will put my own SATA drives in it - need it to be fast. or is it better to just use my USB docking station for sata drives?

it'd be nice if there were more than just 1 bay - best value for the money, and i want to make sure it's not a cheap device that gives horrid speeds (i've read the few cheap ones out there have bad speed ratings)

was looking at a NAS200 from linksys but don't know enough to compare them

11/10/2008 2:20:09 AM

I've got a buffalo 1TB linkstation duo. I would not recommend it.

11/10/2008 7:01:50 AM

I've got a Western Digital 1TB Mybook World Pro. I would not recommend it.

11/10/2008 9:43:23 AM

lol seems like you have to spend $800 to get a decent one

11/10/2008 10:03:32 AM

I am pleased with the 500gb Bufalo Linkstation Pro I'm using at work. It's been fast for transfer speed-- and it was ~$200

11/10/2008 10:27:29 AM

To elaborate on my earlier post, I bought it as a network backup drive and media dump. The problem is that the linux based OS has a 128 character filename size limitation that includes directory structure. This makes backups impossible for pretty much all OSs, unless you compress the entire directory structure into one file and then upload it. I called buffalo support, and they acknowledged the problem but had no plans to fix it. Unfortunately, i didn't run into this until after my return period from Newegg already expired.

So now I use it to store video and music files which stream to my popcorn hour. so it's fine for that, but i'm still irritated by the filename size limitation.

11/10/2008 11:39:30 AM

i think it's cheaper to build a server and stick linux on it than to get one of those things

11/10/2008 11:44:55 AM

^ You'll pay more in electricity costs over time.

11/10/2008 12:20:17 PM

barely. same amount of drives. other one needs power for the device. so you're just looking at an extra cpu/mb being powered vs the nas device. it will not be a significant difference.

11/10/2008 2:20:21 PM

anyone want to build me one for $200-$300ish + cost of drives + cost of shipping

your profit is in that 200-300, minus whatever costs you incur for other parts.

11/10/2008 7:32:41 PM

i have a via epia that idles with a hard drive around 20W.

that's including a who knows how efficient AC-DC supply.

11/10/2008 7:34:13 PM

^^ I'll build you an openfiler box for 2-300. Just tell me how much space and how much expansion you want.

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 10:32 AM. Reason : I've built myself one at work and I'd like to build one as energy efficient as possible for home]

11/11/2008 10:32:10 AM

$210 for an Atom-based, RAID 0/1/0+1/5, 4x SATA, Gigabit LAN NAS
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=9874406

cheap, but possible

you could also buy nearly any old PC from surplus and add a PCI gigabit LAN card, and a RAID controller card for <$100 if you don't care about form-factor or cpu speed

+$225 for 3x 640GB drives = 1.28TB NAS in RAID 5
+$270 for 3x 750GB drives = 1.5TB "
+$300 for 3x 1TB drives = 2TB "

(the case holds 2, the 3rd could go on the bottom using the 2nd bracket, not sure about 4 drives, but you only need 3 for RAID 5)

[Edited on November 12, 2008 at 2:51 AM. Reason : /]

11/12/2008 2:34:27 AM

OpenFiler (free!) will run on about any crappy hardware you throw at it. You can serve out CIFS/SMB shares or NFS exports as well as iSCSI LUNS over Ethernet. Has dynamic volume management (grow volumes on the fly) and copy-on-write snapshots (kind of worthless IMO though). Also supports bonded Ethernet ports and has a built in LDAP server. Definitely not a plug and play solution but much more robust and configurable than one of those Buffalo boxes, and you can build the hardware to suit your needs. I'm running an old P3 system with only 256MB RAM and an old IDE disk as a backup server.

11/15/2008 3:52:05 PM

anyone aware of a *cheap* 3U/4U rackmount chassis with 9x 5.25" bays or (ideally) 16x 3.5" SATA hotswap bays?

