I think I'm like some of the previous posters who have read many, many NAS guides and reviews (having never owned one before), including the one on this site, but am still very confused.
Here are the things that I'm generally looking for:
* I want to spend less than $600 on the NAS for a diskless model. I'm willing to pay more to buy multiple terabyte drives depending on the NAS capacity.
* My setup is as follows. My house has multiple rooms with PC's and TV's and an IP camera. They are connected via NetGear MoCa Coax solution, which I believe tops out at a theoretical 270 MB output. I'd like to put the NAS in one of our closets, which happens to have a coax line in it. The cable modem/router will be in a different room in my office.
* My first need is Media Server. I have a bunch of photos and home videos stored on many hard drives on my computer. Suffice to say, it eats a lot of power, so I don't want this PC on all of the time as my media server. I don't need to move everything off this PC to the NAS, but it'd be nice to move a lot of the video/photos. I'd like to be able to watch the video / photos from other TV and a PS3 in the house.
* The second must have is backup. I'd like to have a RAID mirror solution, so the backups are done automatically since right now I've been manually copying and burning what I want to save. (I don't need to generally backup other PC's on the network, so this would be an optional nice to have.)
* The third need is storage capacity. The videos take a lot of space. We have a baby, and we take a lot of HD videos. One hour of videos is about 16gigabytes. This adds up pretty fast.
* Good performance would really be nice. Since I'm streaming some HD content over coax, I'd like the NAS to be able to keep up.
* IP camera surveillance would be very nice to have. We currently have one IP camera, which we use to check out what the nanny is doing. Right now, we don't record any of it, but it would be really nice to have this ability. I think it's possible to do this without a NAS, but it'd be nice to do. Possibly, however, I can try to do this on the NAS without NAS software, so it's optional, but nice to have.
* The ablility to view the contents of the NAS over the internet (e.g., at work) with the proper security so that not everyone in the world could view it, would be really nice to have also.
* Bittorrent is nice to have. I do download, so it'd be nice to do this without having my power-hogging PC on all of the time to do this.
* FTP, Web Server, database are also nice to have, but lower on the list. I'm a bit of techie, so it'd be nice to play with these features, but I'm not sure I would use them all of the time. I'm somewhat techie (I've built my own PC's before), but I'm definitely not an expert where I'd be changing parameters from root, etc.
The main NAS that I've been eyeing is the Synology DS-710+, which has yet to be released. It is a 2 bay (diskless) for $567.99 on Amazon. One of the things that I'm most concerned about it, however, is that it is only 2 bays, so I'd be limited to 2TB (w/ the 2nd TB drive as the mirror). I have read that it is expandable using the DX-510, but that will probably cost another $500+ for the hardware. I'm not sure that's the smartest solution. Also, this NAS may possibly be overkill for what I need.
I've also been looking at the NetGear ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000. The 4-Bay (Diskless) is a *mere* $387.99 on Amazon. However, it seems to lack IP camera support, and some people have said that NetGear support is lacking. I've tried NetGear support, and it seems that you have to pay for any kind of phone support, which is a huge pain.
The other option that I've been considering is basically one of both Synology and NetGear. The Netgear ReadyNAS Duo RND2150 (2-bay with 1 500 GB drive included) is $201 on Amazon after rebate. I can always swap out the 500GB drive for TB ones. The Synology DS209 (2-bay diskless) is $305 on Amazon. So the total would be $506, which is still cheaper than the Synology DS-710+, with more space and the IP camera solution.
What do people think about this, and/or is there some other configuration or other products that would be recommended for what I want? Thanks!
Here are the things that I'm generally looking for:
* I want to spend less than $600 on the NAS for a diskless model. I'm willing to pay more to buy multiple terabyte drives depending on the NAS capacity.
* My setup is as follows. My house has multiple rooms with PC's and TV's and an IP camera. They are connected via NetGear MoCa Coax solution, which I believe tops out at a theoretical 270 MB output. I'd like to put the NAS in one of our closets, which happens to have a coax line in it. The cable modem/router will be in a different room in my office.
* My first need is Media Server. I have a bunch of photos and home videos stored on many hard drives on my computer. Suffice to say, it eats a lot of power, so I don't want this PC on all of the time as my media server. I don't need to move everything off this PC to the NAS, but it'd be nice to move a lot of the video/photos. I'd like to be able to watch the video / photos from other TV and a PS3 in the house.
* The second must have is backup. I'd like to have a RAID mirror solution, so the backups are done automatically since right now I've been manually copying and burning what I want to save. (I don't need to generally backup other PC's on the network, so this would be an optional nice to have.)
* The third need is storage capacity. The videos take a lot of space. We have a baby, and we take a lot of HD videos. One hour of videos is about 16gigabytes. This adds up pretty fast.
* Good performance would really be nice. Since I'm streaming some HD content over coax, I'd like the NAS to be able to keep up.
* IP camera surveillance would be very nice to have. We currently have one IP camera, which we use to check out what the nanny is doing. Right now, we don't record any of it, but it would be really nice to have this ability. I think it's possible to do this without a NAS, but it'd be nice to do. Possibly, however, I can try to do this on the NAS without NAS software, so it's optional, but nice to have.
* The ablility to view the contents of the NAS over the internet (e.g., at work) with the proper security so that not everyone in the world could view it, would be really nice to have also.
* Bittorrent is nice to have. I do download, so it'd be nice to do this without having my power-hogging PC on all of the time to do this.
* FTP, Web Server, database are also nice to have, but lower on the list. I'm a bit of techie, so it'd be nice to play with these features, but I'm not sure I would use them all of the time. I'm somewhat techie (I've built my own PC's before), but I'm definitely not an expert where I'd be changing parameters from root, etc.
The main NAS that I've been eyeing is the Synology DS-710+, which has yet to be released. It is a 2 bay (diskless) for $567.99 on Amazon. One of the things that I'm most concerned about it, however, is that it is only 2 bays, so I'd be limited to 2TB (w/ the 2nd TB drive as the mirror). I have read that it is expandable using the DX-510, but that will probably cost another $500+ for the hardware. I'm not sure that's the smartest solution. Also, this NAS may possibly be overkill for what I need.
I've also been looking at the NetGear ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000. The 4-Bay (Diskless) is a *mere* $387.99 on Amazon. However, it seems to lack IP camera support, and some people have said that NetGear support is lacking. I've tried NetGear support, and it seems that you have to pay for any kind of phone support, which is a huge pain.
The other option that I've been considering is basically one of both Synology and NetGear. The Netgear ReadyNAS Duo RND2150 (2-bay with 1 500 GB drive included) is $201 on Amazon after rebate. I can always swap out the 500GB drive for TB ones. The Synology DS209 (2-bay diskless) is $305 on Amazon. So the total would be $506, which is still cheaper than the Synology DS-710+, with more space and the IP camera solution.
What do people think about this, and/or is there some other configuration or other products that would be recommended for what I want? Thanks!
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