NAS for home use becoming obsolete?

[arias]

This has been my line of thinking for a while. Simply because, with the RAID setups available today with the FAUX hardware RAIDS available for SATA ... what is the point really of having a NAS?

Using the drives that you would buy for the NAS for your home machine instead, and running them on a RAID 15 or even the blazing fast RAID 50, you can use those extra drives as additional partitions with built-in redundancy from the RAID to backup everything in a heartbeat which would be a hell of a lot quicker and far more efficient than a remote NAS.

I suppose if you're going all out, automating your home with a multimedia center where a centralized NAS would provide tunes for an ipod based streaming server, and video for your media center that might make sense. But this would seem to be an ultra niche market segment at this time.

And even if I were setting up a complete home automation solution, I would prefer to run it from my main machine to have more control and flexibility over the immediate content. And since I keep my main box on all the time, I can't see the reason for a NAS.

 

[thiggins]

Perhaps NASes aren't for skilled people like you, arias. But there are many, many people who have neither the skill nor inclination to go down the path that you have described.

All they want is a place to store their ever-increasing heap o' digital files as quickly and easily as possible. For them, the appliance-like nature of a NAS is very attractive.

Of course, then there are also the power, heat and noise issues.

 

[arias]

NAS to become obsolete?

Perhaps NASes aren't for skilled people like you, arias. But there are many, many people who have neither the skill nor inclination to go down the path that you have described.

Sorry, I had no intention of coming across pretentious by my speculation of the state of NAS for home use so I hope you didn't infer it as such. And I do see your point that for the average consumer, the NAS is an easy and spiffy way to back up all their data.

Although, I would also add that those inclined to read your site and devour your meticulous methodologies, also reflected in the relatively high level of technical proficiency in forum discussions, that your dominant audience is made up of the 'skilled people' that have the desire and capability to setup RAID, as you've even presented articles on the subject yourself.

With all current motherboard manufacturers offering some sort of built-in hardware RAID, be it psuedo or real that has expanded its repertoire from only 0 or 1, to 5 and 10 ... I can't imagine that 15 and 50 aren't imminent of future offerings. As such, using RAID will become as simple to the average consumer as plug & play, which IMHO render home NAS solutions to be nothing more than a consumer marketing scam. Don't get me wrong, I've been an avid hobbyist and participant in the development to three generations of kuroboxes, and have marveled at the interest and devotion to the NSLU2 by the opensource community, in the end these are still niche markets (boys with toys) that future built-in RAID setups would seemingly make superfluous.

The only practical reason I can see for their continuation (discounting the profit driven, corporatist perspective) is that on some random chance that a NAS is released that has the ideal hardware specs and accompanying source to be deployed for purposes different from its original intended application.

For this reason, I've been been on the lookout for NAS's that might have two or more built-in ethernet ports, pci/mini-pci slots, and/or usb 3.0 ports. Even if they only exist as pads on the pcb that would require me to solder on accompanying hardware, the additional networking capabilities brings to mind a whole host of security based network applications that a small footprint, large storage solution could take full advantage of.

If you're aware of anything at present that might fit this description, please let me know. Thx as always.

 

[thiggins]

No offense was taken, Arias. I have found that SmallNetBuilder attracts an audience with a wide range of capabilities.

SNB's NAS section is one of the busiest and NASes are, I think, the second most popular networking product category after wireless for consumer networking vendors. So I don't think that the category is going to die away anytime soon.

Thecus' N5200 and N3200 have WAN and LAN ports and one eSATA port. USB 3.0 products aren't due out until 2010, so better take that off your list.

Really sounds like you're looking for a server, rather than a NAS.

 

[scotty]

I'll have to agree with Tim.

You have to remember that you (and me) and the kinds of folks who even know what RAID are represent probably 1% of the computer using population. I'm more or less of the same opinion, I'd probably do a server in my house over NAS, but I'm far from a typical user.

Most people still call the tower the 'hard drive'.

 

[jdabbs]

Most people still call the tower the 'hard drive'.

My personal favorite is Q:"Is it a desktop?" A:"No, it sits on the floor."
It took me a while before I learned to word questions well enough to trick the user into providing useful information.

To stay on topic though, if NASs were to go anywhere, it would be to converge with media PCs. I'd imagine that, for the average user, the bulk of capacity is music/video. It makes sense for the device that stores it all to be able to interface with the home TV/stereo. Having a 5 disk capable array is nice, but I think many would be satisfied with a simple two disk array. It wouldn't be the best, but the market tends to settle for "good enough."

This direction would have to come from NAS manufacturers themselves, as HTPC development leans toward low-heat/power designs.