Hi everyone,

I've been looking into a NAS setup recently and thought I would check out what people on here thought about it and what you might be running at home.

I'm looking at a very small solution and spending around $500 - $600. With the following two options...

QNAP TS-220

http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?sn=862&c=355&sc=688&t=696&n=18380

or

Synology DS213J

http://www.synology.com/en-global/products/overview/DS213j

Leaning more towards the QNAP and installing 2x 3TB Western Digital Reds. I'd run the drives in RAID0.

What do you think?

My pick - QNAP

I have this:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=617&products_id=23301

And two of these:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_344&products_id=20886

Very happy with it..

Edit: I just read the OP's post.. ITS A GREAT SETUP.. Haha didn't realise I had same setup you were looking at..

I do think the red's could be considered Overkill for a Home NAS setup.. But they work well.. And have warranties..

Edited 27/02/14 06:07 AM27/02/14 06:07 AM by Slightly Depressed Panda

My vote would be Synology.

I have a number of different NAS drives at home from Synology, Netgear & Buffalo. The Synology (DS412+ with 4 x 2TB WD Red) has easily been the best. Performance is fast, plenty of features and it has been nothing short of bulletproof. The Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) has a great interface and supports plenty of first and third party apps. I have a few friends with the DS213j who have good experiences also.

Depending on what your storing (how important is it to you?), and taking into consideration you are shopping for a 2 bay NAS, I would look at RAID1 not RAID0, at least this way you will have some fault tolerance albeit at the expense of capacity. A few extra TB's of space will seem insignificant if you loose all your family photos/video (memories), personal/business documents, etc...

I bought a HP EX490 server running 2x 2TB HDD's mirrored via drivepool (it's running windows server 2012) and it's been awesome; it's headless so sits in the study I simply remote desktop into it when needed. I also run serviio media server on it for all my DLNA devices around the home - been a fun little project actually. I used to just use a Western Digital external HDD (with ethernet) as a network drive - worked ok but was limited to 1TB.

I tend to not keep my TV shows and movies so 2TB storage is ample for now but I got another 2 bays free in the HP which I can just add to the drivepool.

I have also put freenas on a sh*tty old desktop which worked great until the power supply failed.

whole setup cost me $230

Edited 28/02/14 09:26 AM28/02/14 09:26 AM by old_mate

My pick - QNAP

Cheers mate, few people at work have recommended them.

I have this:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=617&products_id=23301

And two of these:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_344&products_id=20886

Very happy with it..

Edit: I just read the OP's post.. ITS A GREAT SETUP.. Haha didn't realise I had same setup you were looking at..

I do think the red's could be considered Overkill for a Home NAS setup.. But they work well.. And have warranties..

Awesome setup mate ! After more research I am leaning more towards the QNAP. Over the weekend I ended up picking up a 2TB Seagate just to have a short term back for my external HDD. Better to be prepared for the worst in the interim of gathering funds for the NAS.

My vote would be Synology.

I have a number of different NAS drives at home from Synology, Netgear & Buffalo. The Synology (DS412+ with 4 x 2TB WD Red) has easily been the best. Performance is fast, plenty of features and it has been nothing short of bulletproof. The Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) has a great interface and supports plenty of first and third party apps. I have a few friends with the DS213j who have good experiences also.

Depending on what your storing (how important is it to you?), and taking into consideration you are shopping for a 2 bay NAS, I would look at RAID1 not RAID0, at least this way you will have some fault tolerance albeit at the expense of capacity. A few extra TB's of space will seem insignificant if you loose all your family photos/video (memories), personal/business documents, etc...

I've heard good reviews on both, Synology looked great at the start then I saw a few more features on the QNAP and liked the easily removable drive bays.

Whoops my mistake ! I was meant to say that I will run them in RAID1 for better data redundancy.

I bought a HP EX490 server running 2x 2TB HDD's mirrored via drivepool (it's running windows server 2012) and it's been awesome; it's headless so sits in the study I simply remote desktop into it when needed. I also run serviio media server on it for all my DLNA devices around the home - been a fun little project actually. I used to just use a Western Digital external HDD (with ethernet) as a network drive - worked ok but was limited to 1TB.

I tend to not keep my TV shows and movies so 2TB storage is ample for now but I got another 2 bays free in the HP which I can just add to the drivepool.

I have also put freenas on a sh*tty old desktop which worked great until the power supply failed.

whole setup cost me $230

Sounds like a good little project mate ! I originally looked at running up FreeNAS on a HP n36l but it started become a bit of a pain... I thought if I was going to run one of those then I should use it for more of a server than just a NAS. Also had an old computer lying around so I might try my hand on that test box to see how good it is.

The external drive has been great so far and 2TB seems to be doing the trick but I wouldn't mind that little bit extra as I do want to move across some old DVD's.

Also something else I was looking into was a cloud option for some of my documents... As an off site backup

Came across the BitTorrent Sync service - free and unlimited.

http://www.bittorrent.com/sync

Has anyone else used this service ??