4 Bay NAS for home

[D3xt3r]

Hello

between all the different NAS solutions my head is spinning like crazy and I hope you guys can perhabs give me some help. At the moment I use a bunch of external USB drives that sometimes I plug into my PC and sometimes into my HTPC a Mac Mini. But now I would like to consolidate everything and just have all the storage in one room and accesable in the whole network. I would like to put in four 1TB drives I have currently in the external stuff and perhabs install bigger ones in the future. The NAS will be connected to my GBit/Wifi-N equiped router and should stream the movies and other stuff to my Mac Mini through the Wifi-N. It doesnt need any transcoding or other stuff as the Mac will do that. I just hope the Wifi-N will cope with 1080p movies in mkv.

Stuff thats important for me:

- real quiet in use and idle because it will be running 24/7
- low power consumption
- Client for Usenet nzb on board or installable
- Place for four SATA drives in either single configuration or a RAID5 havent decided yet


Nice to have stuff would be:
- Itunes Server
- Image Server that will support RAW files

What I found so far would be these stuff around the 300$ I set myself:

Buffalo Linkstation Quad 1TB (remove the 250GB drives for 1TB ones)
Synology CS-407e
Promise NS4300N

Anybody got experience with those or other models that I should look into?

I also looked into a Drobo and then hook that up to the Mac Mini that will then provide it to the network but costs somewhat scared me away because if I want to download stuff I still have to have the mini running or shell out another bunch of cash for the drobo web share.

Thanks

 

[thiggins]

I wouldn't recommend the Promise NS4300N because it's too noisy. Check this thread for other user comments.

Buffalo NASes are not BYOD. You may run into problems replacing the drives themselves with larger drives.

The Synology CS407e is an older product, but could be suitable for your needs.

I don't know of any NAS that supports your "Client for Usenet nzb" requirement.

BTW, I have yet to find a wireless product that will support glitch-free HD streaming, even draft 11n, through even a few walls.

 

[D3xt3r]

It doesnt even need to go through a wall its like 5m from router to TV there is just some doors and stuff in the way that would make laying a CAT5 pretty ugly.

 

[D3xt3r]

Looking around I found some other stuff today.

Acer Aspire NAS Box
Acer H340 Homeserver

Or mod a intel ss4200 to run linux or the WHS software.