11/16/2008 4:15:50 PM

the atom isnt powerful enough to justify its power consumption.

well maybe it is, but the chipset they paired with it isnt.

its like a 70hp civic engine in a hummer

11/16/2008 8:59:14 PM

Quote :

"copy-on-write snapshots (kind of worthless IMO though)"

writing back a new copy on when you have a delta from the original is pretty damn useful, especially when you're using openfiler as the san to backend a virtualization environment

11/17/2008 2:20:35 AM

just get a used PV220 on ebay with a u320 backplane

11/17/2008 2:22:15 AM

Quote :

"the atom isnt powerful enough to justify its power consumption."

are you talking about in general? because the 1.6ghz atom only uses 2.5w, and that seems pretty decent (but i'm referring to a netbook, so that's why i was curious as to whether or not you were just referring to use of the atom in the rig Prospero outlined)

11/17/2008 8:30:05 AM

yeah the atom itself is fine, but they put a fan on the northbridge! that's shit!

11/18/2008 11:51:12 PM

[backs out of thread]



The ornery nerd at work with the neckbeard takes care of all this shit.

11/19/2008 12:36:17 AM

Quote :

"writing back a new copy on when you have a delta from the original is pretty damn useful, especially when you're using openfiler as the san to backend a virtualization environment"

The way OpenFiler handles snapshots sucks IMO. Very similar to a lot of other vendors out there. Copy on write is slow and eats more disk space than it's worth most of the time, and can kill performance if you keep too many snapshots online. I guess I'm biased though b/c the equipment I work with handles snapshots totally differently (1 operation, no data movement, very little performance hit) so using them with OpenFiler feels like taking 2 steps back.

Plus for most home users snapshots aren't going to do them much good. If you want multiple versions of data it's usually just as easy to pull data from the OpenFiler once a week or month to another system, and then you have a backup copy of your data on a different box too.

11/19/2008 12:47:55 PM

you think i can get away with just using my usb SATA docking station? i think i may just do it. if i do cave in, i'll get the linksys 2 bay NAS200 i think

[Edited on November 25, 2008 at 4:39 AM. Reason : .]

11/25/2008 4:28:37 AM

ok so i caved in and got the linksys NAS200 and put 2 x 1 TB drives in it

I am getting write speeds ranging from 1.8MB-3.15MB/sec - that sounds ridiculous when you think about it...

my SATA docking station or external drive enclosures on USB give me 73-80MB/sec and I'm not even hooking them up through eSATA because it always fucks up my boots / hangs my system when I use it.

should i just get a USB hub and a couple more SATA docking stations ($50 and faster speeds as opposed to $100 and ridiculous speeds)?

[Edited on December 12, 2008 at 4:16 AM. Reason : .]

12/12/2008 4:15:38 AM

That sounds about right for moving lots of small files for alot of nas appliances. I have a 1T buffalo linkstation pro and I ran a couple of write speed trials and came up with this. It is by no means a standard test but to show you the speeds I am getting.


If you want better speeds the Sata docking station seems the way to go.

[Edited on December 12, 2008 at 8:09 AM. Reason : ~]

12/12/2008 8:05:22 AM

ah hahahaha

when they said network attached they must have meant to 10baseT

12/12/2008 8:50:13 AM

NO FREAKIN KIDDING. I mean I was testing from a dell 2950 server with 15K scsi drives with teamed 1000t NICs over a 1000t switch to the linkstation. Which supposedly needs the 1000t to be (air quotes) "fast". The hdd in the nas is way faster than the specs I listed above so the overhead in the nas due to memory/chip interface is mind boggling slow. I guess for storage of files as a backup its fine but if you ever want to work off of it forget it.

I am in the process of converting an old HP workstation into a file server because my home buffalo nas from 3 years ago is even slower It almost full and is beginning to annoy me when streaming media bogs it down.

12/12/2008 9:45:39 AM

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/16489

Radioshack has Thermaltake BlacX USB Docking Station for 2.5-3.5" Serial ATA hard drives for $30 - $20 rebate = $10 with free shipping. Thanks hodaddy

12/12/2008 1:22:51 PM

^wrong thread? has nothing to do with a NAS... good deal though, although i wouldn't pay more than $15 for it.

you can also get this:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.474
which does the same thing

[Edited on December 12, 2008 at 1:52 PM. Reason : ,]

12/12/2008 1:46:46 PM

no, not the wrong thread... thx for the link.

12/12/2008 5:42:46 PM

i'm tempted to buy this thing from newegg to build a mini-nas and putting 2x 1tb sata disks in it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032

12/13/2008 2:30:16 PM