Buying Advice - 5/5 Bay NAS $600-$800

[jwpatt]

Buying Advice - 4/5 Bay NAS $600-$800

I am looking to purchase my first NAS. It will be used entirely for home use, primarily for data back-up and media streaming. I have 4 TB (and growing) of music, home movies, pictures, and several hundred backed-up DVD's that I want to be able to safeguard, centrally store and access via media streamers (I own a Popcorn Hour A-110 and a WDTV Media Player) throughout the house. Presently, I am using 6 1TB WD Myspace drives attached to my PC for storage, but I have outgrown this set-up and would like something more capable. I also want the NAS to be future proof enough that I will be able to get a good 5-10 years out of it and it will be able to meet the media streaming needs of tomorrow (i.e. access the media server via TV's, etc directly as that capability becomes more common, etc).

Ideally I want to spend in the $600-800, but I am slightly flexible if a little more $ gets me a lot more NAS. I would like a 5th drive bay, as I have a lot of data to store, and it would seem to set me up better for the future. I would settle for a 4 bay if the other factors warrant it. An external e-SATA connection is imperitive, as I would like to use my existing WD drives for back-up. Media serving capabilities are a high-priority. I would classify myself as a moderately knowledgeable home-user, capable with basic networking. However, I would like to minimize the amount of time needed to set-up and maintain the NAS to keep my wife from killing me (she gets on me regarding the amount of time I spend on my tech hobbies and away from the other needs of the household....). So, ease of use is very important and I am willing to pay a premium for a slick interface that will pay-off down the line.

I am primarily looking at 3 units. Thecus N5200 Pro, the new Thecus N5500, and the QNAP TS 439 pro. Both Thecus units are five-bay units. The QNAP 439 is a four-bay. The N5200 pro is attractive in that it has the fifth bay and appears to be a decent value, but its existing interface was poorly reviewed and its built-in media streaming capabilities appear to be an afterthought. That said, Thecus forum indicated the new Ajax based web interface available on the N5500 will be rolled out to all products in the coming months. If true, I think that might solve the first issue. Also, while the N5200 has a limited feature set out of the box, it is customizable via modules. It appears there is a Twonky module that would replace the built-in media server (anyone have any experience with this?). I dont know if these workaround are effective or too much time/effort to set-up. Again, ideally I would like something that "just works". Any thoughts?

Thecus N5500 is brand new and appears to be a replacement for the N5200 pro. I have not seen a review on it yet and wonder if it is an issue to buy something brand new with first generation firmware and issues? Big selling point is it introduces Thecus’ brand new Ajax based web interface. Also seems to have better media streaming capabilities out of the box. Since this unit is replacing the N5200 pro, would I just be buying old technology if I purchased a N5200 pro now?

The QNAP 439 is only a 4 bay unit, but seems to have a higher level of features and usability than Thecus. I would be willing to trade-off the extra drive bay if the user experience would be that much better for me. It is high priced for the specs in comparison to Thecus models. Is the slickness of the unit that much better?

I summarized below some of the key decision points. Any advice is appreciated.

Thecus N5200Pro (~$660)
1.5GHz Celeron® M Processor, 512MB DDR memory
Five-bay
Customizable via modules
Limited feature set out of the box
More mature firmware than N5500

Thecus N5500 (~$879)
Five-bay
1.86GHz Celeron M, 1GB of DDR2 memory
1 eSATA
Dual-DOM (Disk on Module) feature (extra level of fault tolerance).
Introduces Thecus’ brand new Ajax based web interface
Thecus provides update modules for extra features but only the download station is currently available for the N5500 firmware.
Any concerns on trying new device (new firmware bugs, etc)?
I see this device is not reviewed yet, any ideas as to timing of a review?

QNAP TS-439 Pro (~$750)
Four-bay
Intel 1.6 GHz CPU, 1GB DDRII memory
High-price
Appears to offer a very nice user experience.

 

[Osamede]

I would get the QNAP 439 and not look back.

QNAP have taken a big step forward with this new generation of x39 consumer oriented products and they are hard to beat. The others you mention will not be as easy to use and the QNAP has plenty of performance, unlikely you will even reach its performance limit.

Only thing I woudl say with the QNAP is be aware that you need to back up remotely or to an external hard drive formated in ext3 format. Any other type of backup the QNAP could be very slow or not work at all.

 

[jwpatt]

Thanks a lot for the thoughts. Very helpful.

 

[thiggins]

Any reason why you aren't looking at Synology DS409, 409+?

 

[jwpatt]

I am open to anything. How would you compare the Synology to the QNAP?

 

[thiggins]

Similar feature sets. But the Synology has some feature tradeoffs in order to achieve ~$200 cost savings. Drives aren't hot swappable, one eSATA and Ethernet port vs. on the QNAP.

Comparable read performance, but QNAP does better on Vista SP1 RAID 5 filecopy.

 

[peterk]

Perhaps you can also take a look at the Synology DS509+ model. It has 2 gigabit ethernet ports like the QNAP, and about the same feature set, but it's a 5 bay model. And it's expandable by a DX5 unit, so you can ultimately have a 10 bay storage.

It's worth to mention, that the DS409/409+ models can also utilize the DX5 unit. The difference is that the DS509+ can handle all 10 drives as a single raid array (so you can expand your base raid array with the disks in the extendion unit), while the 409 models can only treat the extension bay as separate volume.

 

[jwpatt]

Thanks for everyone for their feedback/input. I really appreciate it.

 

[a.k.u.m.a]

Our office is actually using a N5200B Pro (MIS just upgraded it from N4100). From what I can see it's pretty good, in office environment of couse where as a staff I only need to access data quickly. The system is up for 8 months and never stop. I am consider to buy a N5500 myself now but need more researchs as it's new.