Cheap home NAS for NAS to offsite NAS backup

[redline]

Looking for my first home NAS so looking at a basic and cheap single bay NAS.
Primary purpose to centralise all my stuff and be able to back itself up to a like device set up at a friends place (and maybe he can do the same)
Lower priority features would be bittorrent stuff and the usual media server stuff that most of them seem to do.
Environment is windows pcs, PS3, and android phone.

Was looking at the base model QNAP and Synology devices ($200-250AUD) until i saw the iomega personal cloud thingies which would work out much cheaper($100-150AUD). I dont really want to share all my stuff with everyone or access my stuff from elsewhere i just want to able to set up a scheduled job to back up my stuff to my mates similar device without remembering to do it or requiring and interference from a pc. My mate doesnt need to access any of it, it would just be as an offsite backup in case of catastophe.

Any suggestions, advice and criticisms would be appreciated .

 

[thiggins]

Any of the products will do what you want. But all will require opening ports in the routers at both ends of the connection. Iomega tries to make this easy by attempting the opening via UPnP, while the others require you to do it yourself.

Read the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive - Cloud Edition Reviewed
for more info.

 

[redline]

thanks .. have read that .... good to know they will all do that.
The main thing i dont know weather i like with the iomega is having the OS on the drive itself making replacing it somewhat harder.
Are the WD my book's the same?

 

[thiggins]

All NASes keep part of the OS on the drive(s). The difference is that some can start with raw disks and bootstrap themselves from there to a working NAS.

WD MyBooks aren't designed to have user-replaceable drives. So if you tried to swap in a new drive on a single drive NAS you'd have a dead NAS.

 

[GregN]

WD MyBooks aren't designed to have user-replaceable drives. So if you tried to swap in a new drive on a single drive NAS you'd have a dead NAS.

You'd be lucky to get the drive out at all, think I ended up using irresistible force (aka hammer) to open the damn thing.

 

[stevech]

All NASes keep part of the OS on the drive(s).

Though I'm not a fan of FreeNAS, I noted that normally it keeps its operating system on separate media, e.g., boots from a thumb drive. Or did I misunderstand the context?

 

[redline]

dont the 'user replaceable' hard disk type ones keep the OS on internal flash memory?

 

[thiggins]

They keep enough of it to bootstrap into a working NAS. But during the bootstrap process part of the OS is installed onto the drives.

 

[redline]

hmm ok ... good to know.
Modifying once off router settings shouldnt be a problem So I could pretty much go for anything in the cheap end of the range
The iomega looks pretty good then. Cheap as chips
Anyone know how mature the firmware is in them (eg have they released a few updates and fixed all the usual firmware bugs)

 

[travisco_nabisco]

I have a couple year old ix2-200 that I haven't had problems with. Some people have reported major failures with the same hardware.

Regarding the firmware, it is quite capable, though on the ix2-200 the web interface goes down after around 5 weeks and I need to power cycle the NAS to get it back. It is probably worth heading over to NewEgg and Amazon and reading user opinions.

 

[redline]

have just been reading review on amazon and I am surprised. The iomega and western digital base devices seem to have very mixed reviews. in comparison the qnap and synology devices had only 1 'bad' review between them and it wasnt really valid. Its making me think twice about considering the 'cheap' option.

 

[stevech]

have just been reading review on amazon and I am surprised. The iomega and western digital base devices seem to have very mixed reviews. in comparison the qnap and synology devices had only 1 'bad' review between them and it wasnt really valid. Its making me think twice about considering the 'cheap' option.

wise position.

 

[redline]

hmm well current evaluation is Synology DS110j($179) vs QNAP TS-112 ($199) and maybe netgear RND2110 ($209 with 1Tb)
Is the netgear comparable (apart from being 2 bay) in quality ?

 

[stevech]

hmm well current evaluation is Synology DS110j($179) vs QNAP TS-112 ($199) and maybe netgear RND2110 ($209 with 1Tb)
Is the netgear comparable (apart from being 2 bay) in quality ?

I would not put netGear's NASes in the same universe as Synology or QNAP due to functions/firmware.

The TS-112 (newegg $159) has eSATA but an older/slower CPU (1.2GHz/Marvel). I'd buy the fastest CPU y9u can afford.

 

[redline]

I thought that might be the case.
Not really concerned device speed at the moment.
So I think ill save my pennies and go qnap or synology.

 

[redline]

Found a local retailer which is almost as cheap as you can get them (maybe $10-15 max more online)

Synology DS110J - $179 - 800mhz - 128Mb RAM - 9/19watts
QNAP TS-112 - $199 - 1200mhz - 256Mb RAM - 5/7watts

differences i have worked out so far Synology cheaper, QNAP faster, more ram, uses less power.
Synology also seems to have a few android apps that do different things whereas QNAP has just the 1.

Anyone know how the 'offsite backup' features id like to use compare between the 2 brands?

 

[maxxjr]

Did something like this...

Looking for my first home NAS so looking at a basic and cheap single bay NAS.
Primary purpose to centralise all my stuff and be able to back itself up to a like device set up at a friends place (and maybe he can do the same)
Lower priority features would be bittorrent stuff and the usual media server stuff that most of them seem to do.
Environment is windows pcs, PS3, and android phone.

...

Any suggestions, advice and criticisms would be appreciated .

Did something like this for a small company with two offices. Had a Netgear Readynas at both locations. Had Netgear VPN routers sitting in between, with a VPN connection. The NAS's back up directly to each other nightly. (Because the NAS's are same models, setup was easier, and made for a smaller chance of some mismatch in a protocol such as rsync).

 

[redline]

thanks ... good to know someone else has done it at least
which makes me think. Do I need anything fancy in my router or will just the usual port forwarding settings do. Its a dlink DSL-2642B

Still having trouble deciding between the qnap and synology. So closely matched.

 

[maxxjr]

Vpn

I went with the VPN routers so that the NAS's can look like they are on the same network...NAS1 = 10.0.1.1, NAS2 = 10.0.2.1 as an example. I can reach either NAS from either network, and am not restricted only to those ports that I have forwarded...which is particularly useful for administration. There are several devices on each network that have web-based management, and I think setting up and tracking different firewall ports to different internal addresses is something I didn't want to do. I think VPN is a more simple, (but *slightly* more expensive) approach.

 

[redline]

well ive just ordered a Synology DS110j
thanks for all your help guys. Will let you know how it goes