Choosing a Storage Device- ReadyNas, Drobo, or DS207

[toymachine]

Hey all, I'm having a heck of a time deciding between:

1. ReadyNas Duo
2. Drobo 2.0 w/ Droboshare
3. Synology DS207

Obviously each has its strengths, but I can't decide which way to go. The ReadyNas Duo has been getting great reviews and it has a lot of features, but the Drobo looks like it's insanely easy to use, which is a major plus for me. I don't need any business features, permissions, Active Directory, etc, I just need reliable home storage with some accessibility. Some features like NAS-to-NAS backup and a Bittorrent client would be nice, but they are not necessary.

You can read here for more of my rambling thoughts (I'm spending too much time looking into this) but I wanted to post here before I made my final decision.

btw- I wanted to say that price is a factor, but only because the Drobo comes out to about $700 without disks. I don't mind the price different of, say, $100, but we are talking about twice the money with the Drobo.

 

[thiggins]

You didn't say how much storage you want or whether RAID is important (and if so, what level RAID).

Doesn't seem like high performance is that important to you, nor is media serving.

The Synologies have gotten expensive. I just looked up the current prices and corrected the NAS chart data. Both the 207 and 207+ are near $300...without drives.

I can't speak to the Drobos, since I have not tested them. But from what I have read, the performance is not that good. For $700(!), I'd give them a pass...

The ReadyNAS Duo has lots of features...probably more than you need/want. But it's a bit on the expensive side and doesn't give you the option of running the drives in JBOD / RAID0 for maximum storage.

You could pick up a pair of D-Link DNS-321's for about $250 (w/o drives) and have what you want, including NAS to NAS backup and have plenty of $ left for drives.

 

[toymachine]

Thanks for the fast reply Tim. To address what you brought up-

Performance is not very important to me. I'd like something is is reasonably fast, but it's not a priority. I have heard that the Drobo is lacking in this respect.

Regarding RAID, I was leaning towards RAID1 because of simplicity and size. I don't want or need anything with more than four disks, and I was thinking two would be fine. Reliability is very important to me though, so I'd consider something more advanced if it was recommended, but I've always been fine with RAID1.

I'm going to look into the DNS-321 now. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[thiggins]

You're welcome. I think RAID1 is fine, too.
Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID

 

[toymachine]

I was about to go with the DNS-321 but it's looking like the DNS-323 might be the better choice b/c it has a USB slot. I'd like to be able to backup my NAS to a USB drive. I need an easy redundancy solution with the NAS and a USB drive seems like the way to go.

Everyone like the DNS-323? Reviews on NewEgg seem OK, not great.

 

[VirtualEdge]

Had a D323

Had one, just got rid of it. It was OKAY. I thought it was slower than it should have been. I did like the iTunes server feature and uPNP. My Buffalo Linkstation saw it fine and streamed movies from it without any problems. Never really used any of the other features, such as the FTP server or the Bit Torrent - I could care less. I rather have dropped those features for the XBox Streaming capabilities.

Tim - why don't you add XBox Streaming to one of the filters.

I'm looking for a new NAS that is mroe business oriented and eon that I can use with VMware ESX and XenServer for HA and Resource Pooling, so at a minimal it will need to support NFS and bonus would be iSCSI! I saw that the Thecus 5200 Pro will now act as an iSCSI initiator. Performance is pretty high on my list. I don't like to be slowed down by transfers. Price is somewhat of a factor, but understand NFS and iSCSI is more of a premium. Another added bonus would be the XBox streaming. (I am assumign that I could stream a movie/DVD rip/AVI format to the XBox).

Is there one that will suport both 1GE (or more) and eSATA (connected as a DAS)?

Thanks...

 

[thiggins]

Is there one that will suport both 1GE (or more) and eSATA (connected as a DAS)?

I have not been looking closely at eSATA features. But I don't think any products tested so far let you use the eSATA port to use the NAS as a DAS. They basically use the eSATA port as a faster (than USB 2.0) drive expansion port.

 

[Grypen]

I am new to this forum but I do have a drobo. If you are looking for a lot of flexible storage capacity the drive works very well. Not the fastest around but I use it to stream video and music files without any noticeable performance problems. If you are transferring a lot of large files it will take a long time but for me this is not a factor. I to am considering a ReadyNAS duo to add to the network and would be interested in your ultimate decision but may build a server using a mac mini and two direct attached raid 1 arrays that I already own.

Chris

 

[sdroots]

I was about to go with the DNS-321 but it's looking like the DNS-323 might be the better choice b/c it has a USB slot. I'd like to be able to backup my NAS to a USB drive. I need an easy redundancy solution with the NAS and a USB drive seems like the way to go.

Everyone like the DNS-323? Reviews on NewEgg seem OK, not great.

For your information I just paid $92 for the DNS-321 on buy.com after 5% coupon, $30 rebate and free shipping. I'm a bit confused about the USB port on 323, I understood it was a print server only? In any event, the 321 was in my budget and I already have a wireless all-in-one printer. I also bought two 500GB Seagate SATA drives (ST3500320AS) at Dell.com for $63 each.