Looking at my first NAS - opinions needed

[spookyneo]

Hi all,

I am looking into buying my first NAS. I've been looking at NASes for some years now but I'm about to take the plunge in the coming weeks. I have done some researches and found interesting options, I think. But first, here is what I'll be looking to do with my NAS.

I currently have a Raspberry PI running Raspbian which has Sabnzbd, Sickbeard, CouchPotato. There is a 1TB USB drive connected to it.

I would like to recycle my RPi to an XBMC media player connected to my TV. While I could run XBMC on my RPi along with all other softwares already on it, I fear that the little Pi would suffer from slowiness eventually. This is where the NAS comes in.

I would like a NAS to hold all my files that are currently on my 1TB disk and future files. Since my 1TB is dying, I would buy WD RED drives and then copy everything over the new drives. So here's what I'm looking for my NAS to do :

• Hold all my media files (mkv, avi, mp4, whatever)
• Run Sabnzbd
• Run Sickbeard
• Run CouchPotato
• Run MySQL to hold the XBMC's library and keep all devices in sync. The RPi of the TV and Android tablets.

I'm looking at a NAS of at least 512MB RAM. I also don't think I would need an Intel processor because I'm not planning on doing transcoding. Is there transcoding anyway in XBMC (like Plex has) ? And to be quite honest, Intel processors do not fit in my budget.

So, the final setup would be :

• The NAS would update the TV Shows and movies using Sickbard and Couchpotato.
• My RPi running XBMC would have a mount on the NAS media shared folder and update the MySQL library running the NAS when new media files are coming in. The RPi would run 24/7 along with the NAS.
• Someone could begin watching a movie/tv show on the RPi, pause it and then resume everything on our Android tablet, which also has XBMC connecting to MySQL library on the NAS.

I am looking to buy a 2 bays NAS running RAID1. So I would probably buy 2x2TB or 2x3TB RED drives. I want RAID1 to have some kind of redundancy in case of a drive failure. Before you tell me, I know, RAID is not a backup

The NASes that I am interested in are the following :

• Netgear ReadyNAS 102. It has a good review on SNB, but it seems to have some software issues and still not as complete as QNAP or Synology. It is however, much cheaper than the others.
• QNAP TS-220. Recently reviewed at SNB and has a pretty good review.
• Synology 213j. While it does not have Hot Swappable Drive, it seems to be a very capable model, but I think it is the slower of my list.
• QNAP TS-219PII. It seems to be a good unit.
• Synology 213. It seems to be a very good NAS according to my researches.

I think that we could compare TS-220 vs 213j and 219PII vs 213. From a technical perspective, it seems to be the comparaison to make. Even if the 219PII and the 213 are more expensive, they do fit in my budget.

From a budget perspective, I don't want to spend more than the 213. The 213 is about 330$CDN in Canada and is the most expensive on the list.

What do you guys think ? Should I give a go to Netgear and save some money ? QNAP and Synology have a lot of bells and whistles that I'm not planning on using right now...but my needs might change in the future. I might want to do backups of my Windows PC, share some files over Internet (cloud feature). I think QNAP and Synology are one step ahead of Netgear regarding features.

Thank you,

Guillaume.

 

[fujifix]

I have both Netgear and Synology. I started with a single disk Synology ds107 years and years ago. After a couple of disk crashes I decided to switch to a RAID NAS. So about six months ago I bought the Netgear Ultra 4 which is comparable to the Synology DS413J. I wanted the option to run 4 disks in RAID5, but didn't have the money to buy more than two WD Red 2TB disks at the time. It's running RAID1 and thanks to Netgears XRAID system, I wont have to reconfigure to RAID 5 when I add two more disks, the NAS will handle the switch itself.

The Ultra4 is a atom based NAS, and might be over budget(?) The main reason I chose Ultra 4 was because of the buck/speed ratio. It does up to 90/60 Read/Write, which is very nice at that price...

I use it for sharing media and documents over the network, but also as storage for my vmware server (ESXi) via iSCSI. It has two NICs, but you cannot use them to load balance traffic. The x86 platform gives access to a lot of extra stuff, but I haven't really tried it out.

In terms of stylish and intuitive GUI there's nothing that beats the Synology (not even QNAP). But if you're after performance, you will have to pay more for a Synology than a Netgear NAS.

I don't have any knowledge of Netgears new product line, but the "old" ones are still for sale.

Trust me, you'll never need hot swap. Home networks just aren't that critical (only if you have a rigid SLA with yourself So my advice is go for a NAS that has good read/write speeds. Files only get bigger and bigger...

 

[stevech]

Very happy with my 2-drive Synology. Software it has, more than hardware, drove my decision. And they have good support in the US.
I've emailed them questions way beyond the warranty period and I always get a knowledgeable response. I've also called them once.

With Netgear and other consumer things, you'll probably wind up with Peggy in Bangalore.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Speaking of Synology in addition to official support there are vast pool of willing helpers on user forum if you ask right questions around. When I got DS713+/DX213 after trying out DS213 and DS213+. it came with a bad cable which is nothing special but I sent an email mention about it. Next thing I know replacement cable showed up in my mail box pronto.

 

[spookyneo]

Hi,
Speaking of Synology in addition to official support there are vast pool of willing helpers on user forum if you ask right questions around. When I got DS713+/DX213 after trying out DS213 and DS213+. it came with a bad cable which is nothing special but I sent an email mention about it. Next thing I know replacement cable showed up in my mail box pronto.

That is good support ! Out of curiosity, did you like the 213/213+ ? You mentionned that you tried them both.

I've read good things about Netgear and their new OS seems great, but everywhere I look around it mentions that it is still missing features. Some features are being redone in their new OS as we speak, but I wonder if it was a great decision to release a new OS that is not "complete". I heard good thing about Netgear though, except support. I really like their new ReadyNAS models though !

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
I could stay with 213+ but little over did it since I had some extra $$ kicking around.
I have 4x3TB WD red drives and another USB3 DAS with 2x3TB. I let it loose to family
who play with lots of picture album, video. Every thing works swell. BTW, I upgraded 713+ memory to 4GB. Simple module swap out. 30 mins. job. Open the case, swap,
close the case.

 

[fujifix]

If you're more after a feature rich OS with great support including forums, documentation and regular OS updates, you should definitely go for Synology. Netgear haven't released any new firmware for my NAS since I got it, but still..never had any problem with it .- it just runs.

Any special features you are looking for?

 

[stevech]

the DS212j is a good price point. Or a DS212 - a bit more $
The newer DS213 is a bit pricey.

But you'll probably use your small NAS 3-5 years before replacing it.