Recommendations for home NAS

[FluffyKitten]

Hi, I'm looking for recommendations for a cheap home NAS system, probably a single hard drive system as my budget is quite limited (<£150).

Requirements are as follows:

low power consumption

at least 1TB capacity

hard drive that can be replaced easily

decent windows XP compatible backup software bundled with the NAS would be nice

preferably not a Buffalo system - seen too many failures of Buffalo Terastations at work to want to buy a Buffalo device

I'm not concerned about stuff like built in itunes servers, being able to access your files over the internet, wireless access etc.. I just want a reliable box to back up files from my small home network.

Thanks in advance,

FK

[CoffeeFiend]

preferably not a Buffalo system - seen too many failures of Buffalo Terastations at work to want to buy a Buffalo device

Those are arguably some of the best in that market segment (not that it's saying much). I don't think you'll necessarily be luckier with other cheap devices.

We've been over this ("Which NAS?") several times before, like here and here for instance. Again, any NAS in that price range will basically suck, especially speed-wise (backing up 1TB worth of data will seemingly take eternity + 1 day)

There's always other options, like eSATA (or USB) drives. You can backup to such a device too. There's even external drives that come with backup software when you buy them, but then again there's many other options like acronis trueimage and what not. But then you'd have to move the drive to the computer you're backuping, or creating a network share and backing up to that from the other computer(s), which is fairly close to what you'd be doing with a NAS anyway (very easy to do too).

I can't personally recommend any cheap NAS

[cluberti]

In the NAS (consumer-grade, anyway) department, to get good and fast, you'll have to omit cheap (good, fast, cheap, select two).

[Junior2613]

Well I'm not too sure on the quality but you could take a look at this from dabs. http://www.dabs.com/products/netgear-stora-500gb-home-media-network-attached-storage--nas--6KTT.html?refs=443340000-443350000-443360000

[CoffeeFiend]

Well I'm not too sure on the quality but you could take a look at this from dabs. http://www.dabs.com/products/netgear-stora-500gb-home-media-network-attached-storage--nas--6KTT.html?refs=443340000-443350000-443360000

Not 1TB or more like he wanted. And write speeds of 10MB/s or so.

[FluffyKitten]

Well I'm not too sure on the quality but you could take a look at this from dabs. http://www.dabs.com/products/netgear-stora-500gb-home-media-network-attached-storage--nas--6KTT.html?refs=443340000-443350000-443360000

Not 1TB or more like he wanted. And write speeds of 10MB/s or so.

The 1TB version of the Stora system is one of the ones I've looked at but not been keen on. IIRC the reason I ruled out the Stora was that it would appear from some posts on the NetGear forums that in order to configure the Storas, you have to connect to them via a Stora website on the internet.

I'm tempted by a QNAP TS110 as it looks like it is aimed at people who want a decent low power back up system rather than the likes of the Storas which seem to be focused more on being a media streaming file server. I think the QNAP will be a bit beyond my budget at the moment though.

Despite my misgivings, I might just go for something like the Buffalo LinkStation Live just to get a workable backup system in place. Then at some point build a low power PC with FreeNAS or similar to replace it.

Thanks for the advice

FK

[puntoMX]

Then at some point build a low power PC with FreeNAS or similar to replace it.

Or build one directly? Take an Atom N430 with 80+ cert. PSU and it won't use much power, downside is that it has only one PCI and two SATA. Also, be sure to have your network ready for 1Gbit network; anything on wireless G/N or 10/100mbit would give you horrible speeds like many times said before.

[KRYOGENIUS]

Hello

you have the synology 110j for your budget. (max 130€)

http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS110j/index.php

i have bought since 3 months the ds410j and i am very happy of it

You have also QNAP etc, but for simplicity Synology is better i think

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