[Nerd alert!!!] Good 4 bay NAS in the $200-300 range? | GTAMotorcycle.com

[Nerd alert!!!] Good 4 bay NAS in the $200-300 range?

FiReSTaRT

FiReSTaRT

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I'm looking into getting a 4-bay NAS, supporting RAID-5, 6 or 10 would be a bonus (not 100% decided on what I'm gonna run), so I wanted to check what's out there on the market in Canada at the moment as the last time I bought a NAS it was a DNS-321 lol

Must have:
-RAID 5 or 6 or 10
-Decent CPU/RAM
-Gigabit adapter (probably standard nowadays)
-Web-based management
-Easy on the power
-DUAL VOLTAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shouldn't have:
-Proprietary RAID-like setups
-Proprietary management software without web-based management
-Bloatware galore

Heard good things about LENOVO Iomega ix4-300d and it's in the right price range, but I was hoping to get something with more CPU grunt (1.6 was standard on budget boxes even a couple of years ago). Thanks for any ideas you guys can come up with...
 
Have you seen the Synology range? I dont think the 4 bays come as low as $300.. My 2 bay cost that much.. but the system is solid. They run the same OS on the home versions as the business/enterprise versions and keep the system well updated. I can access my storage anywhere too. They do a virtual cloud system. The ease of uise of the system sold me on Synology. Well worth the premium. I have been running mine for 2yrs. No issues. Low pwer consumption. Glad I got rid of my DLink

unfortunately its going to cost you $$$
 
Forget it dude, don't skimp. Get Synology or QNAP at the minimum. The OSes they run are good. I just got a 2-bay Synology myself and its excellent so far, wired it into my crawlspace... I could've had Netgear or DLINK or any of the cheapie ones but the reviews just didn't seem that positive, mainly due to crap interfaces.

Considering you'll likely spend more on the HDDs themselves... may as well up your budget a bit.
 
Pay now or pay later.

+1 for Synology.
 
I've got a DROBO (meh, but easy to setup double redundancy) and Synology 4bay. The synology is better. It's run for years with no problems. It tells me when drives need to be replaced and gracefully shuts down when the UPS runs out of juice. They are expensive but worth it IMHO.

Obviously both of these solutions run proprietary raid which you said you wanted to avoid.

Really if you want to run RAID, your best bet is an old computer with the appropriate linux distro (can't remember what it's called, but it basically turns a computer into a NAS box).

Why do you need more CPU grunt? The sinology doesn't transcode on the fly well, but other than that, I haven't needed more speed.
 
^^ my DS213j has an option for proprietary Synology RAID but also does conventional 0 and 1... Im sure the 4 bay models also offer conventional RAID as well as the proprietary systems.

One thing to note is that the internal drives must be formatted in EXT4... I don't remember this when I was setting it up (probably chose the default options, or wasn't given an option) but it says it in the specs. It also says that the only supported raid for volume expansion by adding drives is the hybrid synology raid. Just random things to keep in mind for firestart I guess.
 
mmmnaked said:
^^ my DS213j has an option for proprietary Synology RAID but also does conventional 0 and 1... Im sure the 4 bay models also offer conventional RAID as well as the proprietary systems.

One thing to note is that the internal drives must be formatted in EXT4... I don't remember this when I was setting it up (probably chose the default options, or wasn't given an option) but it says it in the specs. It also says that the only supported raid for volume expansion by adding drives is the hybrid synology raid. Just random things to keep in mind for firestart I guess.
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Yeah, EXT4 is the default. When you put in new drive, Synology will reformat it. EXT4 is common is the Linux world I think. I kept mine simple and didnt bother with the hybrid raid. Just 2 x 3TB drives.

Nice to see the Synology love. I would love to run PLEX right off the NAS, but from reviews of the new "Play" version its not that great. Using a MacMini for home Theature use and PlexServer.
 
kiwi said:
Yeah, EXT4 is the default. When you put in new drive, Synology will reformat it. EXT4 is common is the Linux world I think. I kept mine simple and didnt bother with the hybrid raid. Just 2 x 3TB drives.

Nice to see the Synology love. I would love to run PLEX right off the NAS, but from reviews of the new "Play" version its not that great. Using a MacMini for home Theature use and PlexServer.
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Pretty much what I use, though I feel the mac is wasted sitting there for the occasional video we watch. I hadn't looked at the Plex on NAS for a while but a few years ago it was looking like it was getting better and better.

As for Synology, I had a simple one when they first launched many many years ago. It ran like a champ until the drive died. Never replaced it, but it was impressive as it ran in a poorly temperature regulated, damp basement where I had a lot of woodworking tools so it was very dusty as well, and no UPS. Considering the environment and power outages it was surprisingly stable. If they have kept up their quality, I'd go with them again in a heartbeat.

As for non proprietary RAID, it seems like a long shot to move drives from a broken non proprietary raid in a consumer device to a different device and expect it to work, so it wouldn't be too important to me. Maybe others have had luck doing this? Or why do you care? If it is your only backup maybe something like this isn't your best bet? CrashPlan cloud backup?


j
 
The idea of cloud backups annoys me greatly. I suppose some people just don't fuss over uploading all their digital possessions to some random third party on a promise of it staying safe.... but I want my data to remain local and physical. Paranoid, I guess; until a big cloud backup server farm gets hacked.

