Cheap Home NAS

[Jack54]

I've been looking for a cheap NAS to dump files on that everyone on my network can access and backup to. I have a 2TB external drive I plan to use as a backup to the NAS. Looking for something with 2 bays and plan to throw in 2 2TB drives in raid 1.

Heres what I've got:
Linksys WRT54g
3 Laptops
PS3

Heres what I'm looking at:
D-LINK DNS-323 ~$130
Netgear RND2000 ~$200
Synology DS211J ~$222
QNAP TS-212 ~$271
Synology DS211 ~$340
QNAP TS-219P+ ~$377

I've been looking at just building one myself but I don't think it would be cheaper than the options listed above.

Also thinking of just grabbing a Netgear WNDR3700 and using the external drive as a NAS. I know it isn't the greatest solution but maybe it will do?

 

[stevech]

I'd vote for Synology DS211J and buy your own pair of disks - hand pick what you want.

Newegg's prices for the above are hard to beat. Currently the DS211J is $209.

The products in the list shown are apples-to-oranges, e.g., QNAP and Synology have great software for multimedia and many of the others don't.

Or just take an old PC with Windows, put some drives in it, make them shared on the LAN, and put file duping software on such as SecondCopy. Simple. Also avoids NAS issues related to file permissions to/from windows PCs and the NAS which is a Linux file system.

 

[Jack54]

2 of my machines run linux so that isn't an issue. I would actually prefer to build a nas but it would probably end up being twice the cost of just buying one. I'll defiantly look at the DS211J, Thanks.