Does anyone know a good network attached storage device? I'm looking for something with drive redundancy, windows or mac accessible, but without running custom software on the individual computers. And ideally with some sort of drive failure alarm.

I've searched, but there are so many boxes out there, I was hoping to narrow my scope just a bit!

thanks!,

-jk

And they all run Linux internally..

http://readynas.com/ . I have the NV+, and it has worked very well.

And not all NAS devices on the market run Linux. Windows Home Servers run a variant of I think Windows Server 2003, though they don't command a huge market presence yet.

Yup, I'm a very happy readynas user. The new ones are a bit over the top, but if you can deal with a few MB/second transfer rates, the NV and NV+ are great little boxes. I haven't actually seen mine since I put it in a well ventilated closet about six months ago, but I use it all the time. Their support had a custom build ready the same week I discovered that the firmware wouldn't support 1.5TB drives when they came out.

Performance wise, I get pretty good speeds off my NV+. Just did a quick test using AFP, and pulled down a file at ~45MB/s. Writing back to it was a little slower, averaging around 28MB/s. I did upgrade the unit to 1GB ram, and have all 4 disks populated running X-Raid (so RAID 5 in this config).

Another vote for ReadyNAS

Thanks, all! (And I suspected they all ran Linux inside.)

-jk

If I had to choose now, I'd probably buy the Qnap TS-509 Pro Turbo. According to the NAS Charts at smallnetbuilder.com, it's about the fastest one out there, only to be topped by it's own (a lot more expensive) TS-809 Pro.

The fun part about the TS-509 Pro is that it uses an Intel Celeron CPU instead of some network CPU which is used mostly in these type of devices. The cool part is that it's also sitting in a CPU socket, so you can actually upgrade/mod the CPU to a Core2Duo if you need to.

I love the iSCSI options on some newer products like the QNAP TS-639 or even the new DroboPro 8-drive box (not NAS), but the prices are still hideous.

The TS-509 (5 drives) is US$900, the TS-639 (6 drives) $1000 and the Drobo (8 drives) over $1200. All diskless prices.

I was going to buy a second RAID1 enclosure (Newer's Guardian Maximus) but I really need more than an additional 1.5TB of drive space now that I'm going to be capturing HD streams with my PVR. My current enclosure is already at capacity with my music and movie collection - much of which has even had to be offloaded temporarily to other drives.

What to do, what to do... Since I have a PVR/server on all the time, I don't really need a NAS to run other applications, but it does have to be fast at disk IO. I'm drooling over being able to stick 8 disks into the new Drobo (as long as they're fixed the issues from their previous product iterations).

OpenFiler does iSCSI.

I did a tiny bit of looking at the OpenFiler and FreeNAS sites and forums, but I didn't see a decent hardware reference guide for either of them unfortunately. In the end, I don't mind doing a little work up front, but I don't want a difficult to maintain frankenstein system. I'd like a somewhat power efficient footprint with enough space for 6-8 drives, hopefully without too much headache to access them physically (replacing, adding new, etc.)

If I'm going to be installing my own software to run everything, I'm also not going to be looking to spend $600-1000 on a suitable case & mobo. At that point, for my needs, it makes more sense to go with one of the off-the-shelf solutions, even if spending an additional few hundred dollars.

Synology seem to have a good user forum for mods.
I have been using a DS101g for a few years now, with no problems other than a noisy cooling fan (touch wood!).

I am looking for an eSATA/USB2 external box capable to accomodate 3-5 3.5" sataII disks, RAID5 capable, Hot-swappable.
What would you guys recommend? I do not need a network interface, nor I need NAS features. I am just looking to expand a server with external storage for backup reasons. I'd like something simple (and inexpensive?) and reliable.

So far I only found a LaCie 4Big Quadra.

Drobo?

I'm still strongly considering the DroboPro. Even at half the price it's still pricy, but I don't really see any way around that. There's really no competition and rolling your own is not even remotely possible if trying to achieve a similar level of integration and elegance.

