[WeegieAVLover]

Hi All,

I am in the market for a NAS storage solution but not sure what to go for.

I have been influenced by Smurfin on his threadConsidering media streaming? - The experience (headaches!) of my HD project as he suggests says he uses the Thecus N5200 which is what I have been mainly looking at.

I am looking for something with RAID (5 most likely with 4+1 protection) protection and a high capacity for my storage needs.

I currently have a media streamer and have been backing up my media to the internal 1TB internal hard drive however it has barely scratched the surface of my collection and I have plans for putting my itunes collection on the NAS solution as well.

However I am not sure this is the best solution or if it is over kill, I am also not sure about the noise and practicality of it but I need something with RAID protection so I do not lose anything but it will, most likely, be located in my livingroom behing the telly and not sure if it is quite noisey (have to think of my wife and how annoying she may find it )

Can anyone recommend this NAS solution or give suggestions on alternatives?

[next010]

I use a Synology DS-409 Slim it is very small and quiet;
* Takes up to 4 2.5" SATA hard drives (laptop HD's).
* Has RAID 5 support - more RAID details here.
* Has iTunes server and Squeezebox add-in
* Has in house DLNA/UPnP server not third party licensed from Twonky
* Has audio transcoder in DLNA server along with customizable folder layout for the DLNA client
* All the usuals SMB/NFS/AFP/iSCSI
* Bittorrent client (rapidshare too) via Download Station
* HDD power down feature you can manually set it to spin down HDD's after activity finished so the fan wont be on (it does have a small one in it)
* Power off feature you can tell it to turn itself off at a specific time.

Plus a ton of other features, as a media dump its great at least for me : )

The only catch is that the laptop hard drives top out at 640GB I think (was 500GB when I bought mine) so you'll get roughly about 2TB of storage space tops with all 4 bays in use.

The big plus going for it is that is really quite tiny, imagine roughly 4 cans of lynx deodorant standing in a square shape and thats its footprint. Ideal for placing in a room were you will also be watching content and you certainly wont hear it above the hum of other devices.

If the storage space isn't enough I'd consider placing the NAS in another room even if it meant running ethernet cable and drilling through walls or take a look at homeplugs ethernet over power lines wont deliver the full performance of ethernet but better than wireless. With the NAS in another room you wont have to worry about noise and go with whatever brand/model you like.

[t72bogie]

have a read on the NAS/networking forums on here - loads on info, threads daily on such things

read the FAQ and dont forget - RAID is a protection against a hard drive failure, not a "backup" in itself, unless of course the data on the RAID is a copy of data you have elsewhere

out of the top 10 NAS vendors on the planet, Thecus are not on my list...in fact they are not in the top 10 ..read into that what you will, but most popular are readynas, Iomega, buffalo, HP, QNAP, Synology etc .....

[wildone]

I run a Thecus N5200 filled with 5 x 1TB Samsung disks, running in a RAID 5 configuration. This connects to a Netear DG834PN modem router which in turn connects (wired) to the PS3 downstairs. TwonkyMedia allows me to stream the basics (VOB rips of DVDs, MP3s and photos) which is all we need, really. Admittedly, the Thecus would probably not top people's list of quiet boxes, but as ours sits alongside the PC in the study, this isn't an issue. One recent hard drive failure (in a year of ownership) just meant swapping out for another with no loss of data.

[WeegieAVLover]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your help and advice.

The reason I was going for the Thecus is because I have heard it is quite good on this site. But I have also heard it can be quite noisy.

I like the look of the Synology solution and the size of it is really appealing. However the amount of storage available is not really up to what I need.


Like I said my requirements are:
- Store my DVDs and at somepoint migrate my itunes library onto it.
- Stream my DVDs to a media player (Popcorn Hour A-110).
- Large storage = 4/5TB
- something not too loud when turned on.

Actually - I have just been looking around at Synology systems and a full sized DS409 is £298 all in it which is not a bad price and it comes with itunes manager and all the usual.

We may have a winner. I will check out reviews and let you know.

[WeegieAVLover]

one thing I wanted to know. The Synology DS-409 system that I have seen on ebuyer comes with 256MB od DDR2 RAM.

This is probably not bad but if I wanted to upgrade this to 512MB or 1GB, maybe even 2GB, I take it this is no more of a hassle than upgrading a laptop or PC - which is a doddle.

Discuss?

[raotor]

Originally Posted by colinwilson45

one thing I wanted to know. The Synology DS-409 system that I have seen on ebuyer comes with 256MB od DDR2 RAM.

This is probably not bad but if I wanted to upgrade this to 512MB or 1GB, maybe even 2GB, I take it this is no more of a hassle than upgrading a laptop or PC - which is a doddle.

Discuss?

Just spotted this thread and had to put my tuppence worth in!

I have had the same requirements as yourself for a while and did all the research. Just last week I took delivery of my NAS.

