Three weeks and I still can't decide - please help!!

[alex_g]

Hello everybody,

I'm planning to buy a NAS for several weeks now, and the more research I'm doing the more I am convinced that these NAS things just kill you - by desperate starvation while you're trying to work out what to buy!
Maybe some of you experienced users could give me some advice...

Everything started (and is connected) with my other plan of replacing my current 17" notebook by a new subnotebook with an SSD and a docking station. As SSDs are still quite expensive and shouldn't be packed to 100% with data, I would like to move all seldom used data to a NAS (what makes the data still accessible by LAN, WAN or the Internet) and could also replace the six USB disks which are currently floating around (80gig to 1TB in capacity). These disks are also used for recordings with a HD SAT receiver, but it's getting really hard to remember what data is currently gone where. So the plan is to get a 3/4/5-bay NAS to get things back in order. Besides SMB/CIFS it should provide GBit LAN and secure SFTP and/or HTTPS access from outside my home - that's all I initially thought of and that's also where the crisis of my last three weeks started...

Normally, a 3TB RAID5 (3x 1.5TB) should be sufficient to store my data. That should give me about 1TB for important data (which can be backed up to the 1TB USB drive) and 2TB for other stuff like TV recordings, DVD images and so on.

• So I first took a look at the Synology DS-409 for around 350EU. I like the price and the software, and performance is not too bad either. But the longer I looked, the more I disliked the idea of lacking hot-swap drive trays, and also a second GBit connection (1x for the NB's docking station, 1x for the WAN router) would be quite nice as it would free me from buying an additional (and permanently running) GBit switch. Also the 256MB RAM look a bit small nowadays, since I started thinking of creating and hosting a small website or blog for our choir while reading though the feature list...
  
• So the QNAP TS-410 for around 360EU seemed like the next logical choice, as it features hot-swap drive trays and the second GBit connection. Unfortunately, performance-wise it's rather a small step in the wrong direction with it's Marvell 800MHz CPU?!?
  
• That's when I found the Thecus N0503 for around the same amount of money (350EU). It's Atom powered, it provides 1GB of RAM, and you can easily swap hard drives. But being 3-bay only, it has the disadvantage that I can't add another disk later-on. So to be on the safe side, I'd rather opt to start off with 2TB drives with the N0503? But that eats up the price advantage to quite a degree, and I also didn't like the press reviews and the software features as much as with Synology or QNAP. According to reviews the fan is louder as well, and there seems to be a problem with drives not powering down on idle. So I kept on looking around...
  
• What else is available? The Synology DS-409+ for around 440EU is still missing hot-swap drive bays and the second GBit connector, though I liked it feature-wise apart from that.
  
• The QNAP TS-419P for ~480EU has both, and also quite a low standby power consumption. However, while checking the specifications and reviews, I saw that not all extension packages are available for the ARM based QNAP NASes, and I also thought the missing Wake-On-LAN feature might be actually quite useful (even more than low power usage)?!? Additionally, my new notebook with it's SSD might be quite fast, so it would be nice if the NAS would be quite fast as well?!?
  
• So I had a look at QNAPs Atom models, the TS-439 Pro for about 650EU and the TS-439 Pro II for around 700EU. I think both of these models are "NAS heaven" regarding their performance and feature set (even including IPv6 for the future), and with the price difference being that low, I'd rather opt for the newer model (Pro II) due to the idle power consumption being 10watts lower.

WELL, THAT'S WHEN I FINALLY WOKE UP FROM DREAMING and realized that I WON'T spend 700 hard-earned bucks just for an empty Unix box to put disks in it?!?

Frustrated, I spent the next few evenings on working out alternative plans. Building a FreeNAS box, for example. But actually there are not many cases around, which are really suitable to build a NAS, and the usual Chenbro case is quite expensive as well. I could use any bargain mini tower case and stuff in a 4-drives-hot-swap frame, but I don't like the idea of the case being so big. Next thing was to find an Atom motherboard with GBit ethernet, at least 4 SATA connectors and an expansion slot for a second GBit NIC. There are few, to be honest. Then I didn't like the FreeNAS RAID not being dynamically expanable, and I also know it'll be hard to find the time, nerves and energy to install and optimise my own Linux installation. I better buried that branch.

As another compromise, I found the Thecus N4200, which comes as a 4-bay hot swap, 2GBit eths, Atom-powered, 1GB RAM, Wake-On-LAN NAS with an USV already included, while the price of 520EU is only a little bit higher than QNAP's 419P. But still, I somehow like the QNAP or Synology software package much more than Thecus' - they simply "feel" to be superior or a little bit more polished (the same can be said for their documentation as well). And according to the latest c't review (which is a quite famous German PC magazine) the N4200 also shares the drives-not-powering-down bug with it's smaller cousin (N0503)... but then again, the N4200 is such a deal for it's money?!?