The other negative is the collection of poor reviews. Balanced of course by positive reviews. It might be one of those scenarios where you have to test it all out yourself.

I'm looking at stuffing two existing 1.5TB drives into it along with two new ones to start. Then I'll use my existing RAID1 box with a pair of smaller drives to back up some of the Drobo (my music for now).

Once you get going with this type of storage solution you start to realize you need a lot more storage than you had originally anticipated. Having a second Drobo with identical drives for use as backup for instance...

Thank you for pointing me at it. Simple and interesting. Too bad it does not come with eSATA interface.

However, it seems we may want to go with some more expensive solution. Still, DroboPro is generally speaking a very good idea as an inexpensive file server backup device.

Promise makes a lot of multi-drive 2 and 3U enclosures... SATA, SAS with iSCSI, SAN, etc..

http://www.provantage.com/promise-technology-vj1830~4PROM1CF.htm

On the cheapy side, they actually have a 4-drive direct attached raid enclosure for 4 drives at just over US$300. Though one review I've read claims it's very slow (running some real-world simulation benchmarks which I don't really trust)

I'm still leaning toward the DroboPro myself because I really can't afford something I'd like more. Like a 12 or 16 device (high quality) enclosure connected via fibre running SAN to my server... That's probably the only way to get over 100MB/s read/write speeds.

Thanks Bruno.

Also, iSCSI is not bad at all on the DroboPro; but eSATA seems a bit more attractive given our needs.

Reviewing an old-ish thread, now that I'm in the market for a NAS unit as well, I'm curious... what do you use, Mark? Anything? DIY?

Having recently become unemployed (again), I'm looking for something cheap, but upgradeable. I'm happy with DIY, if it's relatively pain-free to build/manage.

DIY. But I actually don't have a huge need for live storage.

So our 24/7 cookie-tin Mini-ITX server holds email, photos, web, etc. live for us on it's puny 320GB notebook drive (to be updated to 500GB some day soon-ish). It runs Debian Sarge.. with some strategic updates like last week's Linux kernel etc.. We'll replace Sarge with a modern distro this winter.

The MythTV box has it's own internal 2x750GB RAID0, and we don't bother backing up the recordings. This box powers off when not in use.

A trio of external USB2/eSATA enclosures host an assortment of 300GB drives that are used to backup the server and our notebooks weekly.

That's it.

I do ponder consolidating it all into a single server, but then the data would be in one basket.. not as safe as it is now, and it would do more damage to the planet from having to be on all of the time.

But if I did go for a larger NAS, it would simply be the Mini-ITX box, with more 500GB notebook drives plugged into SATA and/or USB2 on it. With Debian Lenny under the hood. I prefer Debian over Ubuntu for this task, simply because it has a MUCH longer shelf life.

Despite the frugal bits described above, there actually is a huge amount of storage and horsepower available to us, most of it stacked under the work table in my home office. Terabytes of storage, lots of CPUs, etc.. But none of it in any kind of semi-permanent use, and it's all powered off when I'm not building or testing kernels on it.

Cheers

I've gone for my old Shuttle SN45G, running Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope", with an internal 250GB desktop disk and (at the moment) a Western Digital MyBook 1TB disk using USB2. I'm using LVM on the external disk so that I can (hopefully easily) add more storage later.

Backup will probably be achieved with another external disk and rdiff-backup.

I'm considering replacing the 250GB disk with a CF/IDE adapter (because it doesn't seem possible to get PATA SSD disks).

Even on permanently, it draws 16W for the Shuttle, plus whatever the external disk needs (usually spun down).

I had a feeling that would be about it. I do like the notion of something similar to your Mini-ITX server. My biggest concern is drive space upgrade-ability, and the DIY gives that, along with the ability to run a small web server. Hmm... and now that I'm unemployed, I *do* have more time for playing with this.

Thanks for the ideas.

Similar to Mark's setup, then. I'll have to look into LVM.

Thanks!