Need some help choosing consumer NAS

[Nixlimited]

So I posted most of this in another discussion, but it was admittedly off topic to that post.

Briefly, my need for a NAS is primarily for home movie storage to be streamed to things like the Popcorn Hour and perhaps the Netgear EVA9150 in the future. I like to archive my DVDs as .iso so they take up a lot of room and require a fairly high bandwidth to stream fluidly. The AFP protocol is a preference because I run all Mac computers. Likewise, Time Machine is a perk for the same reason, but not that necessary--I already have USB drives and offsite back-up.

Right now my capacity need is about 2.5TB, but it is growing rapidly as I digitize my DVD collection. Thus, I had thought a 4-disc NAS would be good, but a 5-disc is probably better since I plan to run RAID-5.

Given that, I have been looking at the ReadyNas NV+, ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer, Synology DS509+, and the QNAP TS-509 pro. I have read all of the relevant reviews (sans the DS509+ because that is just coming out), but don't have the expertise to separate the wheat from the chaff regarding features I need/should pay a premium for.

One specific question I have is: if the NV+ is not readable by most linux systems (because of a modified ext3 disc system), does that means something like my Popcorn Hour (video streamer) will not be able to read files off it? If so, that would be the end of my consideration for the NV+.

Also, though I have done some cursory reading about it, what if any benefit would iSCSI be to me?

 

[thiggins]

Supporting throughput for a single HD stream isn't a problem for virtually any current-design NAS. You need around 20 - 30 Mbits/sec to handle peak bandwith, which is only 2.5 to around 4 MBytes/sec. Check the charts. Any can do that.

With the QNAP and Synology, you are paying for server features you don't want/ need. The Pro Pioneer is probably overkill on cost, but might be a fit if you see expanding to use six drives. The NV+ is an old design and the slowest of the bunch, but a relatively good deal, pricewise.

You don't need to worry about internal drive format on any NAS unless you would be trying to do data recovery on a failed array by mounting the drive on a Linux system. That is reasonable to try with RAID 1, but forget it for RAID 5.

All NASes support SMB/CIFS, which is the network filesystem that is most widely supported for reading/writing data over the network.

iSCSI will have no benefit to you unless you want to try to build a pseudo-SAN (Storage Area Network).

 

[Nixlimited]

Supporting throughput for a single HD stream isn't a problem for virtually any current-design NAS. You need around 20 - 30 Mbits/sec to handle peak bandwith, which is only 2.5 to around 4 MBytes/sec. Check the charts. Any can do that.

With the QNAP and Synology, you are paying for server features you don't want/ need. The Pro Pioneer is probably overkill on cost, but might be a fit if you see expanding to use six drives. The NV+ is an old design and the slowest of the bunch, but a relatively good deal, pricewise.

You don't need to worry about internal drive format on any NAS unless you would be trying to do data recovery on a failed array by mounting the drive on a Linux system. That is reasonable to try with RAID 1, but forget it for RAID 5.

All NASes support SMB/CIFS, which is the network filesystem that is most widely supported for reading/writing data over the network.

iSCSI will have no benefit to you unless you want to try to build a pseudo-SAN (Storage Area Network).

Thanks very much. So perhaps the NV+ is worth looking into because of its steep discount. The real question is whether it will scale with my data needs. I guess with 2TB drives becoming more common, it should. Do you know if you can upgrade one drive at a time in terms of size? I.e. if I had 4 1TB drives, could I swap one for a 1.5TB drive at a time?

Also, regarding the protocols, are you saying I will not have any issue using SMB with the Macs? I had heard or read at some point that AFP was faster/better.

 

[beisser]

you can swap one drive at a time, but the capacity will only expand if you have replaced all 4 drives.

 

[thiggins]

Also, regarding the protocols, are you saying I will not have any issue using SMB with the Macs? I had heard or read at some point that AFP was faster/better.

Mac OS X should work just fine with SMB. I don't know enough to comment on AFP vs. SMB.

 

[Nixlimited]

you can swap one drive at a time, but the capacity will only expand if you have replaced all 4 drives.

Then what's the point of swapping a drive (other than for failure)?

 

[thiggins]

The point is that you can expand storage without having to back up all your data to another device, change drives, rebuild a RAID array, then copy your data back.

If you have a large array, the above could be faster than doing live RAID expansion. But if you don't have a second drive of large-enough capacity, then RAID expansion is an attractive alternative.