So this is where I am now: repeating the above steps over and over again!

Well, if I try to get all my NAS thoughts in order (what is getting harder and harder every day!), then I seem to have only four valid options:

1. Get the Synology DS409 and, whenever I regret it, becalm myself with the idea of having saved lots of money
2. Get the QNAP-419P as a good energy-saving compromise (I guess it does most of what I'll ever need)
3. Get myself drunk and then happily order the QNAP TS-439 Pro II with Wake-On-LAN and all it's geeky "Uber" feature stuff
4. Get the Thecus N4200 and give it a thorough try though I don't "like" it as much up-front?

Maybe anyone of you could share his thoughts and impressions or advice about it, please?!? - This is really driving me bonkers!

Thank you very much, guys! And sorry for the lengthyness of my gush and the rusty English (I'm Bavarian after all, which is near Germany), but I tried hard to describe my dilemma as good as possible...

Best regards, Alex_G

 

[thiggins]

Three things about your thought process, Alex:

1) The two LAN ports in so-equipped NASes don't act like a switch. They support fail-over, two separate LANs or aggregation. So don't limit you choices to NASes with two LAN ports. Just buy a switch.

2) Hot-swap drives doesn't necessarily mean you can pull and insert drives to move data in and out of the NAS. The main use is to not have to power down the NAS when a drive fails. You just pull out the bad drive and insert a new one.

3) Don't worry that much about RAM size. With large media files, you're going to be blowing past the ability of RAM caching to be used and its performance advantages. RAM size only really matters when you're working with file sizes about half the size of the RAM.

All that said, all three vendors make fast NASes. QNAP and Synology both have nice admin GUIs, Thecus less so and also has fewer add-in packages.

If you use the Price vs. Performance view in the NAS Charts, and filter for just QNAP, Synology and Thecus, you'll see there is a big jump between the Marvell and Atom-based NASes. No mystery here since Atom-based NASes require more parts to build.

Hope I've made the selection process easier. You mostly have to decide how much money you want to spend for that empty Linux box and how fast you want to go.

 

[PowerMAC]

If I were you I would really try to get a x86 based NAS, as you already found out there's just more extra software packages available for it and they are more powerful. Owning a TS-509 Pro myself I would advice the QNAP TS-439 Pro, it may not be the very latest model but it does have all the cool features you like and the price is better than the new models of course. To bring the price down some more you also really should try getting a discount on the QNAP TS-439 Pro (say it's an old model and that it's being replaced by QNAP with the TS-439 Pro II and TS-459 Pro models and/or that it's not green enough or something). I think there's a good chance some retailers will listen, especially when you sweeten up the deal a bit, for instance you could say you will also buy (some of) the harddisks there.

 

[alex_g]

Sorry, I happened to have to fix my landlord's lethargic PC today, instead of spending another evening on NAS selection...

But thank you very much for your answers - I really appreciate it and will come back to you asap! That will most likely be tomorrow evening unless someone else arrests my attention.

Best regards and enjoy your evenings (mine's over for today)!
Alex_G

 

[alex_g]

Hello Tim,

having just finished the tax-payback-forms for the last three years, I'm now in a better mood to spend money for a NAS!

But I'll first answer your annotations:

1) The two LAN ports in so-equipped NASes don't act like a switch. They support fail-over, two separate LANs or aggregation. So don't limit you choices to NASes with two LAN ports. Just buy a switch.

Sorry, I didn't make that clear enough. I'm aware that the LAN ports even on two-port NAS are not bridged (or "switched together"). My idea simply was to use one port to connect it to the notebook's docking station, for NAS access when stationary (no other devices included at all). The other port I would connect to my router, to be able to access the NAS via WLAN when the notebook is undocked for living room or balcony usage. I think that should work out, or won't it?

I know the costs of a switch shouldn't be of concern nowadays, and even power consumption doesn't really matter, since I've a left-over USB-triggered power strip in the cabinet, that I could use to power the switch only when the NAS is turned on (the power strip simply senses the voltage of the USB ports being turned on, so there's no logic needed inside the NAS).

But that's also valid the other way around: It doesn't make sense either to step back from a two-LAN-port NAS to a single-port one only because it's 30 bucks cheaper (like it's the case between QNAP 419P and Synology DS-409+), since the switch would cost me the same. But you're right, that really shouldn't be a main point to decide between devices.

