Please help me pick out a new NAS

[ripken204]

the nas in itself is great, no doubt about that.

but price is something that you also have to factor in.

if you want to buy and not build then i believe that you made the right choice.

[CoffeeFiend]

if you want to buy and not build then i believe that you made the right choice.

Exactly. It's better than a lot of pre-built NAS boxes, but that's all there is to it. It's one of those buy, plug it in, and use it things.

It's just that most of us see what we could make with the same (or less) budget and a few minutes of work instead (WAY more space, WAY more speed, WAY more expansible and so on), and also don't have that much to spend on a fairly basic device (or at all, in my case).

[spacesurfer]

Hey, all. Can you define what is slow in terms of speed ranges.

I have a 54 Mbps router and the speed I get for transferring shared files from desktop to laptop is around 1 - 1.5 MB per second. Which is sufficient for me for network speeds. If I use an NAS, if I can get that speed, that would be sufficient. Are NAS's slower than that?

If the NAS has dual interface, like USB also, then I can just use the USB interface for faster speeds from desktop. But from laptop, the low speeds are fine.

[ripken204]

it depends on the speed of the NAS and what type of data you are streaming...

streaming HD movies you may have an issue. files/music you should have no problem.

[jcarle]

I'm running an Active Directory domain on a Server 2008 R2 VM and to it I've attached 2 x 500GB WDs in RAID 0 from which I provision ABE filtered shares and I'm able to get 60 to 80MB/s sustained read and write with no special optimizations between the server and my desktop. The simplicity of administering domain shares and the raw speed makes this full of win over a NAS in my opinion.

Edited August 3, 2009 by jcarle

[ripken204]

I'm running an Active Directory domain on a Server 2008 R2 VM and to it I've attached 2 x 500GB WDs in RAID 0 from which I provision ABE filtered shares and I'm able to get 60 to 80MB/s sustained read and write with no special optimizations between the server and my desktop. The simplicity of administering domain shares and the raw speed makes this full of win over a NAS in my opinion.

Finally we can agree. Too bad he opted for a NAS.

[tain]

My NAS is great and I'm happy with it. The only problem I have now is with my new wireless router...it is somehow causing a/v desynchs and is overall slow. I've tried all my tricks but I may have to revert to my old router since it worked so well.