Newbie wants advice on NAS or Not to NAS

[drgrafix]

I found this forum and I'm hoping that someone will take a minute or two and give me some advice... I am not a PHD or an EE, just a guy with an idea.

OK, so I'm a retiree Graphics/Industrial Designer. My primary machine is a iMAC, but I have a a couple of pcs here at home that are on my network. One is my wife's HP Pavilion running XP, another is a little Shuttle 61 P4 workstation with Vista, and of course I have a macbook as well that moves around the house. I'm using am Apple Airport Extreme, and my cable modem is a Motorola Surfboard DOCIS 3.0, and my switch is a 3Com OfficeConnect. That's it. I have a 1TB Lacie FW800 hooked directly up to my iMac, and rather than overload the USB lines, I've been wondering about network storage where we can all access stored/shared files in the house. And, I'm looking for a low-budget solution so cost is a big factor.

My main question is whether something like a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo would be useable? Questions I have are:

1. Can a device like the ReadyNAS Duo use two 1.5 TB drives to give me 3 TB of total storage space or is it only 1.5TB RAID with the 2 drives?
2. Do all NAS type products with multiple bays only work with RAID setups?
3. Would it make sense to add more memory to a device like the RN Duo?
4. Will I be able to stream video files from the NAS device to my AppleTV?
5. What format is used on the drive(s) inside the NAS and is that important?
6. Can the ReadyNAS Duo be used like a Print Server and allow my wife to print from her PC two flights upstairs?

Thanks in advance for the help and advice.

 

[teknojnky]

1) yes using 'flex-raid' mode, but by default it uses x-raid which will mirror the drives and is expandable. Flex-raid mode is not expandable, and using raid-0 to combine both drives into 3tb is not redundant, meaning that if either drive fails you will lose all data on the volume. If you do this, you should ensure that you always have up to date backups.

2) I would expect so, but there are a variety of raid modes and implementations. Most should let you set up separate volumes for each drive if thats what your asking, individual raid-0 volumes, but you do not get a single large volume when doing this.

3) duo comes with 256 ram and a low power sparc cpu. If you just plan to use for basic file sharing it should be sufficient. If you intend to run additional addons (dlna, firefly itunes streaming, etc) then extra ram can be helpful. You should be aware up front, that while the duo can perform these additional tasks, the performance can be pretty slow due to the low powered nature of the cpu.

4) I believe you can using the firefly itunes streaming, assuming your content is compatible with atv, but see comment 3.

5) readynas are linux based devices, the duo/nv+ use the same low power sparc cpu and ext3 filesystems, but not something you can just take out and plug in to a PC without a bit of linux knowledge and the right software (although you can if you do have it).

6) yes, assuming the printer is compatible. You would need to check the compatibility list and/or provide more details and probably ask on the readynas forums.


Personally, I would suggest you wait for the 'ultra2' to be released, which uses a much more modern and powerful x86 atom based cpu. But I assume it will also have a bit more cost premium.

I have 3 readynas, including an nv+, ultra 4, and pro business. The nv+ is very solid and dependable, but it is no race horse. The ultra4 & pro are much faster and you can run more addons with little to no affect on performance.

 

[drgrafix]

Thanks for the feedback. How far out is the 2nd gen you're talking about? I have read tons of user reviews on these boxes and many people are roughly doing what I wanted to do, but nobody mentioned just using it for bulk storage. I do have FW800 and USB 2.0 external drives, but I'm not liking the idea of adding more desktop clutter with additional individual external drives and cables. The home-NAS concept sounds more appealing, but maybe its not ready for prime-time.

Many users have upgraded the memory to 1 Gig and say it helps, but obviously the CPU is a BIG factor. I guess my real goal is to stream some of my movies and pictures from the ATV unit which only has a 40 Gig HDD. I've never looked into the possibility of swapping out the ATV's HDD with something bigger... that might be an alternative as well. But I would like to be able to share pictures and stuff throughout my home network... especially graphics files created on one OS (like Windows7/XP or Mac OSX) that are going back and forth for work in different programs.

 

[thiggins]

I have a 1TB Lacie FW800 hooked directly up to my iMac, and rather than overload the USB lines, I've been wondering about network storage where we can all access stored/shared files in the house. And, I'm looking for a low-budget solution so cost is a big factor.

What do you mean "overload the USB lines"? What problem are you trying to solve? Speed, capacity or both?

1. Can a device like the ReadyNAS Duo use two 1.5 TB drives to give me 3 TB of total storage space or is it only 1.5TB RAID with the 2 drives?

As teknojnky said, you have to reconfigure the Duo from its factory settings and use RAID 0. But if one drive fails you lose everything.

2. Do all NAS type products with multiple bays only work with RAID setups?

No. Most support JBOD, which combines all the drives into one virtual volume. But again, one drive failure and you lose everything. QNAP and Synology NASes let you configure each drive as a separate volume. So if one drive goes, you lose only what is on it.

3. Would it make sense to add more memory to a device like the RN Duo?

Generally no. This can help only for small file sizes. I doubt if you would see a big difference, especially for streaming.

4. Will I be able to stream video files from the NAS device to my AppleTV?

If the Apple TV can play from a network share or UPnP AV / DLNA server, yes.

5. What format is used on the drive(s) inside the NAS and is that important?

This varies from device to device but is usually a Linux or other open source file system like EXT3, XFS, etc. What matters is the network file system supported and all NASes and modern OSes support SMB/CIFS.

6. Can the ReadyNAS Duo be used like a Print Server and allow my wife to print from her PC two flights upstairs?

teknojnky's answer is correct.

The Duo is a dated design at this point. But its speed is fine for HD streaming as long as you're doing just one stream.

Consumer NASes have been around for years. But like any tech, they have a learning curve.