Looking for a reasonably priced 3 or 4 bay NAS

[fredweston]

The title says it all. I'm looking for a 3 or 4 bay NAS that's reasonably priced. I am using SCSI storage with a Dell PowerVault right now and it's pushing 5-6 years of constant use so I'm starting to worry about it failing.

I need something with RAID 5 support, either IDE or SATA. I found an offering from Intel (http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/05/18/intel_ss4000e_raid5_nas/), but it's out of my price range.

I figure I could build my own NAS out of stuff I have lying around, but I really like the idea of not having another PC taking up power and space 24/7. Is there anything suitable in the sub-$200 range?

 

[PCcashCow]

Short answer, buy 200 lotto tickets. For a 5 bay NAS with the specs your want are in the low 500's high 700's, populated.

 

[fredweston]

Not really sure why these things are so expensive. Considering that all the logic functions are the same from a 1 drive NAS to a 4 drive NAS, the only real difference is that it needs two IDE ports instead of one and IDE controllers ain't exactly expensive. :?

 

[PCcashCow]

Many new NAS devices don't support IDE, only Sata or serialSCSI. They do come with many tools and options that would be helpful creating a network\http\ftp servers. If you find the need for a NAS, the price out is worth it in my opinion. I've made my own similar to tom's, I wish that guide was there two years ago.

 

[fredweston]

Well, it's not like an extra couple ports of whatever type they use should drive the price up that much. Regarding the HTTP, FTP etc, that's all software so it doesn't increase their production costs any. The only real added cost I could figure is the bigger case and a couple extra power and data cables.

I just went and bought 4 250GB drives and I'm gonna put my own together. Which Tom's article are you referring to? I was going to document mine and turn it into a howto, but maybe Tom's already has a good one?

 

[PCcashCow]

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2006/08/01/cheap_fast_diy_raid_5_nas/