NAS suggestions

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lokeynz

105 posts

Master Geek

#449469 18-Mar-2011 08:53

What about the HP Micro N36L?
Seems about the same price as a dedicated 'NAS' but gives you a lot more options.
Uses low power dual core AMD processor, slightly quicker than an Atom.
4 3.5" drive bays, 1x 5.25" - 5 SATA ports so the DVD drive can be ditched for an additional boot drive.
Will run your choice of Windows, Linux, FreeNAS etc.
Will take 8gb RAM and supports hardware virtualisation, ideal for combining non demanding VM's.
PCI-e slots useful for additional NIC, hardware RAID card etc.

http://www.gearbot.co.nz/store_products/search/n36l/

timmmay

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#449477 18-Mar-2011 09:14

From what i've read about Drobo they're not real fast. Very few NAS boxes will be fast enough to work with as a source drive, if you're doing high performance things like video editing or photographic raw file processing. They're better for archiving.

reven

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#449489 18-Mar-2011 09:46

timmmay: From what i've read about Drobo they're not real fast. Very few NAS boxes will be fast enough to work with as a source drive, if you're doing high performance things like video editing or photographic raw file processing. They're better for archiving.

thats true, drobo you get around 7MBs write so its slow to write, but if you want it for media storage (which is what i have it for), its really good because the space is easily expanded and you can have different hard drive sizes in the drobo and get the maximum storage space. and it requires no maintenance at all.

nakedmolerat

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#449492 18-Mar-2011 10:00

benchmark for n4200. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/n4200-ts459-pro-intel-atom,2610-7.html newer n4200pro has faster processor and motherboard

kiwitrc

4123 posts

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#449493 18-Mar-2011 10:02

timmmay: From what i've read about Drobo they're not real fast. Very few NAS boxes will be fast enough to work with as a source drive, if you're doing high performance things like video editing or photographic raw file processing. They're better for archiving.

True, we have one and its useless for live work but fine for backups. They also tend to go to sleep after a while so can take a while to wake up.

timmmay

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#449496 18-Mar-2011 10:05

Yeah Drobo sounds like a nice easy to use way for regular people to get plenty of storage space. The trick is backing it up. If data's worth storing, it's worth backing up offsite. You have to expect the worst when you plan your backups.

Ragnor

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#449497 18-Mar-2011 10:09

lokeynz: What about the HP Micro N36L?
Seems about the same price as a dedicated 'NAS' but gives you a lot more options.
Uses low power dual core AMD processor, slightly quicker than an Atom.
4 3.5" drive bays, 1x 5.25" - 5 SATA ports so the DVD drive can be ditched for an additional boot drive.
Will run your choice of Windows, Linux, FreeNAS etc.
Will take 8gb RAM and supports hardware virtualisation, ideal for combining non demanding VM's.
PCI-e slots useful for additional NIC, hardware RAID card etc.

http://www.gearbot.co.nz/store_products/search/n36l/

Quite an interesting option.

However, I see:
- Only 1 SATA port which looks like it goes to a mini SAS (ie: port multiplication?)
- No real room for a PCI/PCI-E card.

How good would disk performance with 4 drives on 1 SATA connector be?

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redjet

299 posts

Ultimate Geek

#449528 18-Mar-2011 11:17

eluSiveNZ:
pwapwap: Looking for redundancy. that netgear one looks interesting how you can add drives without setting things up from scratch.

Its uses "X-Raid" http://www.readynas.com/?cat=54

Quite handy as it can grow with your needs without much hassle at all.

X-Raid2 is a better solution for a NAS, as with X-Raid you have to replace all disks before you get more storage space. X-Raid2 lets you swap in a single larger drive and get more storage right away. See the explanation here for more info: http://www.readynas.com/?p=656

A NAS with X-Raid2 is well worth the extra $$$'s IMO

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pwapwap

103 posts

Master Geek

#449772 18-Mar-2011 22:51

Has anyone actually used FreeNAS? I just had a look, and seems like info overload and would like a good summary.

pwapwap

103 posts

Master Geek

#456986 9-Apr-2011 12:08

Eventually decided to build my own and use FreeNAS.

I have all parts except hard drives on their way. Does anyone know if anyone does discounts for several drives?

I am thinking it might be easier to do 4 x 2TB in a RAID 5 rather than messing with trying to expand disks. Most of my research on using FreeNAS looks like it is pretty complex to expand like a drobo.

nakedmolerat

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#457068 9-Apr-2011 20:11

pwapwap: Eventually decided to build my own and use FreeNAS.

I have all parts except hard drives on their way. Does anyone know if anyone does discounts for several drives?

I am thinking it might be easier to do 4 x 2TB in a RAID 5 rather than messing with trying to expand disks. Most of my research on using FreeNAS looks like it is pretty complex to expand like a drobo.

try computerlounge.co.nz

terryb8s

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#458313 13-Apr-2011 16:48

I highly recommend building your own NAS box you can do this cheaply using a atom board, 1gb mem, a case and a usb stick.

FreeNAS is the best OS for this and FREE!, make sure you use a RAIDZ set(Faster than raid 5) for the hard drives you will need 3 drives, If you use version 0.72 of freenas, DLNA and Itunes DAAP server are build in along with torrents and many other features.

Being a custom built NAS box you can install various other services, one I like is SABNZBD which is great if you are into newsgroups.

Any further questions feel free to PM me :)

pwapwap

103 posts

Master Geek

#462106 25-Apr-2011 11:31

I have a freeNAS box set up now. My only problem is that the OS is telling me the CPU temps are -1.0 which I think I can safely assume is wrong given the HDD temps are +34 to -37 and I don't live in the Arctic circle.

I am using a GA-D525TUD motherboard/atom chip combo.

Does anyone have any ideas?

bnapi

92 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#462141 25-Apr-2011 13:32

eluSiveNZ: I was in the same position.
I picked up a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (diskless) http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=218193
Its not the fastest (read/write), but for the price its pretty decent.

Why are the read/write speeds for external hard drives not the same as internal hard drives? A nas is just a container with internal hard drives in it that you can access over lan isn't it?

terryb8s

40 posts

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#462209 25-Apr-2011 16:42

pwapwap: I have a freeNAS box set up now. My only problem is that the OS is telling me the CPU temps are -1.0 which I think I can safely assume is wrong given the HDD temps are +34 to -37 and I don't live in the Arctic circle.

I am using a GA-D525TUD motherboard/atom chip combo.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Nice to see you got it going Pwapwap, not all CPU's are supported by Freenas, I wouldn't worry too much about the temp sensor, a lot of the time you can set alerts in the BIOS anyway.

From what I have read 0.7 of freenas doesn't have the best sensor monitoring, they are working on this in 0.8 but I would not recommend upgrading to this version till it a fully released, many of the services are missing from the current RC, and are likely to be implemented later, also there is not easy upgrade path yet.

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