Please help me decide

[EONVirus]

Hello All,

New member here. I am looking into purchasing a 2 bay NAS and am having trouble deciding. I used to use a Galaxy METAL GEAR 3500MGB, until it died a horrible death. I now have 2 WD 320GB drives formatted for EXT3 (originally used in RAID-1) with loads of data. I know I will have to re-format to use these drives in a new system.

Here are the contestants:

• Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220

• D-Link DNS-321

• Netgear ReadyNAS Duo (Diskless)

• ---- YOUR SUGGESTION HERE ----

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Matt

 

[thiggins]

What are the key features you're looking for in a NAS?

 

[EONVirus]

Hi Tim,

Basically I have a home office for a web design business. All total, there are currenly 4 computers, all PC in the house. We want a central location for music, photos, project information and documents so they aren't just stored across all the computers.

Ulitmately, I would love something more than a RAID-1 solution, perhaps RAID-10, but that will have to wait until the economy improves. Expandibility would be nice, but not a mjor requirement. And, I suppose th ability to perform a backup to a portable drive would be nice.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the info.

I'm assuming you have a Gigabit LAN, which you'll need to take advantage of the speeds that all three candidates can provide.

Your needs (centralized file storage and sharing) are very simple and any of the three products would do fine.

Don't be lured into a false sense of security about RAID. RAID is not backup. (
Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID)

If your primary storage is going to be on the NAS, then you should back it up. The DNS-321 doesn't provide that capability.

Between the Duo and BlackArmor, the Duo has the most flexible backup options both to and from it, but it's slower. Since it comes driveless, the Duo will also be easier to deal with when a drive eventually fails.

 

[EONVirus]

Hi Tim,

Thank you for your information, it is really helpful. Beyond the three systems I mentioned, do you have any additional system recommendations?

Thank you,
Matt