# NAS alternatives



## Flash (Aug 19, 2011)

Hey hey,

Was looking into a storage alternative and tho I like the NAS such as Synology, I don't really think I have much use in it's features to spend 900$ for a 5 slot (expandable to 15), or even 400$ for the 4 slot.

Are there any other alternatives out there? TBH, I would put all my hard drives in my case and just RAID them, but my current case does not allow more than 3 HDD's (since my 4870 takes 2 slots)

A friend mentioned buying a HDD rack but I fail to see how you would connect all the hard drives to your PC, unless I keep the side panel out and keep the rack right next to my unit, which I don't really want.


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## yogurt_21 (Aug 19, 2011)

old school rig, doesn't have to be fancy, just need room for hard drives.


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## Easy Rhino (Aug 19, 2011)

racks are expensive. as yogurt said, just find a cheapo old case/rig so long as its at least a p4 and sata 3.


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## Widjaja (Aug 19, 2011)

How much HDD space are you requiring?
Do you have the HDDs already or are you still in the market for HDDs as well as the NAS?

If you only require a 2-Bay NAS then something like a DLink DNS 323 nas will be fine.

I use two of them at work and they have never failed in the years of constant usage.


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## Deleted member 3 (Aug 19, 2011)

What is your budget and what are the requirements? Making a cheap NAS yourself isn't that hard, creating external storage isn't hard to do either. All depends on requirements and budget.


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## remixedcat (Aug 19, 2011)

NETGEAR readyNAS???

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122010


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## Flash (Aug 29, 2011)

Sorry for not replying for a while, been a bit busy. 

Right now I am just in the market. I still don't have the hard drives. For hard drives I was looking at the WD greens, tho I keep hearing problems with them (or with the majority of 2-3 TB)

I would be like to have around 8 bays at least. IMHO 4 bays is just too little. And NAS's cost a lot, everything over 4 bays. 

Bassically I would like to spend at least as possible for the most available space (looking to RAID into 5, and switch to 6, once I get 6 or more drives). I really don't need stuff as bit torrent or other stuff companies like Synology offers.


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## Woomack (Aug 29, 2011)

I like QNAP products but aren't cheap. Transfers are better than in any Netgear for similar price. I'm selling QNAPs and sometimes Netgear 2-4 drive NAS with WDC Green and RE3/4 and so far in last 2 years I had no rma so hard to say , maybe it's just luck


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## Thrackan (Aug 29, 2011)

Cheap solution: FreeNAS on a simple old system with tons of HDD ports (expansion cards?).
Get an old Chieftec case or something similar you can park tons of HDD's in. Or something like  CM690 with 4-in-3 modules and/or 5,25->3,5" converters.

Other option: build a nice case


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## Flash (Sep 1, 2011)

I have kept reading some reviews about different NAS's, and apparently all of them suffer from very low write speeds (ul/dl). They come with 1 Gbps LAN, yet users only get 15-25mb/s. Yet on a normal computer over lan, you can get 100mb/s. Why is that? Somehow I'm thinking of just buying a big case next time I'm upgrading, and just keep the HDD's for storage in the case in RAID 5, together with a pair of SSD's in RAID 0.

Also I came across Patriot Javelin S4. Anyone has any comments on it? Price is 300$


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## Thrackan (Sep 1, 2011)

It's because the processors in most NASes are slow, powersaving ones, which simply can't handle the data rates. Synology makes expensive, but good NAS systems though, you might want to check that.


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