tkam Posted April 7, 2009 Report Posted April 7, 2009 it's actually not that out of line with other 8-bay storage devices, and the price pretty clearly puts it in the small business market.
Voltron Posted January 7, 2010 Author Report Posted January 7, 2010 OK, HDDs are getting maxed out so the NAS solution has taken hold of my brain. I am looking at a QNAP TS-419P and wonder if anyone has thoughts on that idea. Plus, I need to fill it with 4 2TB drives, either 2.5" or 3.5" from Hitachi, Seagate, WD or Samsung and I don't know which ones or where I should buy them from. Any input will be much appreciated.
deepak Posted January 7, 2010 Report Posted January 7, 2010 QNAP and Thecus, either make high quality NAS units. WD and Seagate should be about equal with failure rate. And I think they both offer the same warranty now. WD Green drives use less power.
grawk Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 Why do you want an nas instead of a direct attached raid?
Voltron Posted January 8, 2010 Author Report Posted January 8, 2010 Why do you want an nas instead of a direct attached raid? Well, I like the idea of the whole-house access to the music, video, and a back-up system; the attached printer (getting rid of our old AE in the process); not having to connect a Drobo by firewire because the Mini has only one FW port and I'd have to do some kind of hub or whatever; having the iTunes and Slim server right on NAS; and maybe some other stuff. That said, I don't know shit and maybe all of that is accomplished by the direct attached RAID.
grawk Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 At the very least I'd make sure the nas and mini are connected to ethernet. Beyond that, I'd recommend the wd green drives, and I'd get them from amazon or newegg. Check into the drobo elite too
Voltron Posted January 8, 2010 Author Report Posted January 8, 2010 At the very least I'd make sure the nas and mini are connected to ethernet. Beyond that, I'd recommend the wd green drives, and I'd get them from amazon or newegg. Check into the drobo elite too Thanks. I was planning on the ethernet connection to the Mini because I have been burned by wireless too many times. And will do on DE.
zippy2001 Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 Thanks for the recommendations, I've been looking for a NAS or Drobo solution for a while also. I tried to go cheap and buy a Dlink unit, which worked well for one XP computer, but not my other computer on Vista. And my work laptop couldn't connect, but I think that was due more to setup and restrictions on my work laptop. I'm not sure which way I would go either, but most likely a NAS route.
oogabooga Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 ... not having to connect a Drobo by firewire because the Mini has only one FW port and I'd have to do some kind of hub or whatever ... IIRC the Drobo has two firewire ports, so you can daisy-chain a second FW device w/o need for a hub. At the very least I'd make sure the nas and mini are connected to ethernet. Beyond that, I'd recommend the wd green drives, and I'd get them from amazon or newegg. Check into the drobo elite too +1 on the WD greens - I have four in my Drobo, no problems yet. Cheapest price I've seen (and bought) recently was Newegg selling 2TB greens for $146 (canadian) during Black Friday. The Drobo can likely be found on sale or at a good price as Data Robotics appears to be pushing the new Drobo S (5 drive bays, SATA, can sustain two drive failures) and Elites over the basic drobo. A side note about the Drobo - while you can swap drives on the fly, as advertised, it takes a VERY long time to rebuild the array. When I introduced a new 2TB drive it took > 40 hours to complete the rebuild. You can still use the array during this time, so there's theoretically zero downtime.
Elephas Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 QNAP and Thecus, either make high quality NAS units. WD and Seagate should be about equal with failure rate. And I think they both offer the same warranty now. WD Green drives use less power. I've been using a Thecus N5200 for about three years. It's easy to use and I've had no problems with it. The webpage configuration pages are a bit clunky. The seven bay N7700 model is very nice. One good thing about network storage is that you can put the box almost anywhere, it doesn't have to be near a computer. I would use eSATA for drives directly attached to a computer. I recently bought two WD Caviar Green 1.5TB drives, they're nice and quiet. I thought 2TB drives are still a bit expensive.
manaox2 Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 I've been using a Thecus N5200 for about three years. It's easy to use and I've had no problems with it. The webpage configuration pages are a bit clunky. The seven bay N7700 model is very nice. One good thing about network storage is that you can put the box almost anywhere, it doesn't have to be near a computer. I would use eSATA for drives directly attached to a computer. I recently bought two WD Caviar Green 1.5TB drives, they're nice and quiet. I thought 2TB drives are still a bit expensive. Do not buy WD Caviar Green drives for anything but internal usage. The firmware has known problems where USB/firewire controllers cannot recognize the drives due to its power saving functions.
morphsci Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 Do not buy WD Caviar Green drives for anything but internal usage. The firmware has known problems where USB/firewire controllers cannot recognize the drives due to its power saving functions. I have had no problems using them on NAS servers as they are essentially "internal" server drives.
manaox2 Posted January 8, 2010 Report Posted January 8, 2010 I have had no problems using them on NAS servers as they are essentially "internal" server drives. Yeah, thats fine. I had to find out the hard way that they do not work with almost any rosewill enclosures with SATA to USB, probably many more. At least I will get to use them in my new pc.
