5 months with the Synology DS-412+

Arstechnica has a post about the Synology DS-412+. This post is in the nature of a long-term review about using the Synology device for a few months. It is a follow up to a popular post with a similar theme about the DroboFS:
Last year, when Ars published our two-part DroboFS review (Part 1, Part 2), one of the requests we kept hearing was for a similar in-depth review of other home-oriented network attached storage (NAS) products, particularly those from Synology. A few months

5 months with the Synology DS-412+

Flexraid vs Unraid vs Snapraid

I found an interesting forum thread over at the avsforum discussing the advantages/disadvantages of Flexraid vs Unraid and Snapraid for use as a NAS. The thread starts out with a quote from another forum detailing some of the features of Flexraid:
1. FlexRAID works with Windows (WHS, Win7, etc). It's a driver on top of Windows.
2. Can start with full disks! I know unRAID needs empty disks.
3. Multiple parity drives, to help recover from multiple drive failures.
4. Works with any disks on

Flexraid vs Unraid vs Snapraid

Follow up to I'M Done With Drobo Article - My Life After Drobo

Scott Kelby, of "I'm Done with Drobo" fame has added his follow-up in which he explains what he has done to replace his Drobo setup.

What he has done has been to replace the Drobo with a two-layered approach. The first is to acquire three G Speed Q external drive devices - each with 12 TB of storage. He explains why he chose G Speed Q:
When I originally wrote my post about dumping Drobo, and asked for suggestions on what to use instead, I had a lot of folks recommend G-Tech

Follow up to I'M Done With Drobo Article - My Life After Drobo

unRAID Server Setup Advice

I found a nice thread over on the XBMC forum discussing a new Unraid build put together specifically to run SABnzbd, SickBeard and Couch Potato as well as act as a NAS serving XBMC clients. The original poster asked several questions about Unraid and received some thoughtful responses. Ultimately, he went with the following configuration:
Case: AZZA Helios 910 SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ($79.99 + $30 mail-in)
Mobo: ASRock 880GM-LE FX AM3+ AMD 880G Micro

unRAID Server Setup Advice

How to Install Unraid

TheGearsphere has a great tutorial covering how to install Unraid. Unraid is a NAS operating system using one drive parity to protect the stored files using the least amount of overhead possible. Unraid runs from a USB thumb drive. The Limetech site has good instructions for installing Unraid, but this new tutorial has a large number of screen shots and step by step instructions.

One of the main advantages to Unraid over conventional RAID setups is that with an Unraid system:
If you

How to Install Unraid

Anandtech NAS Testbed

Anandtech has an article explaining how they have built their new testbed for NAS reviews. They explain the reasoning behind designing and building a new testbed for NAS testing:
Followers of our NAS reviews have seen the standard Intel NASPT benchmarks and file transfer test results along with a qualitative coverage of the NAS’s operating system / user interface. The reviews briefly touch upon miscellaneous factors such as power consumption. The feedback from the readers as

Anandtech NAS Testbed

QNAP TS-569 Pro Turbo NAS Reviewed

Smallnetbuilder has done their usual thorough job in reviewing the QNAP TS-569 Pro Turbo NAS. The QNAP TS-569 Pro Turbo NAS is a five bay NAS running a Intel 2.13 GHz D2700 Atom processor. It provides all the features of other QNAP NAS servers - in other words it is a full featured server and NAS. The NAS does not use very much power and is very quiet:
Power consumption measured 46 W with the 4 drives spun up and 27 W with them spun down. Fan and drive noise could be

QNAP TS-569 Pro Turbo NAS Reviewed