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Any NAS users here?

A

applecultvictim

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 27, 2009
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I am looking for something that is above all quiet and fairly priced as I am looking to opt for that instead of the tc. Bitorrent support would be nice too.:apple:

I have might sights at the netgear readynas as a tc alternative.
 
Either buy or build a basic comp, then get a big HDD in it. Install FreeNAS. Connect to network. Done.

I built my own with a Celeron 430 and a Samsung F1 1TB, and FreeNAS is so resource-light that even with UPnP, DAAP, SMB, and so on enabled it runs at max 10%. You could even buy a EEE Box and attach some external HDDs, or use a Mini-ITX Atom motherboard + Mini-ITX.
 
Hey thanks for the heads up! It will cost more than the netgear though, and freenas does not offer hardware raid. I already have pc with a mobo that features raid but it's big ugly and above all noisy box I hate.
 
applecultvictim said:
I already have pc with a mobo that features raid but it's big ugly and above all noisy box I hate.
Click to expand...
An unused system, assuming it's capable of still being used for something other than a paper weight, is perfect for projects like a NAS/AoE/iSCSI box.

Use longer patch cables, and hide it somewhere. ;) :D Cheaper than a new case you can stand looking at. :p
 
Check out QNAP too, they have a long list of different NAS products.

It'll be quieter and way less energy consuming than any old junk pile PC you could throw together.

And don't put too much importance on hardware raid. Most of the NAS boxes use Linux software RAID anyway, which is plenty good. Think of it like this, what else is the box going to do with the spare cpu cycles a hardware based raid controller would save anyway ?
 
I'm using FreeNAS and it's really great for shared storage and long running automated downloads like torrents, usenet and direct ftp/http.

Just a bit of advice, if you're planning to run a NAS 24/7 and want to use a PC for it, you really should consider one that's energy efficient. I mean a lot of (old) PC's can consume 75Watts or even more. Even while they're not doing anything useful. I'm just saying, it might be even cheaper to buy a new NAS, if you're considering your energy-bill too.

Currently I'm using FreeNAS on a HP Vectra VL400, and that box only consumes 18Watts standby and 30-50Watts when its busy.

You could also consider using a Drobo with DroboShare.
 
I'm currently using a couple ReadyNAS by Infrant/Netgear and have been happy.

For those of you running FreeNAS how is the Mac / AFP support?
 
hmmm

I also mulled over this dilemma a couple months back, I ended up with a DNS 323 (and a $30 rebate that you can find at the official site) so it came out to be around 130 for me (no tax and free ship thanks to amazon)
It is quiet, can support 2 drives (not included), serve files to the PS3 (important for me), has bittorrent capabilities, has schedule download (I haven't use yet), USB for printer server that I can't/ don't have time to make it work yet and itunes server.

2 annoying things are the drives are not hotswap capable and that it has to be set up by the window based PC as far as I can tell... but the PC thing can be circumvented by opensource, I think. And once you map the drive and the network stabilizes, the macs would have no problem with recognizing it.

for a first timer with a whole afternoon free, the DNS 323 didn't make me want to knock my head against the wall (the DIR 655 did, but that's another story)

btw, it's not blazing fast, actually, the speed is about 2/3 of what I get from my sandisk USB, but I think my WD green drives contribute to some of that too.

oh, I just saw the Raid part, this NAS supports raid too. don't know for sure if it's hardware raid though.
 
I use a Thecus N2100 NAS to serve PCs and my Mac at home. Has hardware RAID, serves up iTunes (don't need computer on 24/7 to send music to my Roku). I've had it since 2006 and it's been a champ.
 
Quiet is a major issue with cheaper NASs since they all have small and exceedingly whiny fans.

The QNAP TS-109 is probably your best bet as an enclosure if you want silence - simply because it's fanless. Choose a quiet disc, buy a set of cheap hi-fi sorbothane feet to isolate the HDD vibration too and you can cut almost all noise from the NAS. I had the TS-101 a long time ago which has the same case design, and it was silent. Problem was, it was just as slow as the other low-end NAS's around at the time. The 109 is an improved model and it is just as good (or bad) as most NAS's of the same price, and has Bittorrent support.
 
I use a Buffalo Linkstation Live (CL, black - not silver). It's designed to work with time machine. All you have to do is paste the mac address of the Mac's ethernet card (even if you're using wifi) into the admin panel and off you go!

It actually pretends to be an airport disk and supports Apple, Windows sharing and FTP. As a bonus it has a built-in Bittorrent client and streams to iTunes. Oh and you can hook up a printer and/or more drives to its USB port. I love it :) Got mine for about £125 from Amazon in December.

