Home NAS Solutions?

[Merusk]

Anyone have recommendations for home NAS devices?  I've been browsing newegg for a while and the complaints on some of the low-end devices seem to come from primarily high-end users.  I'm only looking to spend a few hundred for 1-2Tb of storage.  The guys reviewing devices seem to want corporate server transfer speeds & bandwidth at home user prices. 

This seagate system or perhaps This one are two of my top choices so far.

The others I'm looking at are this iOmega device and this one.

[Trippy]

I recommend downloading the various manuals and checking out the software features. E.g. I have an older StorCenter model and it has, among other features, a BitTorrent client in it

My main NAS these days is actually an Apple Time Capsule but that's cause I needed a dual-band wireless router and you can never have too much storage.

[apocrypha]

I highly recommend one which you can swap the drives out of at a later date. It's only got to last 3-4 years to make doubling the capacity a very cheap option later on.

I've got a D-Link DNS323 which I have no hesitation in advising anyone to stay the fuck away from. When it works it's OK but during it's firmware update process a couple of years ago it had a dippy fit and irrecoverably deleted all my stored data. D-Link's support were worse than useless, in fact the first thing they told me to ensured that my data was gone forever. Luckily it was all backed up elsewhere, but lesson learned, never buy anything from D-Link again.

[Ingmar]

I have heard good things about, but have not personally tried, this one:

http://www.drobo.com/

[Trippy]

I have heard good things about, but have not personally tried, this one:

http://www.drobo.com/

The NAS version is very pricey. I built my own Atom-based file server tower for about the same price as the Drobo with Gigabit Ethernet.

[Murgos]

What are the downsides of jut using an External HDD hooked to the USB port on your router (assuming you have a router with a USB port)?

Sure, USB 2 isn't very fast but I think it should be 'good enough' and cheap.  If redundancy is a concern external RAID enclosures aren't that pricey either.

I guess my question is, why get a 'NAS' solution, isn't it really just a hardrive hanging off your router anyway?

[apocrypha]

USB is a lot slower. Like, 1-5 Mbps compared to (I'd guess) 30-50 Mbps. Plus a proper NAS means you can remote config it and they usually have all sorts of handy functionality too, e.g. uPnP media server, BitTorrent client etc.

[Lanei]

I recommend this one:
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DNS-323-Network-Attached-Enclosure/dp/B000GK8LVE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302456079&sr=8-1

Also see http://wiki.dns323.info/ for simple instructions on software modding to run additional software (like streaming media services) on the device.

[Murgos]

USB is a lot slower. Like, 1-5 Mbps compared to (I'd guess) 30-50 Mbps.

Really?  Where is that info coming from?  Shouldn't you get closer to 15-20 MBps with USB 2.0?

If true, 1 Mbps is less than 1% of the realistic speed of USB 2 (~20 MBps).  You would think someone would put a smidge of effort into fixing that and sell a million of them.

[Merusk]

Thanks for the advice, guys, it's really helped.  I hadn't considered the upgrade-ability, which those Seagate devices lack outside of proprietary drives.  I also hadn't considered how the features of each might be different. I assumed they'd all have the ability to serve as a print server. 

Since "why" was asked:

We're a multiple computer household.  2 laptops and 3 desktops, with 3 of the machines needing regular printer access, currently done by swapping the USB cable.*  We want to have a central drive to keep all the family pictures and media files on while working as a print server.

Keeping one computer on 24/7 for a USB drive seems silly when there's a lower-power & footprint solution that can also be remote accessed and upgraded with less hassle. Also, if any machine were to be left on it would be my 5 year old monster, which lacks USB2 ports, meaning already-slow USB transfer speeds would be slower still.

If it were just me, I'd go for the USB drive solution because it makes sense if you're just using it for backup or additional storage.  It'd definitely be the cheaper route.

I might have to put this on hold anyway as I started the lawn mower for the first time today and it sounded like it was going to vibrate itself to death.  Clanging noises on a spinning metal blade.. yeah we'll let an expert look at that.    Ah the joys of home maintenance.

* Why swap the USB instead of sharing the printer? Because none of  the machines are on 24/7 and it's quicker to just swap the cable instead of powering up whichever machine it's hooked to, that's why.

[apocrypha]

Really?  Where is that info coming from?  Shouldn't you get closer to 15-20 MBps with USB 2.0?

If true, 1 Mbps is less than 1% of the realistic speed of USB 2 (~20 MBps).  You would think someone would put a smidge of effort into fixing that and sell a million of them.

Yep my bad, was guesstimating speeds from memory. A brief web search informs me that more usual USB 2 transfer rates are indeed 10-20 Mbps, so actually the speed difference isn't as great as I thought.

I think you'd really notice a big speed difference if multiple devices were trying to access the drives at the same time though. Is a USB drive going to handle that? A decent NAS has no problems with it though.

[Salamok]

Been a few years but Buffalo was making okay stuff for awhile.  Not sure what your wishlist is like but if it were me I'd be looking for something that could stream media to my ps3 as well.