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Recommendations for a NAS...

Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
I'm looking for a RAID NAS with auto standby/wakeup. Any ideas? Every one I have looked at (consumer Western Digitals and the like) sit there on all the time, and it would have a relatively low duty cycle in my house.
 
Something like that - I'm prepared to spend real money for the right thing.

If I had to criticise that one as not being worth my money, I would say:
  • Only two drives, no RAID5.
  • Intelligent power requires a background process on the PCs - I guess it has to poll periodically to stop the NAS shutting down. Maybe a periodic WOL from a Humax would do the same.
 
pitchshifter182 said:
http://sg.buffalo-asia.com/forhome/office_nas/double_drive/ls-wvl-ap/

What about this, It may be more that what your looking for.
Click to expand...

Hey, that's one of the two I have. I have had a Buffalo for some 4 years now and no problems. I use it as a media server in RAID0 mode. My other one is an LG NAS, which I use for backups of important files, and I had a disk failure on that after less than two years, but fortunately RAID1 allowed me to restore its contents from the other drive. LG's latest firmware dispenses with RAID altogether and uses partial mirroring instead between its drives.

One thing about the Buffalo vs LG I have noticed is that the Buffalo is extremely noisy all the time it is up, chuntering away, whereas the LG is inaudible. On the other hand, in case of a power failure, the Buffalo restarts whereas the LG doesn't. The LG has gigabit ethernet but the Buffalo doesn't.

Before getting these, I used an NSLU2, which I put custom firmware on, and I believe that used a similar pool of packages to the Humax boxes?

I also have a WD drive but that is rather silly as it has no mechanism for even shutting it down apart from pulling the plug!
 
I am very happy with my D-Link DNS320.

Very quiet in operation, very simple to set up with a straightforward web interface. I have never needed to adjust the default settings which send it to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity. Wakes within a couple of seconds on demand - certainly fast enough for it not to be annoying.

Supports NFS, SMB and DLNA/UPnP

Works with everything I have in the house - XP PCs, Windows 7 PCs, and various android boxes/phones/tablets. I'm sure it would talk to my Humax HDR-Fox T2 if I needed it to. My daughter was here over Xmas and was delighted to be able to play movies on her ipad.

It is the only storage device that works reliably over Wi-Fi with the AC Ryan PlayOn media player I have in the bedroom (via NFS).

I've tested it with three different devices streaming different movies simultaneously, over LAN and Wi-Fi and it didn't miss a beat.

....oh, and it has on on/off switch on the front :)
 
selectortone said:
I am very happy with my D-Link DNS320.

Very quiet in operation, very simple to set up with a straightforward web interface. I have never needed to adjust the default settings which send it to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity. Wakes within a couple of seconds on demand - certainly fast enough for it not to be annoying.

Supports NFS, SMB and DLNA/UPnP

Works with everything I have in the house - XP PCs, Windows 7 PCs, and various android boxes/phones/tablets. I'm sure it would talk to my Humax HDR-Fox T2 if I needed it to. My daughter was here over Xmas and was delighted to be able to play movies on her ipad.

It is the only storage device that works reliably over Wi-Fi with the AC Ryan PlayOn media player I have in the bedroom (via NFS).

I've tested it with three different devices streaming different movies simultaneously, over LAN and Wi-Fi and it didn't miss a beat.

....oh, and it has on on/off switch on the front :)
Click to expand...


Sounds just like my LG NAS. Do LG still make them though? I can find a similar model:

http://www.lg.com/uk/network-storage/lg-N4B2-network-attached-storage

Raid 5, too.
 
I picked up a HP Prolient Microserver last year when they were doing the big cashback offer. Fitted 2 3tb Reds in raid1 (Linux software raid) with an internal flash drive for boot and have it starting with WOL and shutting down from a cron job - just timed at the moment but planning to make it check the packet count to decide if it's in use or not before it shuts down.
The 2 fans on the back mean it's not silent but not finding it intrusive (in bedroom). Officially it is a 4x2tb capable system but there are many claims of 6x3+tb (with the empty cd drive bay repurposed).

Incidentally, drives have a rated spinup count (iirc around 5,000) so having your drives spinup many times (say 10+) per day increases the risk of premature drive failure.
 
magic.m said:
Incidentally, drives have a rated spinup count (iirc around 5,000) so having your drives spinup many times (say 10+) per day increases the risk of premature drive failure.
Click to expand...

Very good point.
 
magic.m said:
Incidentally, drives have a rated spinup count (iirc around 5,000) so having your drives spinup many times (say 10+) per day increases the risk of premature drive failure.
Click to expand...

Good point. That's why I like the Raid 5 feature of my D-Link DNS-320. I've had the unit for six months now and I'm currently running it with one 2TB drive. I intend to fit a second 2TB drive in a couple of months and run them in Raid 5 configuration. (I also have my data - about 1.5TB of movies and TV shows mostly - backed up in two other places on my network. You can't have too many backups!)

A NAS isn't a backup device, it's a handy place to read from and write data to over a network, and Raid 5 makes that more reliable. I like the idea of staggering the timing of installing of the drives too; rather than fit two at the same time and in theory have them both approach end of life at around the same time.
 
selectortone said:
Good point. That's why I like the Raid 5 feature of my D-Link DNS-320. I've had the unit for six months now and I'm currently running it with one 2TB drive. I intend to fit a second 2TB drive in a couple of months and run them in Raid 5 configuration. (I also have my data - about 1.5TB of movies and TV shows mostly - backed up in two other places on my network. You can't have too many backups!)
Click to expand...
I am not 100% certain but I thought RAID 5 was only suitable for three or more disks. RAID 1 would provide a mirroring configuration for two disks.
 
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