Which would you buy?

[ender666666]

I'm soon to be a first time NAS owner, but am faced with a tricky decision.

I have to opportunity to buy either of these 2 choices , but don't know which is better... Can anyone please weigh in with their choice? I know that they are both quite different in terms of specs, but assuming either would suit my needs, which would you choose?

Option 1:

BNIB Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2.0 2-drive bay w/ full warranty

Pros: Well reviewed, Excellent price, full warranty

Con: Limited expandability due to only 2 drive bays, hard choice between max storage vs. redundancy

Option 2:

Used (4.5 year old) Thecus N5200 5-drive bay

Pros: Higher calibre unit, more RAID type options, more drive bays, Very well reviewed, LCD Display, less overall storage lost to redundancy with a 5 disk RAID 5 vs. a 2 disk RAID 1

Cons: 4.5 years old - no warranty, will cost me about $100 more than Option 1

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Ideally I'd like to use 2TB disks in either NAS, and honestly do care more about storage capacity, but would like some data security (no RAID 0).

So... Which would you buy?

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
4~5 year old unit may be EOL product with diminishing support. I just settled down with Synology DS713+ to begin with after trying out DS213 and DS213+. I have 2x4TB with
DS713+ and connected 2x3TB DAS via USB3. If and when I need more expansion there are Synology DXxxx boxes.

 

[stevech]

My carefully made decision was Synology, a 2 drive NAS (I don't have huge storage requirements. I configured it and use it to be a super high reliability storage for irreplaceable data (non-RAID setup). I've been very please with my DS212. I don't update the firmware from Synology until I'm certain that (a) I really need a new feature and (b) the guinea-pig phase is over.

QNAP is probably an equal.

Netgear, IOMega, et al, mass-marketed, no thanks. See user comments here on the latest Netgear NAS (user returned it).