Storage Solutions NAS box or cheap PC? Need suggestions.

zhopudey

Skilled
I was looking ino getting a 2 disk nas box with raid for my office, but got scared by rates of 15K - 20K. :S What advantages does a nas box offer other than small size and lower power consumption? Would it be better to build a cheap PC, which comes to less than 10k nowadays?

How reliable is the onboard raid compared to the nas raid?

@Vivek, you've used a buffalo nas. What are your suggestions on this?
 
Nice....but i outgrew it very fast.

I dont think its meant to be used in a very network intensive enviornment.

When we have 25 rendering stations logging on to pickup 800 mb of textures all at once, it chokes big time!
 
was thinking pretty much the same thing. any advice from current dedicated NAS box owners as well as those with homebrew Nas boxes - superczar, cisco_tech would be highly appreciated :)
 
My ICYBOX was cheaper than a PC and that was the primary reason I considered one. Glad I did because I love this little box for it's simplicity to set up and operate. I've had no issues whatsoever since there are only 2-3 devices connecting to it.

It might be difficult to justify a NAS setup if the box alone costs 15-20k however.
 
was thinking pretty much the same thing. any advice from current dedicated NAS box owners as well as those with homebrew Nas boxes - superczar, cisco_tech would be highly appreciated

AFAIK, a 500GB WD NAS (world edition or something) costs arnd 7K locally which makes it immense VFM

As for a real life comparison between the two, I have my dedicated NAS and my headless server box HDD both working as network drives

My laptops and HTPC map to these drives as y:\ and z:\ directly and the whole setup obviously is transparent with botht he drives appearing as local drives on the client machines

I see no difference between the performance between either and get between 6-8 MB/s transfer speeds on wired clients and 1.5-3 MB/s on wireless..

Neither do I ever see these ugly H**s since both are hidden inside a bookrack with only power/ethernet cables running to them

As for choosing one or the other,

NAS in a box: small, easy to setup, relatively low on power, no headaches

PC as NAS (setup headless): lot more flexibility and capabilities but is bigger, a lil more expensive, and eats more power...setting up takes quite a while but headacheless when done

a 500GB PC NAS will cost you arnd 8-9K with a D201GLY2, 512MB RAM, 500GB disk and cheapo smps ..all mounted on a plastic /plywood board

And the RAID setup is fairly reliable on both
 
Vivek Punjabi said:
Nice....but i outgrew it very fast.

I dont think its meant to be used in a very network intensive enviornment.

When we have 25 rendering stations logging on to pickup 800 mb of textures all at once, it chokes big time!

Is it because of low network speed? Or because the box has a slow processor? I assume a cheap dual core PC with gb lan wouldn't have these problems...or would it?
SC said:
NAS in a box: small, easy to setup, relatively low on power, no headaches

Yeah, but look at the quotes I got :p -

Buffalo 1 TB Link Station LS Pro Duo = 26000/-
Buffalo 2 TB Tera Station TS Pro 2 = 62500/-

WD 1 TB NAS = 22750/-
Maxtor 1 TB NAS = 23750/-

Then u have NAS boxes - empty ones and u can put ur own hdd's in them .
Thecus N299 = 14000/- + WD 1 TB HDD = 10750/-
Thecus N2100 = 19000/- + WD 1 TB HDD = 10750/-

Thecus N299 = 14000/- + Hitachi 1 TB HDD 32 MB Buffer = 13750/-
Thecus N2100 = 19000/- + Hitachi 1 TB HDD 32 MB Buffer = 13750/-
U can insert 2 hdd's in this box and raid them.
 
one of my issues is that power is quite unreliable in my area. large voltage variations , intermittent power etc. my download rig gets turned off at night/ step up transformer/ UPS start screaming if the voltage changes/ goes.

So was wondering if an out of the box torrent HDD could solve them.
 
Yeah, but look at the quotes I got -

Check with Saiyan

I think he got a quote of 7Kish for a WD 500GB world edition

You also have the option of buying Vivek's Buffalo NAS

Is it because of low network speed? Or because the box has a slow processor? I assume a cheap dual core PC with gb lan wouldn't have these problems...or would it?

25 PCs reequesting data from same single HDD NAS = extreme DIsk thrashing and high CPU utils

A setup like Vivek's requires a load balanced RAID 3 setup or similar

A basic NAS intended for home usage won't suffice

You on the other hand will not run into such issues
 
Western Digital 1TB Mybook with Ethernet @ Rs.12600 nett

Buffalo 1 TB Link Station LS Pro Duo @ Rs.30500 + VAT

Buffalo 2 TB Tera Station TS Pro 2 @ Rs.54750 + VAT

:p

i got this quote today
 
superczar said:
Inetersting...
Seems like WD Myworld edition runs a crippled version of linux, and people have been able to make it run a torrent application too

Hacking WD MyBook World Ed: Welcome to the new home for all things WD MyBook WE

Hacking WD MyBook World Ed: Forum Category Torrent programs

Yup there are quite a lot of issues with the mybook right now because of the bloat that comes installed with it. People say that their data transfers are very sluggish because of the bloat, but there is a fully hacked version of the o/s thats in development. This is what is posted on martin's site who is doing the development : I would like to inform you that something like BSD 'ports' collection is in progress at the moment. Stay tuned, lot of software will be available for MyBook soon!

The 250$ deal for 1.5 TB WD Mybook Ethernet Edition was a kick-ass deal by dell if ordered through KMD ;). But unfortunately i dint have the cash to spare at that time. All in all someone needs to develop/modify the loaded o/s that comes with the Mybook removing all the bloat and adding features like Bitorrent Client, Remote Support, And Better Read/Write Speeds. Then WD would sell like hot cakes! :p
 
Isnt all of it already available?

you do not need to install the client access software anyway to map it as a network drive on your PC(which is the reason behind most complaints)

As fot adding additional features via the firmware, you can already add a torrent client and remote access per that site
 
While hdd costs are comparable to those in US, these nas/raid boxes are very expensive here :( The WD 2TB World Edition II ( NAS + Raid) costs under $600 there.
 
While hdd costs are comparable to those in US, these nas/raid boxes are very expensive here The WD 2TB World Edition II ( NAS + Raid) costs under $600

and the WD 1TB is 12600 or ~ $315 here (vs 26-280 in the US) ..sounds fair to me considering NAS demand is also low in India
 
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