2) Hot-swap drives doesn't necessarily mean you can pull and insert drives to move data in and out of the NAS. The main use is to not have to power down the NAS when a drive fails. You just pull out the bad drive and insert a new one.

You're right again, for home usage it's rather a nice-to-have than a need-to-have. I can't count the number of PCs I built over time, so I really should be able to get along with the Synology models as well.

3) Don't worry that much about RAM size. With large media files, you're going to be blowing past the ability of RAM caching to be used and its performance advantages. RAM size only really matters when you're working with file sizes about half the size of the RAM.

Hmm, I'm not that sure about that. What especially concerns me is the amount of RAM taken up by the UPnP/DLNA media servers when hosting huge MP3 collections. At least I know the 32megs of RAM of a FritzBox Router are hardly enough for about 5.000 MP3s, with the FritzBox'es operating system probably using less RAM itself than that of a NAS?

That's why I really feel better off with 512MB of RAM, but maybe I'll dig further into it whether any such problems are known to 256meg NAS users.

All that said, all three vendors make fast NASes. QNAP and Synology both have nice admin GUIs, Thecus less so and also has fewer add-in packages.

In the meantime I spent some more time on the "Demonstration fiddling" web sites of QNAP and Synology, and I have to admit that I like Synology's solution most. Well, in fact they're quite comparable after all, with the most considerable exception being the media station, which looks far better on Synology. However, I think one can assume the next firmware version might as well eliminate that little gap of QNAP...

Hope I've made the selection process easier. You mostly have to decide how much money you want to spend for that empty Linux box and how fast you want to go.

As I'm from the country of no speed limits, I surely want to go VERY fast!

However, I still didn't find the perfect model. I guess I already would've chosen if Synology would offer an Atom-powered model between the 710+ and the 1010+ (price and sizewise). But since this isn't the case, I'm still throwing dize between the Synology DS409+ and QNAP's 419P/439 Pro models. Well, I hope for huge tax refunds!

Anyway... thank you very much for your personal help as well as the excellent NAS charts of your website! It's amazing how you find the time to assist in almost all of the forum's questions.

Best regards, Alex_G

 

[alex_g]

To bring the price down some more you also really should try getting a discount on the QNAP TS-439 Pro [..]. I think there's a good chance some retailers will listen, especially when you sweeten up the deal a bit, for instance you could say you will also buy (some of) the harddisks there.

Thanks for your advice! That actually might be a chance, since I found out by coincidence that a good friend of mine also thinks about getting a NAS. So maybe that could result in a deal for two NAS boxes and 6 to 8 harddisks.

I think of getting Seagate LP 5900.12 1.5TB disks by the way (..541 model). Samsung's always on the cheapest side, the Seagate ..341 model as well as the WD Green drives seem to have (had) a chance of firmware anomalies, and the rest of the bunch is either 7200rpm or too expensive. The Seagate LP 5900.12 drives are officially tested with all NAS boxes in question.

 

[thiggins]

However, I still didn't find the perfect model. I guess I already would've chosen if Synology would offer an Atom-powered model between the 710+ and the 1010+ (price and sizewise).

Be careful with these. The expansion capability of these models is via a single eSATA port connecting to a port-multiplied eSATA enclosure. I suspect there may be a bottleneck for the expansion drives, which I'll confirm as soon as Synology sends an expansion cabinet for testing.

 

[alex_g]

Be careful with these. The expansion capability of these models is via a single eSATA port connecting to a port-multiplied eSATA enclosure.

Don't worry, I'm not looking at the 710+. I don't like the idea of port multiplying either, as it's more or less like an AWD car that can only power one wheel at a time, and it's also an additional source of potential failure. But even with the technical aspects set aside, I already "own" about 1.5TB of data -- so choosing the 710+ would result in need for the DX510 case in only a few months time, and that's utterly senseless from several points of view (price, power consumption, need for additional cabling, etc.).

Instead I was hoping for a renewed Atom-based successors for the 4-bay-models 409/409+, since the 1010+ just breaks the mold a bit for me in terms of extendability and price. But I'm quite sure I can't wait that long.


EDIT+UPDATE: Here Synology speaks of new 1-, 2- and 4-bay models of the 10 series, which are to be released in 2010. Maybe I'd really better wait to get the perfect NAS, at least until the unveil their specs.

SECOND UPDATE: Information on DS410 leaked here and here. I think that might by a good choice for me: Performance seems to be fine, there seem to be drive trays behind the back door of the case and it features Wake On LAN (official statement from Synology that all 2010 models except the 410j will support it).