Good point. If it is purely a NAS (i.e. serve up some disk space) then save space and upgrade your router to a Netgear router with a USB port (WNDR3700 etc) that does simple NAS functions , or spend 70CHF and get a PogoPlug - http://www.pogoplug.com/index.html which will serve up to you wherever you are, both options mean you can re-use the USB drives you already have.
That's the beauty of Linux based NAS' though, you can expand it to do so much more and it runs on minimal hardware. my NAS is not much bigger than the drives it houses, yet replaces most of the stuff I needed my PC switched on for.
I had a nas (unix based) that used external disc's, was ok, throughput a little slow, and as it wasn't windows standard then things like my blueray player and xbox couldn't see it (ok they could see it, but couldn't access it)
So I bought a 2tb disc last week (160chf) ripped my old pc apart, installed the new disc, installed windows 7 on it (from a restore disc from one of my other pc's ) then copied all my music, video's, pictures etc to the libraries and now every device in the house can see them, video's are streamed to the xbox and blueray and all the pc's can access them via streaming or mapped drives.
much as I hate microsoft this was the easiest way to make sure all 3rd party devices could access everything, 2 clicks and it was sorted (click 1 - share, click 2 allow streaming)
biggest headache was getting the 1.5tb from the nas onto the 'new' server, took 3 days to copy everything.
eta
as soon as I can get hold of another sata cable then I'll stick the old nas drive in the pc and setup some raid just in case
Indeed. At least, my TS-119 from a few years ago came without a drive. I quite like it though - I got the 119 because it's quiet, and if you stick in a quiet hard drive you have a very good solution. What you don't get there is RAID - but the only thing on it that's not on other systems as well is my movie collection, and I can obtain those again if necessary.
I would be pretty careful running any kind of webserver on it though. I like the QNAP devices, but I would only ever use them on my internal LAN. You get firmware updates once a month (roughly) which may or may not include the latest patches of MySQL or Apache or whatnot. If you go that route, you're almost guaranteeing a future compromise of all data hosted on the NAS.
At present, yes, all devices will be Apple, it will probably remain that way.
I am currently running a Mac Mini as my 'server', with a 500GB HDD (so not really big enough for everything) and have several other HDDs dotted about - one on an airport Extreme, one on an iomega wireless network thingumy, one plugged into the back of the Mac Mini. It's all very messy, and because of the HDDs are 250-500gb, they are enough to store the bits they have, but no more. I'd like a consolidated solution that they were all in one place on one drive. When I have set up my new 'storage unit', then I will do periodical backups of stuff to my other HDDs (if the NAs doesn't have Raid > 0 capabilities). I'll probably be setting up some kind of windows media machine in my basement, so i'll use whatever bits and pieces I free up down there.
What I would ideally like it a single 'storage unit', that I can connect to with any of my devices and view/play my music/photos/videos etc. It should be on (or at least accessible - maybe these things go into a sleep style mode if not used for a while?) 24/7. I don't like using my Mac-mini in this way, as i get a lot of issues when trying to reconnect to it / run it through the projector etc.
The NAS itself doesn't need any fancy GUI software or anything like that - I can use a client like Boxee or just directly access the files from my devices.
As for the webserver - I don't mind too much either way - if the best solution also has it, great, if not, i'll keep using hostgator, they've been very user friendly and reliable.
Does your Mac Mini have a Thunderbolt interface? And did you take a look at these thingumibobs ?
A little more expensive than what you have been talking about, but they are fat, fast and relatively future proof. It's not a Spütnik Flavoured Penguin Coloured Unix Machine that can be hacked to orbit the earth powered only by Solar Rays provided the assembly compiler is not hit by ICBMs etc etc, but rather a unit that can be attached to any one of your Macs if you want.
Your Mac Mini can own it and it can serve all media, provide backups through Timemachine, provide general redundancy or even act as a storage/editing unit for movie editing or photoshop.
Basically it's big enough to host everything from backups to your media and data and Thunderbolt means it has tremendous throughput. It is Apples unit of choice and you don't need a grumpy fat slob in a greasy t-shirt to operate it.
I have the newest all singing all dancing one, so Apple's website tells me that it does indeed have a Thunderbird interface.
I've looked at the thingumibobs website and the speeds etc are impressive, however the only device to benefit from that would be the Mac Mini, right? At the moment, the laptops get 95% of the use, so that wouldn't be a huge benefit I don't think?
Also, wouldn't that require me to leave my Mac-mini on all the time?
How old is your MacBook (Pro?) as it might well have a Thunderbolt interface too, in which case if your MacMini is not serving the unit, you can just plug it in to your laptop.
If you are not a Mac user and don't have Thunderbolt available then this is of no use to you. It has not other interface (ethernet etc).
So, either all of your Macs are Thunderbolt ready if you want to move the unit around, or you must have your MacMini on if ever you want to access this unit.
I'm thinking sod it, just get a 3TB external HDD and copy everything onto that. Much cheaper, and probably does 90% of what I want. I can back up the important stuff onto the Mac Mini Hard Disk and the rest can probably be re-downloaded if needed!
Aha, I sort of did, but when I looked on Digitec, it was 1500ch!
Seems like that one is discontinued with no replacement, but maybe I can find it in Media Markt or Interdiscount at a reasonable (ish, in CH after all) price.
Just to let you know about my system (which has been stable for years), I have a D-link DNS-323 NAS (not available anymore but there are more recent versions available on digitec).
It runs well (sometimes needs a bump to keep the fan from making noise), I've never had it crash and you can put whatever size hard drives you want in. The HD prices are rather high right now but should be coming down. The NAS has low power consumption, it's tiny, and is easily available on my home network. I don't access it with a mac, but it works fine with Windows and Linux.
As for getting data off a broken system - if you boot with a Linux live CD or live USB you should be able to copy the data off the linux formatted drive. Not sure how well live CD's work with macs, but then it's a BSD system and should be easier than windows to get it to recognize different disk formats...?
My parents just got the WD TV Live hub and they really like it.
I'm running a 4 bay Drobo, currently with 8TB but can go up to 12TB's (4x 3TB drives) It's connected into my wireless network using an Apple Airport Express, the same as you would use for connecting a printer into the network.
It's running my iTunes library and more, currently have just over 2.5TB on it, and for me it works perfectly.
The thing I liked about the Drobo is that it was nothing to set up. Put the drives in, let it do the initialization and go. Because of the way it works I was able to hot swap a new drive in when an older one failed. What they call "beyond RAID" works well, in a bit more than a day and it had copied over segments to the new drive and I was back in full data protection mode.
I run Macs at home but also use it with my Windows work laptop