Which NAS to buy?

[jacob.schmidt]

Hi!

I'm looking into buying a NAS. I'm gonna buy a MacBook Air and 'cause of the SSD I need a place to store my music on.

SO, which NAS is best value?

I'm torn between a Synology DS110j and Western Digital My Book 2tb. I've heard that synology has the best NAS'es but in this comparison chart: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/products/0/171-disk-station/184-my-book-live it looks like the WD is faster than the Synology. Is this possible? In my country they are about the same price (given I have to buy a drive to the synology, whereas the WD comes with 2tb).

Which should pick? I can't afford something more expensive so it can't cost more that about the 150 bucks...

Looking forward to your answers

 

[SlugBlanket]

I recently bought a Synology DS1511+. It has a very easy interface and has been rock solid but I have had it for less than a month. The J series that you are looking at have slower "Home" as opposed to "Business" speeds but still get good write-ups. I'm sure whichever you choose will be fine as streaming music doesn't require super fast transfer rates.

 

[ZachsMacDaddy]

I've been using an Intel SS4200-E for over a year now. I got it new for $129 and installed 4 hard drives I had at the house, giving me a 2TB NAS.

I just finished putting together another small system running FreeNAS. There's a bit more flexibility in price there. You could run it on an older box you have laying around or build a new one, it all depends on your needs and budget.

 

[omegalink]

Great NAS

I just bought a Thecus N3200XXX to replace my ailing D-Link DNS-323. It turns out to be one of the best buying decisions I have made! This NAS is filled with features, runs very fast, and allows you to set the times for it to automatically switch itself on and off for each day of the week!

 

[balamw]

I picked up the WD My Book Live 2TB a while back and it works extremely well as a Time Machine drive for all my Macs. My WHS server HP EX 490 still performs better, but the WD intergates better with the Macs.

B

 

[Cakeove]

I picked up the WD My Book Live 2TB a while back and it works extremely well as a Time Machine drive for all my Macs. My WHS server HP EX 490 still performs better, but the WD intergates better with the Macs.

B

I lose all my data from a WD my book, don't like the system.

I have a synology ds-410 with 4x 2TB HDD great NAS. Performance it's awesome, reach to 980MBps with my airport extreme gigaethernet connected to my iMac 27 i7 3.4ghz 2011 series.

I recommend synology very good support and the software is very stable.

Also use time machine for backup the iMac , a Mac mini and the MacBook air. All 2011 series with lion and no issues.

NAS version is 3.2.

 

[jacob.schmidt]

So Synology is the way to go? I can't figure out if should go with one or two bay.. 1 bay i cheaper and I could just backup by using a regular harddrive..

So the synology ds110j IS faster than the WD? ALso the D-Link DNS-320 is a cheap choice with two drives

 

[notjustjay]

What about using a small PC such as a Mac Mini or even a netbook? You could keep the netbook running stock Windows or put Linux or FreeNAS or something on it.

I currently use a DNS-323 but it is SLOW to access over the network. I'm thinking of replacing it with a netbook connected to a USB drive. Then I could run an actual copy of iTunes on the netbook to serve my Sonos and Apple TV as well as sync my entire music library to my iPod (since I don't want to store the whole library on my primary laptop).

 

[Cakeove]

What about using a small PC such as a Mac Mini or even a netbook? You could keep the netbook running stock Windows or put Linux or FreeNAS or something on it.

I currently use a DNS-323 but it is SLOW to access over the network. I'm thinking of replacing it with a netbook connected to a USB drive. Then I could run an actual copy of iTunes on the netbook to serve my Sonos and Apple TV as well as sync my entire music library to my iPod (since I don't want to store the whole library on my primary laptop).

For the combo price, netbook plus HDD you already can buy a dedicated NAS, synology include iTunes server.

The problem with these implementation it's the slow access USB port, you will reach only 20 to 30 MBps. For me it's very slow. The NAS will use sata bus.

Actually my data read is reaching the top speed of the gigaethernet interface, almost 7 times faster that USB transfer

The other problem is if the external HDD fail you loose all data

I recommend minimum the two drive bay NAS, so you can use in raid 1 mirror

 

[notjustjay]

For the combo price, netbook plus HDD you already can buy a dedicated NAS, synology include iTunes server.

[...]

The other problem is if the external HDD fail you loose all data

I may end up doing a combo solution. My NAS is extremely slow and I want to be able to run an actual copy of iTunes (not just the mt-daapd server which isn't compatible with Apple TV), so I was thinking of running the media off a netbook, which could get synced periodically to the NAS for backup purposes.

 

[Cakeove]

I may end up doing a combo solution. My NAS is extremely slow and I want to be able to run an actual copy of iTunes (not just the mt-daapd server which isn't compatible with Apple TV), so I was thinking of running the media off a netbook, which could get synced periodically to the NAS for backup purposes.

Use a Mac mini them. I am using the base 2011 model. Works great

 

[toolbox]

For me i have been using

Thecus n5200xxx, with 2 Tb WD Blacks giving me total storage 10 TB with 7 usable after formatting etc.

If i didn't have a thecus, would be QNAP or the Netgear ready NAS products. Just to remember to purchases hard disk drives that are on the HCL lists that will work with the NAS devices.

I made that mistake and had bad performance problems with my old NAS, after i bought drives that were on the HCL all was nice