NAS recommendations?

[Obiron]

As a slight deviation from all the new PC threads (which have been very helpful, I'm close to building my second PC thanks to all the good advice) I'm coming to you for advice on my first NAS. It's actually not for myself, but for my friend's mom. She has her own accounting business at home but has no external backup if her PCs (2 PC business) ever get stolen/fried/etc. For such a small business, I'm thinking just a 500GB-1TB RAID 1 NAS would be perfect. So my question is, buy a prebuilt NAS from newegg or buy one of their barebones systems and put one together? The main reason I'm considering building one is that I'm looking to install a Linux platform (FreeNAS or Open Filer) and I'm not seeing a NAS with a built in CD Drive. Maybe just installing from a USB CD drive would be best?

Any recommendations/ experiences would be greatly appreciated as this is my first venture into a NAS solution.

[Ohemgee]

Illmatic
It was written
and Stillamtic for starters.

D:

[Cephius]

Illmatic
It was written
and Stillamtic for starters.

D:

>_> He's not talking about hip-hop music!

ANYWAY

If you're only backing up 2 PCs, a NAS is a waste of money IMO. It'll run you a lot of money, you're better off just buying 2 500GB external hard drives and making that your backup destination. You'll save a good chunk of money that way. Just to answer your question though, it's a better experience to buy a NAS enclosure and add the drives yourself.

[Obiron]

I think I'll stick with the data storage type of NAS lol.

I actually have thought about just doing external drives, but she wants something she can put in a separate room. Kind of protection against theft (not exactly a bad neighborhood, but within a few blocks of some pretty seedy places). If someone were to break in and steal her PCs she would lose it all, but hopefully by having the backup in another room it would go untouched. Also, at the moment I don't believe they have any file sharing set up between the two PCs, so I would map a network drive to the NAS. So I guess I'm not necessarily looking to only backup the drives, but really to move as many files as we can to a more secure location (back to the theft scenario, the less files on the PCs, the less customer data that would fall into someone else's hands).

[Obiron]

Double post time. Been spending some time on newegg, popping back in to show what I've been finding so far in the way of building my own. Open to feedback (trying to keep it simple since it's only for storage, but please point out if I overlook something important).

Case:
MSI MBOX G31M3-F Intel Socket T(LGA775) Intel G31 Black Barebone
Bigger than I really need, but a great price and expandable if there is ever any need.

Processor:
Intel Celeron E1200 1.6GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
Simple, cheap, not sure I would need anything more powerful than this.

Memory:
OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
$13.99 after rebate lol. :D

HDDs:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Two of these.

CD:
LITE-ON Black 52X IDE CD-ROM Drive
Nothing fancy, just rounding out the list. Only needed for initial OS install, and if I ever need to boot from the CD to repair stuff.

Total: $327.94 after rebate. Is that too much to pay for what I'm looking to do? Or too little? Obviously I've tried to keep it simple, but I want to make sure it's done right so that this is a reliable solution.

[Zigma]

just get a drobo.

[Zosi]

Drobo looks kinda cool, basically an easy-to-use external enclosure with some strange variety of built-in RAID that can handle drives with varying sizes. Little pricey though, $500 for the enclosure and another $200 for the NAS capabilities as a seperate box, and that's without any drives.

[Darus Grey]

I have several Drobos and would recommend them for the price, the price difference would make it-self up over electricity over 2yrs, the setup you listed above would be quite expensive to leave on all year.

Plus I like computer appliances that are just set it and forget it in terms of ease-of-use.

[Cephius]

You don't really need the CD drive do you? I thought FreeNAS could be configured to boot off a USB stick.

[Bardicrune]

My company sells and supports this NAS device series by Netgear:

ReadyNAS NV+ - NETGEAR.com

We have had VERY few problems with them. The unit is extremely configurable. I do recommend that if you decide to go with the netgear, pick one with 4HDD's as it will be more redundant. If one HDD fails, your data will still be accessible (X-RAID or RAID5 config). The X-RAID array type allows for on the fly HDD upgrades. You replace each HDD one at a time with a larger capacity drive and once the last one is replaced, it automatically expands the array to include the new storage space.

[Killgannon]

i have a buffalo NAS a linkstation pro duo... it has 2 500GB drives in it in raid 0 (though you can set it to raid1 if you want) its flaky at times, but generally works very well, it has gigabit built in too...

Buffalo Technology - Products - LinkStation Pro Duo™

[Obiron]

I don't know exactly how much my friend's mom is willing to spend, but some of these suggestions might be a bit much. Drobo does look interesting though, so I'll have to nail down a price range. The Buffalo looks reasonably priced, I'll have to read a little more about that.

You don't really need the CD drive do you? I thought FreeNAS could be configured to boot off a USB stick.

I actually haven't used FreeNAS myself, but have a friend who has. Yes, that's correct that it can be configured to boot off of a USB drive, but my understanding is that it would have to be left in full time. A new feature of FreeNAS is that it can now be installed onto the the hard drive. It looks like it creates an OS partition, and partitions the rest for storage. I'm reading up on it, but so far it looks like that can only be done from a CD.

[Kaibelf]

I'd stick with NetGear. I'm in the industry and can say that it will not break the bank, but would be more reliable than any tchotchke parts cobbled together from Newegg. Just go to CDW.

[Obiron]

I'd stick with NetGear. I'm in the industry and can say that it will not break the bank, but would be more reliable than any tchotchke parts cobbled together from Newegg. Just go to CDW.

I'm actually kicking myself right now for not thinking of this. I've never shopped from CDW before so I didn't know they carry NASs (plural? idk...), but my boss has a corporate account that I can order through and get a discount. Right now I'm looking at some Buffalo and Net Gear and it's definitely the way to go financially. Thank you for knocking some sense into me.

I kinda got myself psyched to get my hands wet with Linux though, so I may beef up my newegg order and just build something for myself. More than just a NAS though. Probably a box for Ubuntu where I can get into a lot of different areas. But that's a whole different story. Thanks for all the responses. As always, BG, you have been very helpful.

[Bardicrune]

If you really just want to mess around with Linux, the Netgear NAS units run Linux as their OS and you can install a patch to connect to them via SSH and from there you can set the unit up to do almost anything.