Best NAS Drives??

**mcquaim** · 14-01-12, 16:49

Hi folks,

I have an Iomega 2TB NAS drive and it is good but not great.

Some drawbacks are:
1. Poor management software.
2. Slow to transfer from Windows.
3. Can only FTP into one folder.

I am curious what others are using and what is good/bad about them!

Cheers,
mcquaim

**silverfox0786** · 14-01-12, 17:50

I've owned a QNAP and now own a Synology which i got before xmas 11

i must admid both have been awsome

and would recomend either one

i loved my QNAP but it was a 2 bay so i brought a 4 bay and decided to try out the Synology and will say very very pleased

so in my opinion and if you can afford it a Synology would be my first choice then would be a QNAP

My Synology is a DS411j and with 4x 3TB Drives set me back £850 but worth every penny

**silverfox0786** · 14-01-12, 17:53

Oh also to add

both QNAP and Synology have WEB HOSTING, EMAIL HOSTING, they can install pakages like sabnzb,sickbeard,couch potato, transmition etc.

and the synology even has iphone/android management apps

full windows,linuix,appple file protocols and work a dream to share on VIX

also it has a great FTP protocol and is gigabit lan as standard

**mcquaim** · 14-01-12, 18:33

Man, that is a hell of a lot of storage and a hell of a lot of dosh...

What kind of transfer speeds would you achieve from drag & drop from pc to synology, ignore ftp?

My Netgear router and the Iomega NAS are both supposed to be Gigabit all wired together with CAT6 cable and my transfer speeds are just not great. I would have expected much better after forking out the extra cash...

**silverfox0786** · 14-01-12, 18:37

yeah it ended up costing more than i expected as i wanted 3tb and though oh well might as well so 4x3TB cost me £600 alone £150 each plu steh NAS empty at £250

its a bit of those situation swhere my mum yesterday got a new gas fire that needs a gas safe engineer to fit it

the fire cost £105 and the engineer quoted me £250 to install

but me and my delboy ways he commming on monday to install for £100

here is the performance chart for my DS411j

Code:

http://www.synology.com/products/per...lang=us#tabs-3

**mcquaim** · 14-01-12, 18:55

Would you actually achieve those speeds?

The Iomega was supposed to support high transfer speeds but be lucky to get 7-8 megs per sec. FTP achieves better speeds but that is limited to one folder in the management software (which is terrible..)

**silverfox0786** · 14-01-12, 19:01

those are propper bentchmark tests and i pretty much get close to em on mine

and i am able to tranfer to as many locations as i want its got a pretty good multitasking protocol

**mcquaim** · 14-01-12, 19:09

Cheers for the info, a bit costly but if your getting those speeds then prob worth it..

Anyone else any good alternatives?

**Stanman** · 14-01-12, 23:19

Netgear Readynas Duo, good cost effective solution. They sometimes do a promotion with free HDD.

**punisher** · 14-01-12, 23:22

Yeh im thinking of getting the ultra version of the netgear nas

**mcquaim** · 14-01-12, 23:28

Cheers, I read some reviews saying this NAS lacked ram??

I read something earlier about the synology NAS having some bug with it attempting to generate thumbs for every photo you stick on it resulting in hours to complete! This the case?

**silverfox0786** · 14-01-12, 23:33

Originally Posted by mcquaim

I read something earlier about the synology NAS having some bug with it attempting to generate thumbs for every photo you stick on it resulting in hours to complete! This the case?

i dont think its a bug just thumbs take time

i had over 7000 photos and it did i admit take a week to do but i was able to pause it at any time and let it continue later and now that its done thats it dont need to do it any more

its only a one shot deal on creating thimbs for pictures

from there if you add a pic or 2 at a time then you wont even notice it doing the thumbs

**Maxwell** · 14-01-12, 23:51

HP Proliant Microserver N40L. £240 but with £100 cashback if the offer is still on, I have mine fitted with 4 3Tb drives plus the 250Gb drive that it is supplied with for the OS, Im running Windows Home Server 2011, with Flexraid setup as a drive pool and Snapshot Raid config,
i have a gigabit network and can copy a full 50Gb bluray rip accross the network in about 8 minutes.

Here is a couple of my speed tests the first one is before setting up the drivepool and raid, the second is just after.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 74.968 MB/s
Sequential Write : 71.879 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 23.571 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 37.166 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.273 MB/s [ 66.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.624 MB/s [ 152.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.725 MB/s [ 177.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.621 MB/s [ 151.7 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 61.8% (174.9/283.0 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/12/19 16:22:55
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 86.438 MB/s
Sequential Write : 69.761 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 98.531 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 51.635 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 5.915 MB/s [ 1444.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.185 MB/s [ 289.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 48.526 MB/s [ 11847.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.407 MB/s [ 343.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [Z: 0.0% (0.6/8383.4 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/12/21 20:04:19
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

These test were run from an older laptop that is bottlenecked by the hdd read speed.

**silverfox0786** · 14-01-12, 23:55

thats a pretty nice setup max

have you tried installing freenas to it

might be an idea

**Maxwell** · 15-01-12, 00:06

yes tried freenas but its not as flexible as WHS 2011 and Flexraid, I have the usual suspects running, SAB etc setup to run without the need to log in, I am also running PS3 media server on it for the 3 PS3's and Xbox we have upstairs, music,dvd and blurays are served up to the living room via a popcorn hour c200 and in the case of music direct to my AVR as well
Am thinking of getting rid of the snapshot raid and just using the Flexraid as a drive pooler which will increase my transfer speeds further but I dont want to max out the network.
Flexraid is free by the way and runs with a variety of OS's

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