win7 and serves as xbmc behind the telly via HDMI & a PS3 BD remote.

I run all sorts on it, FTP, sabznzbd, apple time capsule vault, itunes server.. yadda, yadda and can VPN in from my iphone and remote desktop etc from anywhere.

[Sanj[UK]]

Can indeed and is officially supported.

[QPKG] SABnzbd+ 0.5.2 official release

Bugger i was determined to order this..

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/180555

back at square 1 now