It's a QNAP TS 509 Pro which is a 5 x 3.5-inch bay unit with 1Gb RAM (which can be expanded to 2Gb - but invalidate your warranty). I currently have it loaded with 4 x Samsung 1.5Tb drives and have been busy copying across all my DVD rips (ISO format). I am fast running out of space and will be purchasing a fifth drive to complete the NAS shortly. It is setup as RAID 5 which as you probably know gives you the total number of drives - 1 storage space.

I am streaming content over a 200mpbs homeplug solution to my Popcorn Hour A110 and all works fine.

The unit is about the size of a very small PC mini-tower (Smaller than it looks in photos) and is very quiet. The loudest thing you'll hear is the hard drives seeking.

As and when my media collection grows even further then I will expand the capacity of my NAS with larger hard drives when they become available and cheap. The great thing about this NAS is that you can expand the capacity without having to offload all your data by replacing each drive with a larger one and let it rebuild the array each time until you've replaced all the older drives, so it is a flexible solution.

Finally, should you decide, you could also use RAID 6 which allows the loss of any two HDD's without losing any data. I may migrate my unit to this RAID level when the expanded capacity becomes viable to do so.

Oh, I am not able to stream HD over the homeplugs, but I have a BD player for that which I am content to do for a while longer.

[WeegieAVLover]

Raotor,

Thanks for the info and I have been looking at QNap as well but the 5 bay disk drive solution is really quite pricey (I think about 600 smackaroos (that is £'s by the way)) which pushes it a bit on the pricey side for me, however if you have found it cheaper then I am willing to give it serious thought.

Can you have different sized devices in the Qnap at the same time and RAID 5 still works?

As for the memory expansion I had read you can increase the RAM easily however it, as you said, invalidates your warranty.

[sibeer]

If you are happy to put it away somewhere, the most expandable NAS you can use is a PC

Windows Home Server is very easy to use and I have run it well on a 1Ghz / 512MB RAM Machine. I now use a low power AthlonX2 (45W) with a 780G Motherboard. This combo lets me use six SATA drives before even adding further SATA boards. With a quiet PSU, CPU Cooler and hdd rails with rubber grommets it is very quiet. As a PC it is easy to add functionality as and when required too. Best of all they are cheaper to build than a 5 bay NAS is to buy

If not your thing then the Qnap line are on Today Only offers with Scan till about 1PM tomorrow.

[sibeer]

[sibeer]

Windows Home Server has a interesting feature to use a mix of different size drives and have selective RAID 0 style backup. It's called Drive Extender and I have found it a godsend

Windows Home Server Team Blog : Why RAID is not a consumer technology

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by colinwilson45

Hi All,

I am in the market for a NAS storage solution but not sure what to go for.

I have been influenced by Smurfin on his threadConsidering media streaming? - The experience (headaches!) of my HD project as he suggests says he uses the Thecus N5200 which is what I have been mainly looking at.

I am looking for something with RAID (5 most likely with 4+1 protection) protection and a high capacity for my storage needs.

I currently have a media streamer and have been backing up my media to the internal 1TB internal hard drive however it has barely scratched the surface of my collection and I have plans for putting my itunes collection on the NAS solution as well.

However I am not sure this is the best solution or if it is over kill, I am also not sure about the noise and practicality of it but I need something with RAID protection so I do not lose anything but it will, most likely, be located in my livingroom behing the telly and not sure if it is quite noisey (have to think of my wife and how annoying she may find it )

Can anyone recommend this NAS solution or give suggestions on alternatives?

Spooky, mine is now up for sale....see the PC classifieds section (RAID all set up as I'm selling it with the drives). Just ordered my Thecus N7700 from scan today, with 7 x 1.5TB drives

There are lots of options out there, but if you just want it for streaming media, I couldn't see the point in spending the same amount of money for a 5 bay Qnap compared to a 7 bay Thecus....

[energy80s]

Might be worth looking at Dell. I have a Dell Poweredge Server that I got last year for £99 and run FreeNAS on it. There is room for 5 HDD drives and it runs silent - in fact the only way I can tell if its switched on or not is to look for the lights on the front panel!!

[raotor]

Originally Posted by colinwilson45

Raotor,

Thanks for the info and I have been looking at QNap as well but the 5 bay disk drive solution is really quite pricey (I think about 600 smackaroos (that is £'s by the way)) which pushes it a bit on the pricey side for me, however if you have found it cheaper then I am willing to give it serious thought.

Can you have different sized devices in the Qnap at the same time and RAID 5 still works?

As for the memory expansion I had read you can increase the RAM easily however it, as you said, invalidates your warranty.

Yes, the QNAP TS 509 is expensive. I managed to haggle my supplier down to £632 inc VAT & delivery. I had looked around at different NAS devices for ages agonising about the merits of one over another. The thing is, you could spend less on a 4-bay solution - which I nearly did BTW.

