Recommendations for a NAS device

[neuralfx]

I need a NAS device for backups and quick restores. I'm trying to be under $1500-$2000. I need gigabit ethernet and somewhere between 500GB - 1TB effective storage. As well, since this is for backups, I need RAID1 or RAID5. I don't need blazing speed just reasonably quick backup and restore. The main thing I need is reliability and a solution that is fairly quiet.

I'd be open to building my own but I really want to make sure I meet that "quiet" requirement. Also, something fairly small, though not necessairly a SFF solution.

Thanks

-neural

 

[JackBurton]

One of the best consumer NAS units out today. Just buy whatever drives you'd like. It supports X-RAID and RAID 0/1/5, and the drives are also hot swappable. And yes, it is very quiet.

 

[RebateMonger]

There's no real need for RAID on a backup system. You'd be much better off buying a pair of external SATA drives. Connect one to a PC on your network. Keep the other drive in a safe place. Alternate them as appropriate. Verify and periodically test the backups and, if a drive fails, put in a new backup hard drive. That's a good reason to have two backup drives, especially with the dirt-cheap price of drives nowadays.

Buy a pair of $40 external SATA housings, two $100 500GB SATA hard drives, and a $40 SATA hot-swap controller card. Attach it to a PC on your network It'll be quiet and MUCH faster than any low-end NAS unit. When 1TB drives get cheaper, you can use those intead and put the 500GB drives in a working PC.

 

[neuralfx]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
There's no real need for RAID on a backup system. You'd be much better off buying a pair of external SATA drives. Connect one to a PC on your network. Keep the other drive in a safe place. Alternate them as appropriate. Verify and periodically test the backups and, if a drive fails, put in a new backup hard drive. That's a good reason to have two backup drives, especially with the dirt-cheap price of drives nowadays.

Buy a pair of $40 external SATA housings, two $100 500GB SATA hard drives, and a $40 SATA hot-swap controller card. Attach it to a PC on your network It'll be quiet and MUCH faster than any low-end NAS unit. When 1TB drives get cheaper, you can use those intead and put the 500GB drives in a working PC.

Thanks for the response. However, I do think there is a need for RAID. One of my goals is reliability, with a single drive I'm subject to its failure at any given time.

-neural

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: neuralfx
Thanks for the response. However, I do think there is a need for RAID. One of my goals is reliability, with a single drive I'm subject to its failure at any given time.

Why would you care? You still have a second set of recent backups on the other backup drive, plus you have the original data on your main PCs. Go to the store and buy another $100 drive and replace it. You still have one working backup drive. When you said "backup", I assumed you meant "backup", and not your main storage device.

Maybe you didn't mean "backup"? If this is your primary storage device, then you may want RAID on it, if uptime is important. But it's far better to have two independent backup drives, with one offline, then to have a single RAID'ed array that's always online and vulnerable to accidents, electircal damage, viruses, worms, theft, fire, flood, etc.

I'd be shocked to discover that ANYBODY has EVER lost all their data when they have such a backup system in place. The same can't be said for RAID arrays, CD/DVD, and, to some extent, tapes. (I say tapes because too many folks never TEST their tape backups and there's too many unusable tapes and tape drives in this world).

 

[thorin]

You could get something like:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...pNo=2329545&CatId=2670
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...pNo=2532995&CatId=2670
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...pNo=2354282&CatId=2785
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...pNo=1779382&CatId=2785

and put any drive you like in it.

 

[Old Hippie]

Check out this Buffalo TeraStation. Just came on sale!