New NAS Couple of Questions

[travisco_nabisco]

My Iomega ix2-200 has had a hard drive crash twice in the last year, the rebuild has gone fine with no issues, but I have decided it is time to upgrade to something a bit easier to manage.

Before anyone chimes in, all the data is fully backed up to an external HDD regularly.

I feel a bit odd posting for advice here, I am more than happy to give out advice but when it comes to purchasing another opinion is appreciated.

I was considering a couple of the Thecus products, specifically:
Thecus N2200EVO
Thecus N4100EVO

Looking at reviews for these the performance seems very sub-par and I am wondering if anyone has experience with either of these models.

The third option is the Synology Disk Station DS212J. I have used the Synology DSM and am very impressed with it but feel that it offers a of glamour for things that shouldn't need to be done very often, and am not sure if the performance will be adequate going forward.

The final option is a QNAP TS-212. I have heard good things about them and their online web demo seems to put the features on par with Synology.

Currently my NAS is used as a media server and third copy of important files. I use an external HDD for full backups of important data.

One laptop, a PS3, and a few tablets and smart phones are used to access it, though rarely more than one at a time.

I would like to be able to have the NAS automatically check an RSS feed and start downloads if possible.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[thiggins]

What are you looking for for performance?

For your uses, except for the auto download feature, a simple NAS like the WD My Book Live Duo or ZyXEL NSA-325 might do you just fine.

 

[travisco_nabisco]

I don't have a set target for performance but would like the option of using iSCSI for a virtual machine in the future.

My main goal is better performance than the ix2-200 provided. I realize that any of the options would provide better transfer speeds, specifically for file reads and directory copy operations.

Currently I can get the ZyXEL you mentioned for the same price as the QNAP. The ZyXEL has the USB 3.0 and appears to perform around 15% better across the board from the performance charts.

I do not like that it doesn't sent emails about disk failures, if I didn't have that notification from my current NAS I could be in a bit more difficult of a position.

I have found some information about getting Transmission running on a ZyXEL device, but no luck finding out if anyone has been able to configure FlexGet.

From a bit more research it looks like I am between the ZyXEL, mostly due to the USB 3.0 port, and the QNAP.

I can get them for the same price, however the QNAP is from a retailer that will most likely be much faster shipping.

May come down to a flip of the coin.

 

[stevech]

I'm pleased with my DS212 with its USB3, and DSM 4.0 software. I'd wait a while before going to DSM 4.1.
No glitches since I've owned it. Setup with 2 volumes rather than RAID. Use Time Machine for backups.

 

[travisco_nabisco]

Well after all of that I went with the Synology DS212J.

The reason is that the retailer I bought from was offering the WD 2TB Red drives at a discounted rate with the NAS purchase. This caused all three options to be within $5 once the hard drives and shipping were added in. Since I am already familiar with Synology DSM I went with that.

Ordered this morning and it already shipped, I may even get it before the weekend!!

 

[stevech]

If it comes with DSM 4.1 rather than 4.0.. I'd like to know. Synology forum is topic area has users complaining that 4.1 went out of beta with too many bugs. But, maybe not. I've stayed with 4.0 due to all this, for now. And 4.0 has been trouble free.

Retailer was? (if you don't mind saying)

 

[travisco_nabisco]

I got it from NCIX Canada. They are offering the WD Red's at
1TB - $75
2TB - $105
3TB - $150

with the purchase of specific NAS units.

 

[travisco_nabisco]

Just started setting up the NAS last night and discovered it still shipped with DSM 4.0.

Based on the recommendations made here I am not going to upgrade to 4.1 yet.