I need a NAS and don't know which one to get

[maxcavalli72]

I have 2 laptops and a PC at home. I mainly store pictures, music, videos etc. I have been looking at getting a NAS for storage as I currently store everything more than twice, i would like to make the data accessible and shareable to all users, I have also read that NAS allows users to access data from anywhere in the world. I do understand some of the technospeak but not enough. I am looking for a 1TB size NAS with Ehternet and USB capabilities. Also I want to be able to share a printer. I have looked at many products from LaCie to Synology to Buffalo. Not quite sure what to pick. I would like to keep on a budget of max 200 GBP if possible.

Can you help?
Thanks
Max

 

[scotty]

None of your requirements are particularly special, so just about any unit should do the trick for you. As far as 'being able to access the data from anywhere in the world' - that's typically referring to FTP ability, so you can use the NAS as a little FTP server, hence you can get at your files from anywhere outside your network. As such, you can probably pick a pretty basic NAS and they should do the trick for you just fine.

 

[maxcavalli72]

hi scotty thanks. Is it better to buy and enclosure and drive as opposed to a ready built unit. Was looking at Synology DS108J + a Seagate 1Tb or go for something like a Lacie Disk mini? Or is there anything else better out there?

 

[boggsie]

hi scotty thanks. Is it better to buy and enclosure and drive as opposed to a ready built unit. Was looking at Synology DS108J + a Seagate 1Tb or go for something like a Lacie Disk mini? Or is there anything else better out there?

I've been reading a bunch over the past few days and the concensus is that if you want turn-key, then get a complete unit. However, if you like to tweak and want options if the drive happens to go bad, then source the unit and the drive separately, while obviously keeping drive case compatability in mind.

Best regards,
-boggsie

 

[Chris]

Your requirements are almost identical to mine. I went through an exhaustive search reading this website's reviews and browsing the forums before arriving at the decision to purchase a Buffalo Linkstation Live LS-CHL 1 TB. I was looking for a USB 2.0 port to allow me to backup the NAS to an external drive for offsite storage. As it turns out, I made a HUGE mistake purchasing this drive. It took 18 hours to transfer 230 GB from an external USB drive to the Linkstation. When I contacted Buffalo about this, I received the reply below.

Unfortunately, the LinkStation products are a little on the slow side compared
to a direct transfer from PC to PC or from a PC to a USB disk.

Usually 1GB of data will take about 3 to 5 minutes to transfer. Assuming 3
minutes which would be the absolute fastest, it would be a nearly 12 hour
transfer. At 5 minutes/gig it would take about 19.

The speeds you are seeing are about normal for this particular device.

I cannot wait several days for a 1 TB drive to backup to an external drive.

So if you plan to utilize the USB for something other than a print server, look elsewhere.

 

[Chris]

Here's a follow up email from Buffalo.

This is a limitation you are likely to see across most manufacturer's consumer
level NAS drives. Due to the small form-factor on these devices the bottleneck
tends to be the processors and small memory configurations. If you're looking
for a NAS with full USB2.0 transfer speeds, you are most likely going to want
to avoid consumer end products and go to the SOHO or Enterprise end units.