Stand back everyone, this is my first post on here for quite some time. I have gotten lazy and just been sending little things (like POTD's) to Justin to post. Anywho, I have a serious topic at hand to discuss: Home NAS Devices.

The background on this is that I just started upgrading my entire home network to Gigabit. I will be running CAT6 cable to select rooms in my house (namely the living room for the entertainment systems), and will shortly (within the next 3 weeks) be getting a new Linksys Wireless N router with built-in gigabit switch to compliment my existing Netgear 8-port gigabit switch. Clearly, the next step is a 1TB NAS device.

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First of all, I narrowed my searching and product comparisons to devices that would allow me to select my own drives and capacities. I also restricted to searches that allowed RAID 0 and RAID 1. The goal is to have 2TB total storage, 1TB usable, across 2 WD 1TB 32MB Cache Caviar SATA drives. These run for about $200, so this is already $400. Ideally, I'd like to bring the total cost in at around $650, so this left me with about $250 to play with. Also, this device will sit on my desk, so I'd like it to be somewhat quiet. Given all of this criteria, I did some research, and after many hours starring at reviews, I have come up with the following 2 devices:

ZyXEL NSA-220

D-Link DNS-323

Breaking it down further, both are somewhat the same price - maybe $40 difference, but no problem there. They fall within the $250 budgeted expense. Both offer similar things - iTunes servers, BitTorrent servers, both are 2 drive bay devices, both have RAID functionality. Both seem somewhat quiet according to the reviews at SmallNetBuilder.com, and both have somewhat decent web interfaces to manage the device as well as perform backups. Both allow PC and Mac connectivity via SMB among other other protocols, although the ZyXEL device is difficult to configure on anything except a windows box. After initial configuration, it doesn't matter what you use. The ZyXEL interface does look a little nicer, but that's a miniscule difference. Also, the D-Link device offers email notices for things such as temperature increases and drive failures. This is especially handy if you are not in the viscinity of the device.

That's about it! Has anyone had any experience with either of these devices, or even another device I may not have run into? Initially, I was thinking of going with the well-known D-Link brand, but I am now not sure which one to go with as the ZyXEL device was announced more recently and may take advantage of some new upgrades not achievable by a simple firmware upgrade. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. Sorry for creating such a long post!

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#3: by Anon@72.165.80.2 on 8/1/08 8:54AM (reply)
i've heard that NAS just cannot perform over gigabit by the factor you'd expect. it's not the drives (or RAID-level), or the network, it's the protocols.

for throughput, you need to get something low-level and i came across really great hardware, but it was $3k starting and i thought that was ridiculous. now i wish i could find it again, because it's a steal. anyway, iSCSI & hyperSCSI are teh sort of things i'm talking about. if you're going the NAS route, i'd say invest a solid weekend and build a freeNAS box. for real, if you're spending $$$, buy something more sophisticated than some crappy embedded card with limited software. my two cents.

• #3, in relation to this, ... - Justin on 8/1/08 9:09AM (#4)
• #4, You can do ISCSI ... - Anon@68.49.100.32 on 8/1/08 11:17PM (#5)

#2: by Kristen on 7/31/08 10:02PM (reply)
I just went cross-eyed reading this thing.

;)

#1: by Justin on 7/31/08 10:12AM (reply)
did you look at what is available on NewEgg as well? I found the drobo on there (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822240001). I personally haven't used any of these products as I just built a standalone "as quiet and energy efficient as possible" computer with a 4 hard drive bay in it. The drives are then hooked up to a 3ware SATA RAID card. I previously had 160GB drives in it, but now I think they are 200GB for roughly 750GB of usable space (RAID-5). This is also my webserver, so it's doing more than just file serving. You could get two 1TB Apple Time Capsules and have redundant WiFi connections. :)

keep us posted on what you decide on...maybe even write a review, heh.

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