External 8TB NAS/USB bad reviews, now what?

[anecdote]

I am in the market for an 8TB(4x2TB) raid external drive or NAS. Either option would work. There are lots of options. However I am not seeing any consistent good reviews on any particular model. Buffalo, WD, Cavalry, etc.

I am questioning which is the real "issue" and/or they are all pretty much decent devices.
1. They put in cheap drives and they fail. Is this true?
2. The drives are ok but the raid hardware is substandard?
3. People who purchase don't know how to operate/work with raid, the hardware is generally just fine?

The pieces I am looking at have an avg 2.5 star rating. Those that have 4-5 typically have only 1 review. Sources amazon. Newegg etc.

Your thoughts please?

 

[Northwolfe]

I am in a similar predicament, but have not seen such issues. From what I understand there are only two very good/reliable solutions on the market, throughout their whole range of products: Synology, and QNAP. Drobo also seems to be popular.
As for the Drives: Stick with WD, or Seagate. Never had a problem with Samsung, but know people who have had issues. Stay as far away as you can from anything Hitachi.
My research leads me to believe that you can't go wrong with Synology or QNAP. The ease of use, and RAID management , is also carefree, and seamless (the operating system of these units configures RAID for you, only have to select the setup you want).
Hope this helped a bit. Spend a bit more, "bargains" tend to become really expensive paperweights