Seeking a new commercial NAS Setup

[wilsonics]

Hello All!

I'm looking for some advice from all of you for a new commercial NAS rig. I currently have the 4Gb WD ShareSpace and it has a few pros and cons to it. The system has been great for a long time, but I did notice that while I'm streaming my XBMC flix and doing a write of new movies at the same time, the video chokes. I'm sure that this has something to do with the 5400 spin WD Caviar Green disks inside it.

The interface to the ShareSpace is OK, not the best, but FTP just does not work through my Airport Extreme. I had it working through my Cisco Firewall...however I'm lazy...and took that out.

Here's what I need and what is not really needed:

NEED:
Diskless System 4-slot (Or at least 8TB, as long as the Read/Write speeds are OK)
I have only Apple computers in my house currently (please hold your flames, because I'm a recent convert) so time machine support is a must.
FTP support, I like to drop stuff from work.
Quiet running
low(er) power (I'm getting to be a hippy in my old age)

Don't care:
iTunes/Twonky/media server (I do this myself)
Torrent Server (I have a headless server doing this already)


I know that I can probably do this cheaper with a freeNAS setup, however I am just not into building my own boxes anymore. I just like to crack the box and "it just flippin works" kind of mentality.

Anything you can suggest would be great, thanks very much!

 

[house70]

Synology makes very good quality NAS devices, you should go on their website and check some out.
QNAP - i had one and failed on me, causing loss of the data from the RAID array. i would not purchase another one again.
Regardless of brand, I would recommend a RAID 1 setup for your NAS.

 

[wilsonics]

Regardless of brand, I would recommend a RAID 1 setup for your NAS.

Thanks very much for your recommendation. I guess I left out the RAID 5 portion of the NEED section of this. I suppose this is going to slow me down...I have been burned by data loss in the past.

 

[house70]

You're welcome, that's why we're here.
The problem with RAID 5 that I had in the past with QNAP was that the network controller quit on me, rendering the RAID unusable. I have tried numerous software-based solutions to try to reconstruct the RAID and retrieve the data, but to no avail. That's why now I only use RAID 1 in my NAS. It's cheaper and more reliable. If the box goes bad, I can still read the files using a Linux system (for filesystem access) like Ubuntu and retrieve my data. The probability of both drives going bad at the exact same time is extremely small. I have a drive in "stand-by" at home, ready to be inserted in case of necessity. Synology is built like a tank, and even though my DS 207 is not hot-swapable, I could not care less. I'd rather have a good quality box that I have to unscrew once in a blue moon to replace a drive.
Speaking of drives, I would recommend using the capacity that you think you might fill during the lifetime of that drive. I do not use drives bigger than 1GB because by the time that drive would get filled with data it will reach it's lifespan. That, of course, and the fact that the HDD's reliability goes down as capacity goes up. Not researched, but personal experience as well.
That's my personal experience, your mileage may vary. Wish you luck in this endeavor and let us know if any help needed.