SoHo NAS products just don't cut it yet
Recently, I bought a NETGEAR SC101T as a pure, inexpensive solution for my growing storage needs. Only after the initial install did I read the fine print and find out that the box only supports Windows clients. I need Linux support, and I want Mac support, too (*nix support), so Windows-only is a dealbreaker for me.
The SC101T also has this crazy proprietary software you had to install to make it work. I returned it right after I figured all this out. I replaced with the a new one- the Thermaltake X-Duo RAID system. That thing barely even functioned. It managed to install the drives once in a linear array, but there was no option to convert to RAID 1 (the reason I bought the thing), and subsequent attempts to reboot and re-install failed because the machine could no longer pick up an ip address from my dhcp server. As far as my network was concerned, it was dead. I returned that one over the weekend.
I finally gave in and built a file server using spare parts and the drives from the SC101T plus another drive for RAID 5 on the storage partition. I spent maybe an extra $50 over the cost of the X-Duo RAID, including case, power supply, and extra drive., and the system too me less time to get working properly than the X-Duo RAID, which never did what I wanted it to.
Please someone tell me when this category of products matures enough to be useful.
Have you looked at the Netgear ReadyNAS NV +? It was acquired as part of the Infrant acquisition and is a pretty decent NAS, with a strong following. A little more $$$, but their proprietary x-raid is pretty nice.
That's the one product in this segment I have heard good things about. To compare pricing, I put together a system in a LAN box with about $700 worth of hardware and Ubuntu server 7.10 with LAMP, Samba, and webmin. A ReadyNAS NV + with comparable space ( 1x 80 GB system drive + 3 x 750 GB in software RAID 5 for data) runs about $1,500 or so on eBay. I am going to do a write-up on configuring my custom NAS, I'd love to compare the time to set up with a ReadyNAS to get a sense of the actual cost of purchase and install.
Another nice thing about the ReadyNAS is that it's now shipping with a 5 year warranty - part of the reason they recently increased prices.
I also looked at the Drobo, but it's not quite where I want it to be yet.
Power consumption is still an issue. I'm using on-board VGA (I'd go headless, but with the video chip there, I might as well use it) and an Athlon 64 3700+ processor, which I might replace with an EE model, which would significantly drop overall power consumption on the system. That might require me to replace the motherboard, though.
http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=85...