NAS comparison - lack of info

[bumsf]

I am considering buying a 1TB NAS, and I saw that Buffalo Linkstation Pro LS-XHL seems promising. I also like the Synology and QNAP drives.

I need the NAS for home use: storing media (photos, music, video, etc) and accessing it from different computers in the home and possibly some media server attached to the TV in the future. Also I would like the ability to access the data remotely when away. I use both Mac and Windows. I also plan to attach a USB drive or otherwise perform scheduled backups.

The buffalo drive seems a lot cheaper than buying a Synology DS-107+ for example with a 1 TB drive. However I cannot figure out what the Buffalo drive is lacking as the Buffalo website is not as complete as listing the feature as Synology and QNAP.

Can someone with experience with these brands advice?

 

[thiggins]

If a product has the features that you want, don't worry about what it doesn't have. Buffalo makes good NASes that are attractively priced. Synology (and QNAP) focus more on NASes that have more general purpose server features and charge a premium price for the extra features.

 

[gquiring]

I am not sure about the other brands but I would not recommend a Buffalo because they install the boot on the hard drives instead of flash ram. I recently bought a LS QUAD and wanted to use my own disks. Each drive had to be swapped one at a time and do a rebuild. When it was all done the RAID was not smart enough to bump the size up requiring a rebuild of the entire array. All tolled 40 hours to swap in the 1TB drives.

 

[thiggins]

Buffalo isn't unique in installing the boot partition on the hard drive. It is common practice for diskful NASes.

 

[gquiring]

Buffalo isn't unique in installing the boot partition on the hard drive. It is common practice for diskful NASes.

Do the other brands at least offer a way to install the boot on bare drives?

 

[thiggins]

Actually, I think Buffalo provides a program if you contact their Support. I don't think WD or Iomega do.

 

[gquiring]

Actually, I think Buffalo provides a program if you contact their Support. I don't think WD or Iomega do.

They do not. I was told by Buffalo support the only way to use my own drives was the swap one at a time technique. The TFTP can install the boot but it does not offer a way to format the drive to their liking. There are many threads on their forum complaining about this.

 

[thiggins]

Well, to be fair, Buffalo does not advertise the Quad (or any of their NASes) as BYOD, or say they support RAID expansion or migration...

 

[gquiring]

Well, to be fair, Buffalo does not advertise the Quad (or any of their NASes) as BYOD, or say they support RAID expansion or migration...

They don't say you can't do it either which is equally frustrating. But what they won't answer is what happens if you have RAID 5 and loose two drives? Will it still boot? My worry is if you really have a disaster and loose two drives there may be no way to revive the NAS except by buying their drives.

 

[thiggins]

But what they won't answer is what happens if you have RAID 5 and loose two drives? Will it still boot?

That's why I recommend sticking with RAID 1 at most and preferably single-drive NASes that can rsync to another.
Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID

I'll see if I can get an answer from Buffalo about this.

 

[thiggins]

Buffalo confirmed that the Quad does not support RAID expansion. So if you swap in higher-capacity drives, you need to re-create the array.

They said that the Quad will boot if two drives fail, but the data will be gone.

Finally, they said they said that user replacement of drives voids the warranty.

 

[gquiring]

Buffalo confirmed that the Quad does not support RAID expansion. So if you swap in higher-capacity drives, you need to re-create the array.

They said that the Quad will boot if two drives fail, but the data will be gone.

Finally, they said they said that user replacement of drives voids the warranty.

Yeah they stressed the warranty non-sense to me also. Bad policy IMHO. It's a home product and should be considered more friendly to geeks wanting to play with it. After seeing where it falls on the benchmarks they did not do a great job. The web interface is also not very fast. I think the TheCus N4100 looks like a much better product for about the same price.

 

[Osamede]

Buffalo isn't unique in installing the boot partition on the hard drive. It is common practice for diskful NASes.

This is true - strange as well since they could quite easily stick the OS on a small internal flash card or other solid state storage. At small sizes, these things are quite cheap these days..

 

[jeffla]

I bought the Buffalo Linkstation Pro LS-XHL and couldn't be happier. I initially considered Synology and QNAP but their cost was prohibitive. For the 236.09 I paid Techonweb.com, I felt it was worth the risk. If I didn't like it I could probably sell it for 200.00 used and not be out too much, but I liked it, I got a nice nas for cheap.

I can't compare it to much, but it is faster than my Coolmax cn-350 was by far and faster than my XP maching that was serving (wirelessly) my media up after the 350 died.


Jeff