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Cronus

I'm looking into getting something for backup, storage, and possibly streaming and online access. I was looking into a Drobo, but with no ethernet port, poor reviews, and a decently high price tag, I'm reconsidering. An ethernet port is not necessary, but I would like the ability to move the box around more that using my LAN brings.

Does anyone have a NAS suggestion or should I just buy/build a Windows Home Server box? I want to keep the whole thing including 2 terabytes of storage under $700. Obviously lower is better. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

asuko

Take a look at this guy here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108050&cm_re=synology-_-22-108-050-_-Product

That plus 2 drives would put you at exactly 700 bucks and be well worth it (with the added benefit of being able to add more drives when you feel like it).

Pretty much anything by Synology is good from what I've seen but the 4 bay seems to be the sweet spot of price and space.

Cronus

Thanks for the suggestion. It is very expensive though. It does look pretty good. Though $500 is kind of scary. Do you own one?

Ryokaze

I've heard good things about these

They're very cheap, and only hold one disk, but it's tough to beat $60 for even a neutered NAS solution.

Cronus

Ryokaze wrote: »

I've heard good things about these

They're very cheap, and only hold one disk, but it's tough to beat $60 for even a neutered NAS solution.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm definitely looking for something that can hold multiple drives, preferably one that has build in RAID. $60 is nice, but I'm fine with spending some more. The $500 is also scary for something I don't have much experience with.

Roland_tHTG

I would build something similar to this but I would want anything I buy or build to be multipurpose anyway or I'd just use external drives.

krush

I have a little Netgear NAS on my home network where my wife and kids keep their critical stuff (i.e. homework and client invoices). Works well, but support from Netgear is atrocious (as-in, it doesn't exist).

Ogdilla

I've been using the D-Link 321 NAS (~$120 @ Newegg) for the better part of a year and its worked out pretty well so far. 2 bays supporting up to 2TB drives each and RAID 0/1 support. Read/write speeds suck compared to USB 2.0 (even over a gigabit network) but it's fast enough to stream most high-def content at least.

RandomEngy

I like my HP Mediasmart WHS box. Got it for around $400 a couple years ago. I think this would be the model to get today. The great thing about it is that it's incredibly easy to expand the storage on it. Just open up the front of the case, slide the drive in (no tools needed), then go to the controller software and add the new drive to the storage pool. You don't even need to shut it down.

IMO this beats the pants off of a RAID setup where you have to buy a bunch of identical drives, then find one of the exact same type to replace it when one fails.

Roland_tHTG

Well, to be fair (at least with some (most? (all?)) raid setups) you don't need identical drives (size or manufacturers) but the raid will only use the smaller size of the two so if you have mismatched sizes you will lose some space and will read/write at the speed of the slower drive.

But honestly, if you have data that you cannot lose any form of raid or nas solution isn't enough anyhow.

Ogdilla

But honestly, if you have data that you cannot lose any form of raid or nas solution isn't enough anyhow.

Fair enough, but lately I've been wondering what the alternative is. My NAS has close to 1TB of data on it now and doing optical backups would take over 120 dual-layer DVDs. Back when I used to do DVD backups regularly, I ended up losing a lot of photos due to degraded (unreadable) discs over time. Internet backups are not practical when you have a monthly bandwidth cap of 40GB. What do you think is the best way for a home user to archive data for the long term?

useless4

I suggest just backing up one RAID to another...
I currently have a 6tb RAID 0 backing up to a 8tb RAID 5. I would have to have one drive fail on the 6tb and two drives on the 8tb to lose data.

Roland_tHTG

Ogdilla wrote: »

But honestly, if you have data that you cannot lose any form of raid or nas solution isn't enough anyhow.

Fair enough, but lately I've been wondering what the alternative is. My NAS has close to 1TB of data on it now and doing optical backups would take over 120 dual-layer DVDs. Back when I used to do DVD backups regularly, I ended up losing a lot of photos due to degraded (unreadable) discs over time. Internet backups are not practical when you have a monthly bandwidth cap of 40GB. What do you think is the best way for a home user to archive data for the long term?

Keeping price in mind, external hard drive(s) kept in another location is really the only viable option.

edit: by another location I mean offsite such as a safety deposit box

Cronus

I am going to be moving some stuff offsite. Generally documents and the like that could make things very difficult if I lose. However for most stuff, including all my media an onsite backup is fine with me.

I did like the HP Mediasmart box that RandomEngy linked. It's a bit less than the Drobo w/ Networking or the Synology and it's also running Windows Home Server. This is the way I'm currently leaning. I did think a NAS would end up being cheaper, but with it not does anyone have a reason I should stick with one rather than go with an HP prebuilt box.

Also, I'm leaning toward HP already because, besides what RandomEngy said, I've heard very good things about their home server boxes.