Buy NAS or Build

[travisco_nabisco]

I am currently researching a NAS for my house. The primary tasks of the NAS will be:
1. Central storage for photos, music and video.
2. Serve video and music to my PS3 via a physical network connection.
3. Backup to an attached external HDD.
4. Have a build-in BitTorrent client with RSS feed and smart filtering of downloads.

I don't need specific accounts for each user, though it would not be a bad thing to have.
At most there will be three devices at a time needing files from the NAS with 1 or 2 being the normal load case.
So far I have been limiting myself to 2 drive NAS units and capacity isn't a huge concern, especially if I get one of the BYOD NASes.
Price one the drives are populated should be below $500.

My current options are a bit scattered due to my uncertainty in the BitTorrent needs.
1. DLink DNS-323
2. Synology Disk Station (DS207+)
3. HP Storageworks Media Vault Pro MV2040 1TB
4. Build my own, probably on a VIA ITX board.

 

[fry]

I am currently researching a NAS for my house. The primary tasks of the NAS will be:
1. Central storage for photos, music and video.
2. Serve video and music to my PS3 via a physical network connection.
3. Backup to an attached external HDD.
4. Have a build-in BitTorrent client with RSS feed and smart filtering of downloads.

I don't need specific accounts for each user, though it would not be a bad thing to have.
At most there will be three devices at a time needing files from the NAS with 1 or 2 being the normal load case.
So far I have been limiting myself to 2 drive NAS units and capacity isn't a huge concern, especially if I get one of the BYOD NASes.
Price one the drives are populated should be below $500.

My current options are a bit scattered due to my uncertainty in the BitTorrent needs.
1. DLink DNS-323
2. Synology Disk Station (DS207+)
3. HP Storageworks Media Vault Pro MV2040 1TB
4. Build my own, probably on a VIA ITX board.

How'd you go with this mate? I'm also contemplating this but can't make a decision on what.

 

[travisco_nabisco]

I actually ended up going for something that wasn't even on my initial list. I got an Iomega Storecenter ix200.

I went for this one because I found a thread here that was discussing how to install TransmissionBT and RSS feeds on the Storecenter for fully automated torrent downloads. When I looked around I found that the 2TB model (2 x 1TB redundant) was cheaper than the Synology DS 207+ once hard drives were added in.

I've had it set up for about a month now and have torrents downloading automatically when they are published to the RSS feed. Over all transfer speeds are good. Streaming to the PS3 is much better than it was when I streamed from my laptop. I found an added bonus with this, I now have an easily accessible always on USB port for charging my MP3 player.

The one downside to this box is that the HDDs are quite loud. You get used to it, but they make a noticeable noise.