Quick NAS Question

I'm after a NAS box, in the 500GB - 1TB range. Key things are:
1) Can back itself up to an attached USB Disk
2) Reliable
3) OK speed (doesn't need to be super quick, don't need it)

If it can also do the following then that would be great but none are essential
1) Stream music, films etc.
2) Have capacity allocated (and secured) by user and with public space
3) Print Server
4) FTP Server

I don't want to pay silly money but will pay a few extra quid to get the right product first time.

I think I'd prefer to go for a NAS box rather than a home server on the grounds of energy consumption.

Thanks,
M

Been looking into these for a little while now and finally took the plunge last week with a Synology DS210j, along with a couple of 500GB drives to go in it. I'm still exploring all the functionality, but so far I'm more than happy with it.

There's a good review from El Reg here. If you want to save a few pounds, and don't need multiple drives, then I believe the DS110j is essentially the same piece of kit with a single bay.

Thanks for that, really appreciated.

It's interesting to note that
-> a 110j is about £180 with 1TB
-> a 210j is about £160 for an empty enclosure plus about £50 for 1TB drive (£210 in total)
-> a 210J with 1TB is £250 - £290

(The 210 has space for 2 drives, the 110 only one drive)
I used a Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3 for the price of 1TB, PC Pro rate it very highly.

Anyone know if you get something for that extra £40+ when buying a NAS with built in drives?

On the features page for the 110j and 210j it mentions "allows you to backup data from certain shared folders to another shared folder located on internal hard drives or externally attached USB/SATA drives"

Anyone know if certain shared folders can mean entire device backup? Or is it limited somehow? The words on the webpage also seem to suggest that a full device backup is only possible to another NAS.

Mike

Edited by Mrs_Rice (Mon 08-Nov-10 22:08:17)

In reply to a post by Mrs_Rice:

Thanks for that, really appreciated.

It's interesting to note that
-> a 110j is about £180 with 1TB
-> a 210j is about £160 for an empty enclosure plus about £50 for 1TB drive (£210 in total)
-> a 210J with 1TB is £250 - £290

(The 210 has space for 2 drives, the 110 only one drive)
I used a Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3 for the price of 1TB, PC Pro rate it very highly.

Anyone know if you get something for that extra £40+ when buying a NAS with built in drives?

No - it's called 'markup'

In reply to a post by Spasch:

In reply to a post by Mrs_Rice:

Anyone know if you get something for that extra £40+ when buying a NAS with built in drives?

No - it's called 'markup'

Bear in mind they also need to recoup the cost of the skilled labour required to install the drive(s); i.e. remove cover, fit four screws (supplied) per drive and then fix the cover back on with a further two screws (supplied).

In reply to a post by Mrs_Rice:

On the features page for the 110j and 210j it mentions "allows you to backup data from certain shared folders to another shared folder located on internal hard drives or externally attached USB/SATA drives"

Anyone know if certain shared folders can mean entire device backup? Or is it limited somehow? The words on the webpage also seem to suggest that a full device backup is only possible to another NAS.

Mike

For definitive answers, as well as a slew of other information, I suggest you check out the suport forum on the Synology website. It appears to be fairly active and monitored regularly by Synology reps.

Thanks to you both for the help
Have posted the questions on the Synology forum - great suggestion, all too easy to rely on somewhere you trust (that's here if anyone is confused) and forget the other (sometimes more obvious) options!

They mod the post before showing it so I'll link it here (for completeness) if I get a decent answer.

Thanks again,
M

I use a QNAP TS-210 (available, without drives for around £157 from Amazon and as a single drive housing, again without drive, for around £130 or £194 direct from the manufacturer with a 1TB Samsung drive pre-installed).
I chose the QNAP one mainly because of all the useful stuff it can host.
It, like the other one mentioned here, runs on Linux so you can install a host of stuff onto it.
It can host a web-server, has an FTP server, auto-backup routine, auto-download (bit-torrent), has a DLNA UPnP media server (Twonky Media) and even has a built-in iTunes server.

This pdf document explains.
It also has USB ports front & rear, so when you run out of internal storage you can just add a USB drive (I've now got three USB external drives plugged into mine!!! So I'm in the process of tidying things by replacing it with a four or five drive version).

Thanks for that, the qnap pdf doc explains a lot more and includes a key point for me that I haven't got an answer for yet about the Synology:

In reference to qnap.expertsinstorage.com/aitdownloadablefiles/download/aitfile/ait...:

USB One Touch Auto Copy
The one touch copy button can be configured to trigger data backup from the
external USB device to the NAS or the other way round (applies to the USB
device connected to the front USB port of the NAS only).

I've recently got one of the Synology ds210j's - I've fitted it out with two Samsung 1TB drives in Raid 1.
According to the manual the front usb port has a one touch backup from the usb drive to the NAS. The rear USB ports can be used to attach drives and the Synology can back up to those or to online storage. I'll admit I havent tried backup yet though. I'm still setting up my network.

I found it easy to set up and it runs very quiet and fairly cool. I personally like that you can set up different permission levels for different users. It's also supposed to work as a print server (one of the reasons I bought it - but again, I haven't finished setting everything up yet).