But, if like me your main criteria is storage capacity, then you either load a 4 bay NAS with 4 x 2Tb drives or put 5 x 1.5Tb drives into a 5 bay unit. Factoring in the large cost differential between 1.5Tb drives (the sweet spot as far as I am cost per Gb ratio) as opposed to fewer - but much more expensive 2Tb drives, then the money you save on a 4 bay NAS will be largely cancelled out by the extra cost to achieve comparable capacity of a 5 bay NAS.

However, there are cheaper 4 bay solutions from QNAP (TS 409, TS 410 or TS 419).

You cannot mix drive capacities within a RAID array - other than to expand the capacity as I mentioned before. If you do mix drive capacities, then I think the RAID array will treat all drives as if they were the lowest capacity drive. I.e. 3 x 1.5Tb + 1 1Tb would equate to 4 x 1Tb logically.

The other thing to consider when deciding how much to spend on a NAS is the feature set offered. Now I don't know if cheaper NAS devices offer some of the RAID level migration and capacity expansion facilities of the unit I purchased do (I think most QNAP and Synology NAS's do), but it's worth considering. Imagine a couple of years down the line when you want to up the storage of your NAS or migrate from RAID 5 to RAID 6 and your NAS doesn't support this. How would you transfer all your data?

Just things to consider

[WeegieAVLover]

Cheers Guys,

I think you have all been really helpful its up to me to make the decision on what to go for.

Its just the 4-bay V 5-bay cost and what drives to go for. The one thing I am thinking is that I would go for 2TB drives regardless of whether I went for a 4-bay or a 5-bay....

I have never meditated before but I think this is the ideal time to do so... Besides I look like buddah with hair so I do not think there is much else to it!

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by colinwilson45

Cheers Guys,

I think you have all been really helpful its up to me to make the decision on what to go for.

Its just the 4-bay V 5-bay cost and what drives to go for. The one thing I am thinking is that I would go for 2TB drives regardless of whether I went for a 4-bay or a 5-bay....

I have never meditated before but I think this is the ideal time to do so... Besides I look like buddah with hair so I do not think there is much else to it!

Definitely a good decision, however, 2TB drives cost an absolute fortune. All of my new kit has arrived this morning, and I ordered 7 x 1.5TB drives - £88 each compared to £157 each for 2TB. The gain in capacity isn't worth the cost imho....but without a doubt I would look at a 5 bay (if you can afford it).

[WeegieAVLover]

Smurfin,

First off congrats on the new baby girl, hope you are enjoying the sleepless nights. Not experienced that myself (yet!) but I am sure no matter how much you love you bundle of joy it is tough.

I will deal with my problem of capacity V price in the coming weeks. I know what you mean though about the cost of the drives and I am sure that the TB drives will continue to get bigger and bigger?

I have two questions I have thought of:

1) If you increase RAM (invalidating warranty aside) would you notice a performance difference when streaming video to PCH? I understand increasing RAM on a PC can help performance but not sure if this would help with a NAS server.

2) Regardless of what I get I will be using RAID 5 and being a storage person by trade (enterprise solutions so no help to me hear) I understand that RAID 5 is not a backup but does give you protection to a H/W failure. However does the software that comes with these NAS servers allow you to take backups to another media e.g connect a DVD R/W to the NAS and use backup software to backup over a number of discs???

Just curious.

[WeegieAVLover]

Thanks for all the responses to my questions below

Anyway I have been doing a lot of looking and thinking about if the old finances (or at least that is what I call the wife when I know she won't see it ).

I think I am going to take the plunge and going for the Synology DS509 from microdirect. It is the cheapest I can find at £642.

There are other 5-bays that are possibly slightly cheaper but just as good however I have discovered that you can buy the Synology DX5 which is effectively a 5-bay expansion kit for the DS509 therefore increasing it to 10 bays.

Not sure when I will finally take the plunge and buy this but I will let you know when I do.

Thanks for your help.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by colinwilson45

Thanks for all the responses to my questions below

Anyway I have been doing a lot of looking and thinking about if the old finances (or at least that is what I call the wife when I know she won't see it ).

I think I am going to take the plunge and going for the Synology DS509 from microdirect. It is the cheapest I can find at £642.

There are other 5-bays that are possibly slightly cheaper but just as good however I have discovered that you can buy the Synology DX5 which is effectively a 5-bay expansion kit for the DS509 therefore increasing it to 10 bays.

Not sure when I will finally take the plunge and buy this but I will let you know when I do.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Colin

What did you go for in the end? Just curious as I'm now running out of space on my 7 bay NAS, so tempted to but the DS509+ and DX5 for a 10 bay, 20TB NAS. According to Scan though, the DS509+ is discontinued?

[digitalera.co.uk]

QNAP released some new models that maybe worth a look at.

Perhaps you could consider getting a DVD/Blu-ray stacking system instead may work out cheaper than hard drives?