jp11801 Posted May 2, 2010 Report Posted May 2, 2010 so for basic Itunes library the drobo would be the move? I have about 1.5 tb itunes library and another .5 tb of movies at least and needledrop raw files that are 4gb each normally. So I was thinking the drobo 4 bay unit with 4-2tb drives (thinking of the WD green) All in this sets me back $880 but gets me off the hard drive merry go round for a while.
aardvark baguette Posted May 2, 2010 Report Posted May 2, 2010 In the past week or two I've noticed occasionally pausing in itunes. It could be from the green drives turning off (which I doubt since it hasnt happened until now), it could be from seeding linux distros off the same drive, ahem, or it could be from updating itunes. I have the buffer set high, but maybe something's going on with that. I havent spent much time looking into it, but I did finally set up my older Drobo, which I plan to offload the linux distros to, to free up resources and whatnot. I've not really had any problems until this, so I'm still happy with drobos thus far. I'm pretty sure if you dont host linux distros on the same drive you'll be ok.
deepak Posted May 2, 2010 Report Posted May 2, 2010 Do not buy WD Caviar Green drives for anything but internal usage. The firmware has known problems where USB/firewire controllers cannot recognize the drives due to its power saving functions. That's odd both of my WD Green drives work with the BlacX (USB2).
thrice Posted May 2, 2010 Report Posted May 2, 2010 so for basic Itunes library the drobo would be the move? I have about 1.5 tb itunes library and another .5 tb of movies at least and needledrop raw files that are 4gb each normally. So I was thinking the drobo 4 bay unit with 4-2tb drives (thinking of the WD green) All in this sets me back $880 but gets me off the hard drive merry go round for a while. I've been using a Drobo (with WD green drives) for that very function for a year without issue. I have 4 X 1tb drives though. But prices on 2tb drives have come down a lot recently and it may be time to start swapping them out one by one.
manaox2 Posted May 3, 2010 Report Posted May 3, 2010 That's odd both of my WD Green drives work with the BlacX (USB2). The 1.5Tb 32mb cache WD15EADS were the model causing the issues if that helps.
deepak Posted May 3, 2010 Report Posted May 3, 2010 The 1.5Tb 32mb cache WD15EADS were the model causing the issues if that helps. I will have to double check I think they are EARS drives.
oogabooga Posted May 4, 2010 Report Posted May 4, 2010 Do not buy WD Caviar Green drives for anything but internal usage. The firmware has known problems where USB/firewire controllers cannot recognize the drives due to its power saving functions. The 1.5Tb 32mb cache WD15EADS were the model causing the issues if that helps. I can report that I have 4 greens in my Drobo (two are WD15EADS) and have no problems with that setup in terms of dropped drives, etc. The drobo is connected directly to my WDTV, so it spins up and down once a day when I go to watch TV. I will note that it takes a long time (10-15 seconds) to spin up the first time I go to play a video file, but once it's running it's perfectly fine. so for basic Itunes library the drobo would be the move? I have about 1.5 tb itunes library and another .5 tb of movies at least and needledrop raw files that are 4gb each normally. So I was thinking the drobo 4 bay unit with 4-2tb drives (thinking of the WD green) All in this sets me back $880 but gets me off the hard drive merry go round for a while. I would have to recommend against the Drobo in this case. Transfer rates with my Drobo, using FW800, are a crappy 30 MB/s max, so transferring your needledrops will be painfully slow compared to a NAS. A properly configured 4-drive RAID 5 array should be MUCH faster than that (hell, a single drive transfers at close to 70 MB/s). One of my buddies has the Acer H340 for his WHS and really likes it, and if I had to do it again I'd go the NAS route. The big advantage of the Drobo is that it requires basically NO setup and maintenance, but at the cost of speed and $$. With a NAS you also have the freedom to network the drives (Droboshare is $200 and even slower, FWIR).
tyrion Posted July 28, 2010 Report Posted July 28, 2010 (edited) I am in the market for a Drobo then came across this NAS: LG 2TB Network Attached Storage with DVD Re-Writer : Storage, Drives & Media | Dell Any reason why I would go Drobo over this? I can get a Drobo 4 bay for about $330 without drives or possibly buy the one Jim is selling. I do see where it has only 2 bays. I was planning on going with 4 1 TB drives in the Drobo so I would need to add a 2 TB drive to this NAS. Edited July 28, 2010 by tyrion
n_maher Posted July 28, 2010 Report Posted July 28, 2010 Mike, I'm considering the same type of purchase and will be looking at the Netgear ReadyNAS solutions. Marc (luvdunhill) seemed to be very happy with his and I like that it can run the slim software easily. Also, be aware that Jim's Drobo is the older, non-networked version (at least I think it is) so it's not NAS.
morphsci Posted July 28, 2010 Report Posted July 28, 2010 (edited) Yep, my Drobo is USB only and non-networked. For networked drives I would look elsewhere as the Drobo seem a bit pricey. You could hook it up to an airport extreme or express via USB, but I would not expect it to be a speed demon. Edited July 28, 2010 by morphsci
The Monkey Posted October 10, 2010 Report Posted October 10, 2010 I'm now considering this decision. Drobo or NAS. My usage will be iTunes, with increasing video stuff. Anything new and interesting out there now?
grawk Posted October 10, 2010 Report Posted October 10, 2010 why network attached instead of direct attached?
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