Opinions on suitable NAS required please.

Hi all,

In recent months there seems to have been a major influx of NAS/Similar devices onto the market.

With so many reviews and articles and specifications flying around I need to get advice from those in the know.

I'm looking to buy a device with the following primary requirements (any thing else is a bonus)

The NAS (or whatever the term for such a device is!) must have:

1) FTP capability
2) Mirroring capability (or connection to external HDD for backup)
3) Sleep/SpinDown for HDD
4) Sleep for cooling fan (?) OR no fan (case based/conduction cooling)
5) Reasonable (bit vague I know!) security

These are the 4 things that i need!

Does anybody have a device that does these things, any feedback, recommendations?

Please let me know.

Cheers,

Duncan.

Duncan,

I think the biggest problem you are going to have is a NAS that supports mirroring to an external HDD. You didn't mention storage capacity or budget, so I may be out of line here, but I have a Snap Server 4500 and it supports everything except the HDD mirroring. I'm assuming you meant mirroring the contents of the NAS to the external HDD, if you just mean RAID, then most any NAS should support that. The 4500 is nice in that it has an optional SCSI port so you can connect a tape drive directly to the NAS for easy backup. It also has dual ethernet ports, so you can bond them together or plug them into separate switches for redundancy. It's pricey though, definitely not an option for most SOHO users.

If you were just talking about RAID, you may want to look into some of the older series Snap servers. I recall reading an article where they basically bought the chassis without any drives on eBay and then loaded it up with whatever size IDE drives they wanted. Last time I looked, I think the bare chassis' were going for about $75, so they're not a bad deal. As for the HDD and fan spindown, not sure about those. The 4500 supports it, so there's a good chance the older models may as well.

Someone recently posted about an issue with the DS101 where it would lose all data during a power outage, so buyer beware.

You might be able to get away with a DIY NAS box using cheap hardware like this. Add the cost of a cheap minitower case and flash card, plus IDE to CF adapter and you've got a nice BYOD NAS for about $100.