Which NAS? £300 budget.

Educate a man - not sure I am able to do that, but can say that my Qnap TS410 is now about 4 years old, has 4 bays and runs in RAID 5 and has been totally reliable.
I only have 3 x 3tb WD red hard drives in it and use it as a back up for all my photo's, data and to run my Sonos music system - all of which it does very well.
 
I have run a QNAP TS659 Pro II for a couple of years now in RAID 5 and have had no problems either.
 
Can this NAS do mirror/RAID 1 as well?
 
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depends how hands on you want to get. youll need an operating system too along with the server and hard drives..

check out the big microserver thread, its based on an N40L but its much and much the same as the N54L.
 
neil_g said:
depends how hands on you want to get. youll need an operating system too along with the server and hard drives..

check out the big microserver thread, its based on an N40L but its much and much the same as the N54L.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Will take a look.

Yeah, happy to spend some time with the initial setup (I'm assuming RAID 5 support is through software rather than hardware?). Is the plug and play factor the only thing Qnap has over the HP?
 
theurbanclown said:
Thanks. Will take a look.

Yeah, happy to spend some time with the initial setup (I'm assuming RAID 5 support is through software rather than hardware?). Is the plug and play factor the only thing Qnap has over the HP?
Click to expand...
its a hardware raid AMD chip.

pretty much plug and play/wizard based setup for the NAS, loads of different built in features/apps (DNLA streaming, native Apple shares etc). everything is more manual with a MS and/or requires 3rd party software.
 
I had a 4 bay Synology at the start, then switched to HP microserver because it was much more powerful in terms of hardware and in theory it can do much more. But then decided it was too noisy, wasteful on energy and way too much configuration. Now I run a 2 bay Synology on 24/7 with periodic non-destructive backup script (like TimeMachine but using Rsync) to the HP microserver.

4 bay is nice, but if you want it on 24/7, I don't think 4 bay is the answer. Are you wanting RAID for always-running reliability or want it as a backup? RAID is not backup! If you run single disks with external backup disks, you can power-off or disconnect external disks and not suffer file losses in case of virus or accidental delete. It's really easy to retrieve a backup, only downside is you will have some down-time to your server compared to RAID.
 
neil_g said:
its a hardware raid AMD chip.

pretty much plug and play/wizard based setup for the NAS, loads of different built in features/apps (DNLA streaming, native Apple shares etc). everything is more manual with a MS and/or requires 3rd party software.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Think I might stick with Qnap to keep things painless.

wuyanxu said:
I had a 4 bay Synology at the start, then switched to HP microserver because it was much more powerful in terms of hardware and in theory it can do much more. But then decided it was too noisy, wasteful on energy and way too much configuration. Now I run a 2 bay Synology on 24/7 with periodic non-destructive backup script (like TimeMachine but using Rsync) to the HP microserver.

4 bay is nice, but if you want it on 24/7, I don't think 4 bay is the answer. Are you wanting RAID for always-running reliability or want it as a backup? RAID is not backup! If you run single disks with external backup disks, you can power-off or disconnect external disks and not suffer file losses in case of virus or accidental delete. It's really easy to retrieve a backup, only downside is you will have some down-time to your server compared to RAID.
Click to expand...

I have a lot of data and 2 bays won't cover it. I'm thinking of 4 x 3tb WD Red drives in Raid 5 - so 9tb in total minus whatever.

Not planning on using it as a backup solution. Will probably move current drives each to an external caddy and then store off site as a backup - possibly looking at some cloud storage too but by upload speed sucks so may give it a miss.
 
neil_g said:
its a hardware raid AMD chip.

pretty much plug and play/wizard based setup for the NAS, loads of different built in features/apps (DNLA streaming, native Apple shares etc). everything is more manual with a MS and/or requires 3rd party software.
Click to expand...
wuyanxu said:
I had a 4 bay Synology at the start, then switched to HP microserver because it was much more powerful in terms of hardware and in theory it can do much more. But then decided it was too noisy, wasteful on energy and way too much configuration. Now I run a 2 bay Synology on 24/7 with periodic non-destructive backup script (like TimeMachine but using Rsync) to the HP microserver.

4 bay is nice, but if you want it on 24/7, I don't think 4 bay is the answer. Are you wanting RAID for always-running reliability or want it as a backup? RAID is not backup! If you run single disks with external backup disks, you can power-off or disconnect external disks and not suffer file losses in case of virus or accidental delete. It's really easy to retrieve a backup, only downside is you will have some down-time to your server compared to RAID.
Click to expand...


Do either of you, or anyone else know much about a brand called Thecus? I hadn't but after doing some more research they seem quick as far as NAS's go and appear feature rich.

What's the downside?
 
I've heard of them, can't say they anything they are known for.

Remember feature checkbox is different from able to actually use it. Microserver has infinite list of feature checkboxes, but they are spread all over Windows home server in a mess. Using Synology is like using a Mac, everything is simple and there, if it's not, there's a package centre (like a free app store).
 
Thecus have been around for years but the QNAP and Synology units are far better IMO.

For the money the Synology DS-214 Play @ £277 is a mighty good deal
 
Synology all the way! And with DSM 5 just having been announced with all it's new features I would say it's even more value than previous. There's also the DS411 Slim if you want 4-bay, although you will be limited to 2.5" disks.
 
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