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Quiet (cheapish) Network Attached Storage

Sesshi

Sesshi

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jun 3, 2006
8,113
1
One Nation Under Gordon
I wonder if anyone has suggestions for a quiet NAS device of about 400Gb capacity under £500 or so that I could stick on a shelf without elaborate soundproofing arrangements. There's no point having some of the quietest personal computers around if there's something else in the room that sounds like something that should be taking off from Heathrow. And that's been my experience with NAS's so far. Any ideas?

Oh yes Gigabit would be nice. Place is wired with CAT6.
 
Sesshi said:
I wonder if anyone has suggestions for a quiet NAS device of about 400Gb capacity under £500 or so that I could stick on a shelf without elaborate soundproofing arrangements. There's no point having some of the quietest personal computers around if there's something else in the room that sounds like something that should be taking off from Heathrow. And that's been my experience with NAS's so far. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Linksys NSLU2 and 2 200 gb USB drives, or 1 400gb USB drive, or any other configuration you can think of.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002ZDQLI/202-5034856-2519049

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Reviews.asp?ProductID=1716&CategoryID=252&ShopGroupID=76

It's also a mini Linux computer, so you can run an FTP server, an Itunes music server, or pretty much anything that a Linux PC can do. You only have to flash it with 3rd party firmware to use it like this. (www.nslu2-linux.org)

It's very simple to set up, it's accessible via a web interface, and is a fantasticly cheap way to add storage to your network.

Conceivably, you could add about 1TB to your network for the 500 quid you budgeted. As long as you shop right, you could probably buy 2 500GB drives and 2 USB enclosures for that much.

Hope i've been helpful!

EDIT: Saw that you're looking for gigabit, that's the only drawback. the NSLU2 won't do Gigabit. I would be IN LOVE with it if it did.
 
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Sesshi said:
I wonder if anyone has suggestions for a quiet NAS device of about 400Gb capacity under £500 or so that I could stick on a shelf without elaborate soundproofing arrangements. There's no point having some of the quietest personal computers around if there's something else in the room that sounds like something that should be taking off from Heathrow. And that's been my experience with NAS's so far. Any ideas?

Oh yes Gigabit would be nice. Place is wired with CAT6.
Click to expand...

I've tried a couple of NAS devices (not Gigabit) and they are s-l-o-w. Subjectively they feel like USB1.1 devices from a speed point of view. OK for small files and background file transfers but not so good for interactive use.
 
Buy a g4 powermac (check it has gigabit internet first) for about £100, then load it up with drives and stick it somewhere?

As you have cat6 everywhere, that shouldn't be too hard. Some people have even aquired B+W G3 Powermacs for free by asking around.

I brought an old B+W G3 very cheaply and put a raid card in and now have 600GB of RAID5 level storage running off 3x300GB drives. It serves media files, backs up email, a small website, and I'm trying to set up a FTP server (with some difficulties).

Reccomend a G4 powermac as you get gigabit ethernet, and sleep / wake on LAN is easier with the G4 models.

Hope that helps

..RedTomato..
 
Sesshi said:
I'm going to try a NSLU2, seems low-risk since I have silent USB drives already to try it out with.
Click to expand...
Note that with the standard Linksys firmware, the drives need to be formatted ext2 (or is it ext3?) the Linux file system. Using the third party firmware already mentioned you can use FAT32 drives and also do things like run mt-daapd to have a bonjour compatible network iTunes library without the 5 connections per day limitations of iTunes.

B
 
balamw said:
Note that with the standard Linksys firmware, the drives need to be formatted ext2 (or is it ext3?) the Linux file system. Using the third party firmware already mentioned you can use FAT32 drives and also do things like run mt-daapd to have a bonjour compatible network iTunes library without the 5 connections per day limitations of iTunes.

B
Click to expand...


No, when you update the firmware to the newest Linksys, I'm pretty sure you can use FAT32 drives. BUT, I beleive it is more efficient and doesn't defragment if you use the ext3 format.

If you want to stick with the standard NSLU2 option of formatting to linux partitions(which I recommend unless you're fairly fluent in *nix commandline usage) you can use ext2fsx to use the drives when they are directly connected to the OSX machine. Though I don't recommend doing this, as it can cause strange permissions problems and make the files on it read-only when you connect it back to the NSLU2.

I don't have first-hand experience with this specific program(ext3fsx), I have had these same issues when I connected a NSLU2 formatted drive direct to my linux box and copied files onto it that way, and then went back to the NSLU2, the files were read-only, because my linux box re-set the permissions on them so that only the user on my linux box could write or delete them. Just a cautionary note.

I Do love it because it's quiet, simple, and is VERY stable, no need to reboot it often.
 
purelithium said:
No, when you update the firmware to the newest Linksys, I'm pretty sure you can use FAT32 drives. BUT, I beleive it is more efficient and doesn't defragment if you use the ext3 format.

I Do love it because it's quiet, simple, and is VERY stable, no need to reboot it often.
Click to expand...
Glad to hear they've changed it! Used to be that FAT32 was only supported for flash drives. I might actually pick one up now... There are still lots of things that are not supported in the default Linksys firmware that are enabled by the third party firmware, just as is th case for the WRT54G family of routers.

B
 
balamw said:
Note that with the standard Linksys firmware, the drives need to be formatted ext2 (or is it ext3?) the Linux file system. Using the third party firmware already mentioned you can use FAT32 drives and also do things like run mt-daapd to have a bonjour compatible network iTunes library without the 5 connections per day limitations of iTunes.

B
Click to expand...


Not really a hacker (I went to the Slug site and looked at the Installing Slimserver bit, recoiled in horror) so I think I will stick with what it comes with but it's dead cheap and allows me to choose fanless enclosures. I'll be using new HDD's so as long as it stores the files I need I'm not worried.
 
The geek hard-on quotient went distinctly up in the Sesshi household when I saw that since it seems to be everything I want in a NAS. All I hope is that it has no crippling bugs or doesn't overheat. I'll order it tomorrow with a 400Gb Barracuda SATA.
 
Finally finally got it. Will report back on effectiveness later. The sum total of what it's capable of is quite staggering. It's almost a PC!


Edit: It's also best installed from a PC. I tried doing it from a Mac first but it didn't quite work out.
 
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