NAS for Home

Mark · October 07, 2011, 09:31:54 AM

We are in the market for a NAS for home use. I really like the Synology DiskStations. I had purchased one for the office in a code red band-aid situation. Even had one of the Western Digital drives fail, did a warranty exchange and the RAID array did it's thing. Worked beautifully.

Since I'm familiar with this one, and I like it -- and I like that I can pick my own drives to put in it, it's at the top of my list. I think it will come to around $400-ish when all said and done -- maybe $500 depending on which one I choose.

With that said, I'd like to know what others use or like. We have 6 years worth of pictures and short video that we'll be storing on there, and likely other documents, etc. This will be our main storage facility, as we don't really have a "family computer" at this point. I might like to eventually be able to stream movies from the NAS, but that is not a requirement because streaming movies isn't as important to me as centrally storing my data. We just want to be able to access from iPad and any computers we eventually get in the house. TV's, etc would just be a bonus.

Jeff Golas · October 07, 2011, 10:28:48 AM

Not a nas and probably as power efficient as a NAS, but I used Openfiler for a while and as a benefit it does iscsi for playing with vmware.

Not exactly the easiest thing to use but once you get used to it it's not bad.

Mark · October 07, 2011, 10:31:54 AM

I could totally build an awesome box and I have server hardware available and probably a good TB or more of available 10,000RPM SCSI drives sitting on my desk... but I don't need that, nor do I want to pay for the electric bill or consume that much energy

Believe me, it is tempting though!

Jeff Golas · October 07, 2011, 10:39:35 AM

FYI I actually ran Openfiler under my play Vmware box so that comp wasn't completely dedicated to just storing files.

PS - I wish I had some extra 10k SCSI's laying around...I'm at that "band-aid-red-alert" mode right now and my server slots are mostly filled!

Mark · October 07, 2011, 10:43:21 AM

Quote from: Jeff Golas on October 07, 2011, 10:39:35 AM
PS - I wish I had some extra 10k SCSI's laying around...I'm at that "band-aid-red-alert" mode right now and my server slots are mostly filled!

Well, if I could do a 7 pass wipe on them, I'd send 'em your way. Problem is that I spent too much time trying to find something that would support the Dell PERC controller. Can't wipe these damn things in the server they came out of. Will probably just drill some holes through them and discard.

Gene Foraker · October 07, 2011, 10:52:18 AM

I recently added TVersity to my PC on the network. It shares and streams photos, music and video all through the house and especially to the PS3 on the home theater. Best of all it is free. It even streams mkv movies which are harder to convert and are not natively playable on the PS3.

It is not quite the same as NAS since it does not add storage capacity or automated backups across the network and only handles media, but I am still impressed. I back up the data on my hd to an external hd anyway.

Jeff Golas · October 07, 2011, 10:53:22 AM

I can get 300gb 10K scsi's from Dell for $275 or spend $350 on 300gb 15k SAS drives and I have 2 SAS slots left in my VM server I could do a Raid 1 on.

Never thought I'd see the day when I need more space outside of email where nobody ever deletes everything!

Mark · October 07, 2011, 10:57:15 AM

Sounds cool, Gene. Thanks for sharing! Believe it or not, we really don't have a central computer in the house right now. The wife's laptop died and I'm not going to spend the money to fix it. She got one from a friend, but I think it has a bad hard drive, and it's getting old now, so again, I'm not going to spend the money to fix it.

So, right now, my wife mainly uses her iPad, I don't use anything, but do have a Netbook, and I remembered I had a 10 year old PC with XP and about 768MB of RAM sitting in my trunk -- so when the wife's laptop died, I fired that up for the kids to go to Lego.com, youtube, etc. It's a beast, but it gets them online. I don't trust this box to store ANY data though. Who knows when it will go.

So, that's why I want to go the NAS route. Low power consumption, can put it in the basement on the shelf or mount to the wall by all the other comms equipment, set it, and forget it (put it on a UPS too, of course).

Mark · October 07, 2011, 10:58:14 AM

Quote from: Jeff Golas on October 07, 2011, 10:53:22 AM
I can get 300gb 10K scsi's from Dell for $275 or spend $350 on 300gb 15k SAS drives and I have 2 SAS slots left in my VM server I could do a Raid 1 on.

Never thought I'd see the day when I need more space outside of email where nobody ever deletes everything!

I think the 10 drives on my desk right now are 300GB 10k SCSI. Two of them might be less. Too lazy to check.

Jeff Golas · October 07, 2011, 11:03:14 AM

D'oh!!

My file server is a Dell 2850 that uses SCSI...I thought about just adding drives to it (there's a Powervault 220 hanging off it) but I can't justify spending money on SCSI drives when I'm hoping to move to some sort of SAN device at some point.

If you do decide to do 37 wipes, pass a magnet over them and drive under some power lines for good measure, I'd be interested in them!!

Mark · October 07, 2011, 11:11:21 AM

Quote from: Jeff Golas on October 07, 2011, 11:03:14 AM
If you do decide to do 37 wipes, pass a magnet over them and drive under some power lines for good measure, I'd be interested in them!!

They came out of 2850's. I have some of those, too!! lol We will probably dispose of them very shortly. Been hanging on to them for months because I planned to wipe the drives.

I think DoD standards is only 3 passes. I usually do 7 because I don't really care how long it takes since I'm never in a hurry. BUT, I'd have to rig something up to wipe these and I'm running out of time, space, and motivation. lol

Mark · October 07, 2011, 11:14:12 AM

Wow, I must be getting old. Swore these were all 300GB, but a closer inspection reveals that only two are 300GB, 4 are 36GB & 15k and the rest are 146GB 10k.

Guess it doesn't really matter since I can't wipe them with hardware on hand anyway.

Jeff Zylstra · October 07, 2011, 11:15:38 AM

Quote from: Mark on October 07, 2011, 11:11:21 AM
Quote from: Jeff Golas on October 07, 2011, 11:03:14 AM
If you do decide to do 37 wipes, pass a magnet over them and drive under some power lines for good measure, I'd be interested in them!!

They came out of 2850's. I have some of those, too!! lol We will probably dispose of them very shortly. Been hanging on to them for months because I planned to wipe the drives.

I think DoD standards is only 3 passes. I usually do 7 because I don't really care how long it takes since I'm never in a hurry. BUT, I'd have to rig something up to wipe these and I'm running out of time, space, and motivation. lol

Ship them to Texas. I know someone there who will scrub the data using NRA standards.

Mark · October 07, 2011, 11:16:35 AM

Quote from: Jeff Zylstra on October 07, 2011, 11:15:38 AM
Ship them to Texas. I know someone there who will scrub the data using NRA standards.

HAHAHAHA! Don't think for a second that this hasn't crossed my mind already.

Billy Welsh · October 07, 2011, 12:19:08 PM

Quote from: Mark on October 07, 2011, 11:16:35 AM
Quote from: Jeff Zylstra on October 07, 2011, 11:15:38 AM
Ship them to Texas. I know someone there who will scrub the data using NRA standards.

HAHAHAHA! Don't think for a second that this hasn't crossed my mind already.

San Antonio, I believe, to narrow it down.