Wednesday, November 6, 2013

The Thecus N4560 NAS is Reviewed

Over at Smallnetbuilder there is a new review of the four drive Thecus N4560. This is a relatively low cost Intel Atom processor 4 bay NAS focused on the home user. Although the NAS has decent performance, Smallnetbuilder concludes that there are better 4-bay NAS options out there:
At $543, the Thecus N4560 is by no means the cheapest four-drive NAS. In fact, there are seven NASes that are cheaper. As you might expect, the top four cheapest NASes have low (poorer) Total NAS scores. But there

Click here to read more ...

The Thecus N4560 Reviewed is Reviewed

Over at Smallnetbuilder there is a new review of the four drive Thecus N4560. This is a relatively low cost Intel Atom processor 4 bay NAS focused on the home user. Although the NAS has decent performance, Smallnetbuilder concludes that there are better 4-bay NAS options out there:
At $543, the Thecus N4560 is by no means the cheapest four-drive NAS. In fact, there are seven NASes that are cheaper. As you might expect, the top four cheapest NASes have low (poorer) Total NAS scores. But there

Click here to read more ...

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

"I think I might be cursed" thread - Too Many Hard Drive Failures

A thread over at http://ask.metafilter.com/251359/I-think-i-might-be-cursed discusses what to do after too many drive failures. There are quite a few good posts which lead to the conclusion that Synology is the way to go.

The discussion also deals with Raid 1 versus Raid 5. In fact, reading that thread led me to do the analysis in my recent post "Raid 1 vs Raid 5 Cost Comparison." This post was what got me thinking:
Three WD Reds ($300): two for a RAID1 setup, one for external off-site

Click here to read more ...

Raid 1 vs Raid 5 Cost Comparison

I did a cost comparison using current prices on Amazon to see what the difference in price is between a 4 bay NAS using two Raid 1 volumes and one Raid 5 volume. As you can see, going with Raid 1 arrays means about a 30% premium per terebyte.

These costs do not take into account the cost of the NAS enclosure itself which should add around $360 at least for the least expensive 4-bay Synology

Click here to read more ...

Synology Goes After the Low-End Market with the All-New DS214se

Synology seems intent on grabbing the low-end part of the NAS market. It has introduced the low priced (MSRP around $180) DS214se two bay NAS. The NAS runs the full DSM software, but it obviously is lower in power and RAM running a single core 800 MHz processor with 256 GB of DDR3 RAM.

Synology claims that the new NAS will still achieve speeds when reading that will support multiple HD video streams:
Centering on the core features of NAS devices, Synology DS214se provides handy and

Click here to read more ...

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Yet Another Help Me Find the Right NAS Forum Thread

Another of the threads where people are helping others find the right NAS for their needs is over at http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1223281#p25610075. This thread has some good discussion of Synology vs QNAP vs Drobo. A particularly interesting post is this one where the writer compares two different Synology NAS devices and states exactly what the "j" means in several Synology product names:
I have two Synologies (a DS411+II and a DS211j), and I love both of them. One

Click here to read more ...

Your Own Cloud Server in a Box: Western Digital's My Cloud 2TB NAS box

The theregister.co.uk has a review of the new Western Digital My Cloud 2 TB NAS box. This NAS joins the recent trend of NAS devices that allow for remote access to your files - not just from your LAN but also from the internet when you are away from home.
WD’s mobile app, WD 2 Go, has long let you draw down files from your Live and upload them too as if - your home broadband bandwidth permitting - it was your own personal Dropbox.

Speaking of which, WD 2 Go can tap into that too, and

Click here to read more ...