Looking for a NAS device. Any recommendations?

Question

I'm looking for a NAS device (Network Attached Storage).

I keep reading various reviews, but nearly all of them have some horror stories attached to them on Amazon, and other places (including drives frying after a couple of months).

I considered a Drobo and DroboShare, but from what Im reading, USB performance is great, but gigabit ethernet is terrible. I want to use the NAS on gig ethernet, not via USB/firewire.

The second ne Im looking at is NetGear NASReady NV+. Nobosy seems tothink performance is bad for the NV+, but again there are bad reviews about drives dying, and even with RAID, unable to recover their data

Can anyone recommend a good reliable NAS storage device.
I think I want between 2 and 4TB, Gigabit ethernet, Access from Linux, Windows and Mac (NFS, CIFS, SMB). Rsync support would be nice, but I can rsync to the NFS share if needs be.
Cost is not a huge factor, although Im not looking to pay enterprise level prices.

All opinions very welcome
Thanks

Answer 1

The best value is to build your own. You can use Freenas or Openfiler to build a NAS using old hardware. Both are free and requires minimum hardware. Both support gigabit, even multiple gigabit connections. The connection to the hd can be anything: usb, sata, esata, firewire, iscsi. I have a comparison and some quick installation notes here.



http://blog.patyuen.com/lessons/technology/openfiler-vs-freenas-tips-for-building-your-own-nas/

Answer 2

Check out Synology their devices get great reviews on newegg. I have a DS207 which has been running for over a year with no maintenance. It has everything you could possibly want. They I have used a few companies devices including linksys, thecus, dlink and I have found that synology has the best web interface and the best features(web server, vpn, router, dhcp server, mysql, etc).

The feature list is pretty large.

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



I believe the DS207 got replaced by the DS210j and the DS209.



They even allow for third party apps almost like plugins that you can get so your not limited to just what you get with the device.

Answer 3

Western Digital makes a World Book in at least a 2TB version. I have an older (smaller) model on my network, and have been using it for daily backups for several months. It works so well, I forget it's there.



One note: you don't need the MioNet that comes with it. In my opinion, it needlessly complicates installation for not much benefit unless you need to access your files away from home routinely.

Answer 4

Get a QNAP with two hard disks if you are serious about protecting your files. Its not the cheapest solution but it means if one disc crashes, you replace it and will once again have mirrored hard drives. It is safer.

Answer 5

DLINK - DNS-323 , storage+ bittorent..