Network Attached Storage (NAS) products

[stevech]

I see lots of low cost NAS products. Some or all seem to run embedded Linux and FAT32 (rather than NTFS) file systems on USB.

Anyone know if (1) these are too slow due to cheap implementation, (2) if I can force a NAS to format to 64K blocks and (3) max drive capacity (I've seen some with low limits).

I'm still searching for a low cost RAID 5 product - rather than a DIY box.

[Lucas]

If the security of RAID 5 is important to you, note that reliability can only be obtained by using hardware RAID cards and not by using the mostly software based RAID offered by most motherboards. These cards typically cost from $200 upwards.

I think that ready made RAID 5 NASs are pretty expensive so if low-cost is important, you might want to explore the NASlite solutions for www.serverelements.com. V2 is coming out soon which will support hardware RAID5 cards.

I use v1.5 (no RAID) on an old PentiumII 233 PC and it gives very good performance.

[tmiranda]

I also get very good results using NASLite+ on very low end hardware. I would stay away from FreeNAS, it is slower and the software RAID is buggy. NASLite+ v2 (due out any day) will support hardware RAID and some other goodies as well.

[lotusvball]

NASlite+ USB for me and it runs great. V2 will add RAID support and SATA drive support. I use a PII for the hardware. Running for over a year with no reboot.

[Berg]

Another very happy user of the NAS Lite + USB products. I run two NAS Lite servers on Pentium 200/233 mhz "doorstops" and could not be happier.

The upcoming version 2 promises to significantly improve on a great product !

My two cents.

[stanger89]

Take a look at the ReadyNAS NV, fast, supports 750GB drives (but last I looked had a 2TB array limit, but that only loses you about 50GB due to the base-10/base-2 discrepancy).

[Jesse]

Hi,

Not exactly what you are looking for, but you may want to check it out anyhow.

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=17760

Keep in mind that the ebay link is certainly dead by now.

[lotusvball]

Also, here is a thread about NAS.


http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=12122

[stevech]

wow, lots of ideas.

smb with embedded linux for NAS - FAT32 and smb. segmented files. Do these use 64KB disk blocks for reducing the I/O rate for video files?

Same question, but for disk-based linux and smb as a NAS.

NAS for me makes sense only if I can get RAID 5 or some such running so my videos for Sage and my family photos (now GBs in size) are assuredly protected from drive failure. Now, I backup photos and Sage configs/wiz.bin but I can't backup video storage as is. A unified NAS with reliability would be nice, but without spending more than $150 or so on a disk controller. And I sure would like to reuse the PATA drives I have. Or bite the bullet and buy three identical SATA drives.

[steingra]

The version 2 of the product is now available. I havent had time to use it yet, but I am getting closer to upgrading to it. I have bee happy with the version 1.x Suite for 9 months now. I started off running it on a 233Mhz system, but decided to upgrade to a newer system. It worked OK on the 233Mhz. But the new case holds lots more hard drives And I get DMA5 connection speed on the IDE channels. Whereas I only got a DMA2 connection on the 233mhz if I remember correctly.

Here is a link to version 2.
http://www.serverelements.com/naslite-2-usb.php