Yet Another WNWYS ("What NAS would you suggest") Thread

[Chum]

Love the site - unfortunately, there's so much information that I'm having a hard time sifting through everything. Figured I'd give a shot here to get me moving in the right directions.

I'm looking for a home-network based NAS to replace an extremely loud, noisy and cumbersome PC that I'm currently using for shared storage. My requirements are something like the following - not necessarily in the order of importance:

1) RAID 1 - I lost a couple thousand pictures to a bad disk (and poor backup habits of my own) and never again want to see that look on my wife's face when I told her I lost a year of baby pictures. Hot swappable would be a neat touch but certainly not required. Uptime is less important than data integrity.

2) USB connectivity - Along those lines, I would also like to have the ability to attach a external USB harddrive to backup the most critical of items directly from the NAS.

3) DLNA Compatible UPnP - Not having my computer on to stream music to my 360 would be a nice addition.

4) 2-disc BYOD-style setup would be preferable. SATA interface would make for the cheapest disk options here and would be optimal. Ideally, supporting up to 2x1TB disk would be great.

5) Performance - mid-grade and up would be preferred. Currently running a 100MB network, with plans to add a giga switch in the near future.

6) Interface - Web interface a must. Additional services like FTP are nice, but not requried.

Price - $200 would be a nice start for an enclosure, but I'm not above spending more money for better quality. If there's an outstanding product that you think meets my reqs, but costs more, let me know.

Again, great site and thanks for all the help.

 

[thiggins]

Sounds like you have your requirements down. The main issue will be successful streaming to the Xbox 360. DLNA doesn't necessarily guarantee that.

This thread mentions two possibilities.

And remember, RAID does not equal backup!
Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID

 

[Chum]

Thanks for both links. I have no intentions of running RAID5 but RAID1 does protect me from the one failure type that I've personally had to deal with: mechanical failure. Having the ability to back up through USB should allow me to "off-site" some of my stuff for further security.

After reading the other thread, it looks like the DS207+ is the right choice for me. It's a little more pricey than I was hoping for, but it has the right feature set and having an extremely active user/modder community is a HUGE plus.

Thanks again for the help!

Chum