NAS for SOHO use

[richj44]

Hi, I'm just starting my search for a possible NAS to use with my home office. The purpose will be almost solely for backup of critical data, I have very little use for streaming, web access, or the other fancier features. Just local backup. Performance isn't critical either, but reliability (including raid 1) is. I need at least 1TB capacity, but would prefer to purchase the drives separately and just get the NAS w/o drives. Getting very picky here, I would greatly prefer the ability to use NTFS with the drives. And finally, I'd like to keep this under $300 if at all possible.

Anyone have any ideas for an NAS that meets all (or at least most) of these requirements? I haven't found anything so far. The budget is fixed so if not, I will have to sacrifice the features, not overshoot the budget.

Thanks in advance,

RJ

 

[Ignatowski]

Hi, I'm just starting my search for a possible NAS to use with my home office. The purpose will be almost solely for backup of critical data, I have very little use for streaming, web access, or the other fancier features. Just local backup. Performance isn't critical either, but reliability (including raid 1) is. I need at least 1TB capacity, but would prefer to purchase the drives separately and just get the NAS w/o drives. Getting very picky here, I would greatly prefer the ability to use NTFS with the drives. And finally, I'd like to keep this under $300 if at all possible.

Anyone have any ideas for an NAS that meets all (or at least most) of these requirements? I haven't found anything so far. The budget is fixed so if not, I will have to sacrifice the features, not overshoot the budget.

Thanks in advance,

RJ

most small nas devices are linux based and use ext2/3 or reiser fs.

if you want raid 1 you need to look for a 2 gig nas or diskless nas with 2+ drive bays.

a quick newegg look and you can do a pair of 1.5tb drives and a 2 drive nas system for around 400 bux.
4 drive nas boxes like that are more expensive (400ish) + drives.

 

[cadder]

DNS-323- $160 after rebate
2- WD 1TB drives- $105 each
($88 each for the Hitachi 1TB)

 

[chunkymonster]

Hi, I'm just starting my search for a possible NAS to use with my home office. The purpose will be almost solely for backup of critical data, I have very little use for streaming, web access, or the other fancier features. Just local backup. Performance isn't critical either, but reliability (including raid 1) is. I need at least 1TB capacity, but would prefer to purchase the drives separately and just get the NAS w/o drives. Getting very picky here, I would greatly prefer the ability to use NTFS with the drives.

If you're not interested in streaming, web access, or other NAS type features and are going to solely use this for back ups, then why not just get a 1TB external hard drive and back up all your critical data to that. You can snag a Western Digital 1TB My Book Mirror Edition for $210 off Newegg. Can't get much easier than that...

 

[richj44]

I appreciate all the replies and suggestions. At this point it looks like I can assemble a file server from mostly spare parts for the same price as any of the NAS solutions I could afford. That's probably the way I'm going to end up going with this.

Thanks again to everyone.