What NAS solution should I buy?

[smbrannan]

Want to buy a NAS product to add to my home network. Will use for backup and also music serving.

I have 5 Macs running OS X and a Soundbridge M1000 on the network.

I am no UNIX geek and would like something that doesn’t need to be hacked to get it working.

What NAS products would the fine folks on this forum recommend?

[fizze]

It depends, how much data you gottahave to backup.
Most NAS do have a rather low I/O performance.

The Linksys NSLU2 f.i. has a peak I/O of about 3-4 MB/sec.

On the other hand if you “hack” it (which isn’t all that hard, really) you can get a 24/7 music server and more for the SoundBridge, and whatnot.

If you need better i/o performance, the linkstations or terastations do really look great. They offer internal and external ports for harddisks, plus a gigabit network plug on some devices, at least.

[CCRDude]

The Kurobox is the “open” version of the LinkStation (installing a custom Linux to allow for the mediaserver is kind of a hack with the Linkstation or Terastation). Just one internal harddisk (two USB ports for more if you want), but a nice thing with low power consumption. Speed is about the same for all those devices (Kurobox/Linkstation/Terastation) from Bufallo… about 5-6 MB/s with the standard ext3 file system, and I’ve read with xfs you could get one or two more.

[Iris]

Prior to purchasing a NAS I too had similar concerns. After reading this tutorial I purchased a Maxtor MSS+ 300g and couldn’t be happier.

It works quick and transparently with the SB and our laptop.

Good Luck!

– Iris

[richdunlop]

@smbrannan wrote:

I am no UNIX geek and would like something that doesn’t need to be hacked to get it working.

Unfortunately the built in media servers that ship on off the shelf NAS devices are somewhat lacking e.g. don’t support search. In addition you become dependent on the NAS vendor to resolve any issues you have. Mod’ing a NAS box really isn’t as tough as it sounds and there are setups that mean you don’t need to know a whole lot about linux. Check out the MSS and NSLU2 install guides at http://wiki.fireflymediaserver.org.

[smbrannan]

Thanks for the suggestions and advice folks. I knew you would steer me right.

I’ve actually thought about it a bit more and decided to go another route.

With 5 macs in the house, and only 4 family members, it makes sense to take the extra Mac in the kitchen, beef up its hard drive, and use it as a backup/music server. I know enough about OS X to be confident that I can make it work. And I already have Chronosync so should be able to set up a regular backup schedule that works.

Thanks again.

S

[mas]

Oh of course it would work.

You have a noisy 150W (or more) server then however.

A NAS is typically a <25W server while serving and <15W while standby. And its small and makes no noise as it has no fans.

So we comparing different things here.

[smbrannan]

Good point mas.

But the “extra” Mac would be running anway (I like the convenience of having a networked machine in the kitchen so that I can track the family calendar and to-do lists, see the latest newspages, etc.)

So by using this as a server too, I’m actually arresting the further proliferation of energy eating appliances in the house. No?

As an aside — how much power consumption are we talking about here? I know that any un-needed consumption should be avoided, but compared to the fan in my furnace/air conditioning (which runs all day) and the pump for my pool (runs May to September), is the difference between a PC and a NAS device really material?

[rpedde]

@smbrannan wrote:

As an aside — how much power consumption are we talking about here? I know that any un-needed consumption should be avoided, but compared to the fan in my furnace/air conditioning (which runs all day) and the pump for my pool (runs May to September), is the difference between a PC and a NAS device really material?

I always thought a mini probably wasn’t too bad power consumption-wise. Seems like it’s a laptop design anyway, which is pretty low power.

Was thinking about something along the same lines myself, actually.

[CCRDude]

The NAS I use is a Kurobox, it’s using 17 Watt, meaning about 150 kWh/a. In Germany, that’s about 28 Euros for non-stop power.

A good desktop machine might use about 100 Watt, which means an additional cost of 137 Euros. Two years, and the Kuro will have paid itself.

Might well be a MacMini is less power hungry than the above 100 Watt (on the other hand a server might have even more, see mas), and energy in the US for example is cheaper than here.

edit: from Apple site on the MacMini: Maximum continuous power: 110W

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