Hi all,
I'm pretty new to the forums here and NAS in general. Found references to SNB in the course of researching NAS choices and I've found quite a bit of useful info, from the NAS performance charts to advice/info in the forums. One thing I'm really taking to heart is modifying my plan to absolutely include a backup NAS for the primary NAS!
I jumped on a QNAP TS-409 Pro open box on Newegg that was a good deal, but it turned out to be defective. So I'm stepping back a bit b/c my experience with QNAP support was not quite what I'd like it to be, and re-opening the bidding, so to speak.
My goals, which are fairly similar to most home users:
Right now the choices in consideration for the primary NAS are:
The performance of the ReadyNAS seems to be seriously lagging behind the other two, but I ready many good comments about it otherwise in terms of reliability and support, in addition to architecture. The HP MediaSmart servers seem to be gems, and although my initial plan required RAID for the drive level fault tolerance, it might not be as important with a backup NAS device. But as the backup NAS box, it would probably be fine.
So a few scenarios play out in my head:
Thanks for any thoughts or advice.
I'm pretty new to the forums here and NAS in general. Found references to SNB in the course of researching NAS choices and I've found quite a bit of useful info, from the NAS performance charts to advice/info in the forums. One thing I'm really taking to heart is modifying my plan to absolutely include a backup NAS for the primary NAS!
I jumped on a QNAP TS-409 Pro open box on Newegg that was a good deal, but it turned out to be defective. So I'm stepping back a bit b/c my experience with QNAP support was not quite what I'd like it to be, and re-opening the bidding, so to speak.
My goals, which are fairly similar to most home users:
- Host media files (audio, video, photos)
- Have 2-3 TB space with room to expand (I have 3 1.5 TB drives on hand now)
- Also make most of my other various documents accessible on the network
- Store backup images from my work & personal PCs
- Run a torrent server such that files are available to watch on my HTPC
- Include a 2nd NAS to run backups of the primary
- Be fault tolerant of a single disk failure
Right now the choices in consideration for the primary NAS are:
- HP EX485 (and I'd likely repurpose the included 750GB drive to my DVR)
- Netgear ReadyNAS RND4000
- QNAP TS-439 or TS-509 (IF my confidence in their support can be improved.)
- Possibly a Thecus
- Other? (don't see anything else in the price vs performance chart that jumps out)
The performance of the ReadyNAS seems to be seriously lagging behind the other two, but I ready many good comments about it otherwise in terms of reliability and support, in addition to architecture. The HP MediaSmart servers seem to be gems, and although my initial plan required RAID for the drive level fault tolerance, it might not be as important with a backup NAS device. But as the backup NAS box, it would probably be fine.
So a few scenarios play out in my head:
- Primary = EX485, Backup = ReadyNAS
- Primary = EX485, Backup = another HP MSS, maybe EX47x
- Primary = QNAP TS-439, Backup = ReadyNAS
Thanks for any thoughts or advice.
