Need a NAS for work and home

[Cain]

Anyone using one ??

[paceman]

I had one. It was so slow that I gave up on it and went with a file server. It was a Netgear, but it's been a couple of years, they may have improved the low-end home versions.

[Cain]

Do you remember your exact model number?

[paceman]

No, I'm sorry I do not.

[juneau]

If you're wanting a NAS i'd built your own out of old parts and throw FreeNAS onto it. It'll be faster than the majority of all in ones out there.

[BlackArrow]

i built my own Windows Home Server box and it is really great.

HP sells preconfigured....i got a box for $300 and put WHS on it.

[mapes]

If you're wanting a NAS i'd built your own out of old parts and throw FreeNAS onto it. It'll be faster than the majority of all in ones out there.

I havn't used FreeNAS but, a bunch of folks here at work like it... and I work for a storage vendor so it can't be bad....

[WalkinTarget]

i built my own Windows Home Server box and it is really great.

HP sells preconfigured....i got a box for $300 and put WHS on it.

^^ This + 1 !!! I use an HP MSS, modded with 2gb RAM and an AMD 1640LE to replace the lowly Sempron CPU. You can roll your own and build one, but I much prefer the teeny case and low power consumption of the HP WHS boxes.

That thing has saved my bacon (and files too) on numerous occasions over the past three years. Its so much more flexible and worthwhile than a NAS once you see what it can do.

New version of WHS, codenamed 'Vail', coming out soon -> http://www.winsupersite.com/server/whs_vail_preview.asp

[mapes]

Its so much more flexible and worthwhile than a NAS once you see what it can do.

You are of course talking about SOHO NAS boxes and not enterprise grade NAS boxes...

[WalkinTarget]

You are of course talking about SOHO NAS boxes and not enterprise grade NAS boxes...

I am indeed. I haven't seen any NAS boxes that can perform a full image restoration from a bootable device, either USB or CD drive. The WHS supports up to 10 users/PCs, so in a work environment that amount is your limitation.

[mapes]

I am indeed. I haven't seen any NAS boxes that can perform a full image restoration from a bootable device, either USB or CD drive. The WHS supports up to 10 users/PCs, so in a work environment that amount is your limitation.

Yeah though enterprise grade NAS boxes have way way more features although they're not target at restoring a single pc so you wouldn't have usb reimage type stuff but, you get CIFS,NFS,iSCSI,snapshots, NDMP, Deduplication etc...

[juneau]

Not to jump off topic here but for simple media storage that can be accessed by multiple PC's in the home. Which do you think it best? Homemade NAS or WHS?

Very tempted to create an entertainment home.

[paceman]

Poorly implemented NAS can bring your network to it's knees. I would stick with a File Server, whether that be WHS, or Linux running Samba.

[mapes]

Poorly implemented NAS can bring your network to it's knees. I would stick with a File Server, whether that be WHS, or Linux running Samba.

I run a Linux box with the Linux software raid1. The box does NFS and CIFS. Ontop of that I've aggregated two pretty beefy Intel server network cards into one logical NIC. Basically I got one 2GB network interface on my box(not really but, close enough). I never see any problems file sharing wise. So the raid covers disk failure. For data backup I bought a 20$ caddy less sata enclosure. Both SATA and the Linux kernel support hotswapping SATA drives. So when I want a back up I grab a backup drive. Slot it in the enclosure. Then run a script which dumps my databases, config files and other data to the the drive. I then pull the drive and put it in a small fire safe. The small fire safe is stored in my larger firearm fire safe. Thats my data recovery plan