As for noise, it's quiet but vibrates if you put it on a hollow surface.
 
I love my Synology 108J it is perfect for my needs as a download manager and storage of shared files. The web interface also makes it easy to use and they are fast with filmware updates fixing any bugs that may come up.
 
I use a NetGear READYNAS been really happy with it for some time now, need to get a second one so I'll probably stick with the same TBH.

Costly but has been bullet proof! :)
 

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Sesshi said:
Quiet is a major issue with cheaper NASs since they all have small and exceedingly whiny fans.

The QNAP TS-109 is probably your best bet as an enclosure if you want silence - simply because it's fanless. Choose a quiet disc, buy a set of cheap hi-fi sorbothane feet to isolate the HDD vibration too and you can cut almost all noise from the NAS. I had the TS-101 a long time ago which has the same case design, and it was silent. Problem was, it was just as slow as the other low-end NAS's around at the time. The 109 is an improved model and it is just as good (or bad) as most NAS's of the same price, and has Bittorrent support.
Click to expand...

The new QNAP TS-119 Turbo is quite a bit quicker than the 109, though it's pretty expensive.

The new Western Digital MyBook World is also fanless and is a lot quicker than the dreadful old 'blue ring' version. It's also a lot cheaper than the QNAP.
 
OllyW said:
The new QNAP TS-119 Turbo is quite a bit quicker than the 109, though it's pretty expensive.
Click to expand...

The QNAP's are pretty expensive, but they are also feature packed. I have a TS-209 Pro myself, with sharing for about every platform, a uPNP media server, full LAMP stack (though not using Apache) for hosting, bittorrent client right on the NAS, etc...

The drives being hot swappable is also a big plus. Though I probably would never consider the 1 drive model, too much of a risk. I'm running my 2 1 TB drives in mirror.
 
Hey guys, wow, so many great replies, where do I start...first of all let me re-read everything.

How are you guys inclined wrt the time machine? Is it quite? at the money I am getting the time machine I could get any number or very decent nas you mentioned, but aesthetics of the tc beat everything else...so I am still thinking about it.

I am also wondering how the tc fares in terms of power consumption.
 
KnightWRX said:
The QNAP's are pretty expensive, but they are also feature packed. I have a TS-209 Pro myself, with sharing for about every platform, a uPNP media server, full LAMP stack (though not using Apache) for hosting, bittorrent client right on the NAS, etc...

The drives being hot swappable is also a big plus. Though I probably would never consider the 1 drive model, too much of a risk. I'm running my 2 1 TB drives in mirror.
Click to expand...

I'm about to buy the TS-509 Pro myself.
 
applecultvictim said:
Hey guys, wow, so many great replies, where do I start...first of all let me re-read everything.

How are you guys inclined wrt the time machine? Is it quite? at the money I am getting the time machine I could get any number or very decent nas you mentioned, but aesthetics of the tc beat everything else...so I am still thinking about it.

I am also wondering how the tc fares in terms of power consumption.
Click to expand...

ReadyNAS NV+

There is beta software in the works, or if you get the Pro editions, they already have built in support for Time Machine.

They are not quiet at all. I have mine in my Attic office and it sounds like an old PC with those whirring fans. You couldn't comfortably put it in a living room. I don't know what the Pro versions sound like.

It's a nice little machine, supports both Macs and PC's as well as anything else that supports PnP??... My PS3 see it just fine. It has iTunes server support built in, AFP and CIFS. You can set up security or just have it wide open. It has Bittorrent (never used it) and a few other little things that I don't use.

It's hot swappable and you can upgrade the disks by rebuilding one at a time then reboot to get the new expanded volume size. The Pro versions allow you to have mixed volumes, but there must be two of the same size (Pro allows up to 6 disks). The Pro version is also faster on the network and has a faster CPU.

Size wise, it's about the size of a small 2 slice toaster.
 
Sesshi said:
Quiet is a major issue with cheaper NASs since they all have small and exceedingly whiny fans.

The QNAP TS-109 is probably your best bet as an enclosure if you want silence - simply because it's fanless. Choose a quiet disc, buy a set of cheap hi-fi sorbothane feet to isolate the HDD vibration too and you can cut almost all noise from the NAS. I had the TS-101 a long time ago which has the same case design, and it was silent. Problem was, it was just as slow as the other low-end NAS's around at the time. The 109 is an improved model and it is just as good (or bad) as most NAS's of the same price, and has Bittorrent support.
Click to expand...


The TS-109 is excellent, and QNAP support seems to be good.

They publish a list of HDDs which they approve of based on their heat output, given that it's fanless, so make sure you stick to those. Hmmm I can't find it online right now - does anyone else know where it is?

S
 
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