As for non-proprietary RAID, it just makes it easier to retrieve or move your data to and from the NAS device, especially for someone working with hot-swappable hardware. A lot of times it may be easier to just physically move a hard drive to copy data rather than sending it over a network.
 
mmmnaked said:
As for non-proprietary RAID, it just makes it easier to retrieve or move your data to and from the NAS device, especially for someone working with hot-swappable hardware. A lot of times it may be easier to just physically move a hard drive to copy data rather than sending it over a network.
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How do you pull one drive from a raid array and get anything useful when you plug it into another computer? The whole array can move, but I didn't think you could pull a single drive? Especially since you have no idea where the files are physically located within the array.
 
I meant in general, not specifically in RAID. For multiple drives you'd have to swap the whole array over, you're right.
 
GreyGhost said:
How do you pull one drive from a raid array and get anything useful when you plug it into another computer? The whole array can move, but I didn't think you could pull a single drive? Especially since you have no idea where the files are physically located within the array.
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Yep. But maybe a RAID1 mirrored array would work. But higher levels will be problematic. We had an (at the time) expensive Fiber Channel SAN system at my company from HP, RAID 5. Two drives failed in quick succession. RAID was f$%&*d. High level engineers at HP were on the case and could allow us to salvage some files though in the end we had to do a very lengthy restore of 20TB from tape. If it is critical data then you need it in more than one place, and then you only need to worry about data corrupting and syncing... and on it goes. Now we have local redundancy and 2 datacenters in different cities, but the $$$!

I backup to the cloud. My photos get put on FB, Flickr etc already so that can't worry me. Otherwise it is encrypted locally which at least is a decent barrier to cross. At the end of the day my data isn't that secret, but important from a 'family memories' point of view. So if my house burns down, or some jerk breaks in and steals all my equipment I still have my cloud backed up data. And that is a huge plus. People copying all their family photos to a local drive and having it live right beside their computer annoys me greatly. :)


j
 
And for those that don't have the 'Cloud to Butt' extension installed, you miss out on fun like this:

"The idea of butt backups annoys me greatly."
and
"I backup to my butt."

hee hee. Small things amuse small minds and all that...


j
 
Thanks guys, I'll look at a more expensive solution then, hopefully as a "loss-leader" In general, the faster the CPU, the faster the reads and especially the writes. Of course, there are other factors at play that can add to or reduce the efficiency, but I'm sick of about 100Mbps down and 50-60Mbps up because of the anemic 200MHz CPU on my current 2-bay NAS. Takes forever to do a system backup since I got a lot kicking around in the /home folder. My main uses for the NAS are:

1) System backups
2) Media playback (I have an Acer Aspire REVO 3610 running Linux+XBMC set up as an HTPC in the living room)
 
Even the small Synology 2-bay units with single core ~800mhz processors benchmark at over 110MB/sec read and 80MB/sec write with WD RED drives.

http://www.storagereview.com/synology_diskstation_ds214se_review

Conclusion

The DS214se is definitely a budget-friendly option, costing approximately $50 less than the DS213j. That reduction in price comes with a loss in performance specifications with its 256MB of RAM and 800MHz single core processor versus the 512MB and 1.2GHz CPU in the DS213j. Equipping itself with a lower-performance CPU also changes its SATA specification; this means that while the a more powerful device can take SATA 6Gbps drives, the DS214se will only run at 3Gbp/s speeds. However, since the DS214Se only has a single Gigabit Ethernet port, it's not a huge sacrifice and users won't see too much of a performance drop when drives connect at the lower speed. Overall, the sacrifice in performance is worth it, as it drives the price down even more.

All of that said, the DiskStation DS214se still offers good performance for an entry-model 2-bay NAS. In our tests we verified Synology's claims of 100MB/s read and 70MB/s write, which we saw in our SMB performance tests, which actually exceeded those figures. With 2TB WD Red 2.0 NAS hard drives, we measured sequential speeds of 114MB/s read and 83MB/s write over SMB, while iSCSI performance dipped to 71MB/s read and 76MB/s write. Looking peak I/O we saw 8K sequential transfers topping 5,460 IOPS read and 3,950 IOPS write over SMB, while random 4K transfers peaked at 307 IOPS read and 215 IOPS write. Overall for a base model NAS with a huge featureset, we were quite impressed with the DS214Se for the price.
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I'd get a DS412+ yeah its twice your budget but you can buy it and forget it. You'll probably spend $500+ on the drives anyway.
 
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GreyGhost said:
Management software? I've never seen the lenovo, but the synology interface is phenomenal.
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As long as it's able to rebuild the array for me when a drive craps out on me, that's all I need. I don't need or use any bells and whistles. Just need a solid, redundant array that will allow me more than 50% total capacity and decent read/write speeds. The only times I log into my management is when I wanna check if the array deteriorated due to a power outage or to force a rebuild in case I replaced one of the drives.
 
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