One drive formatted, and the other will be here shortly. I think I'm going to use the FreeNAS Live-CD and a USB stick. I don't want to grab a CF->IDE card just yet.

 

FWIW, I used to have an XP based file server before getting the ReadyNAS. Switching to the NAS meant 1/3 the power usage, less noise/heat, and no need for a large tower. I'm moving to a condo half the size of my current one in the next few months, so size was a big factor for me.

 

Another reason I love my ReadyNAS...

In 5 minutes, using community provided binaries, I now have SVN, PHP and WebSVN installed and running on my ReadyNAS.

 

 

Tried to run the FreeNAS Livecd and it says it can't find bootmgr. Can't find any info on this. Just clear the CMOS?

 

Ugh, I may have to buy a controller. I forgot how shitty the A7V600 is.

 

I got the WDTV Live + working today with the DJ411J. It can stream DVD ISO no problem over wireless G, assuming that the access point isn't too busy. I think I'll either switch to wired or get wireless N, but for now it's not really a problem. I'm going to send back the AppleTV since the WD worked out of the box and has more features. My harmony remote can run the WDTV.

I also got my Time Machine backups pointed to the NAS. Backing up to the NAS is slower than local disk but I don't care. The DJ411J is dead silent compared to my stand alone external drives. My transfer rates are as per documented specs so looks like I'm in good shape.

 

Doopster, what are you using to stream music (if anything) on the WDTV? I should have looked at that before the ATV... All my movies are ISO!

 

It just attaches to a file share on the NAS. Keep in mind WDTV doesn't have built in wireless. You need to buy a compatible USB adapter if you want wireless. Peeps that stream Blu-Ray to it seem to think that wired > wireless. It can also attach to a DLNA media server but for some reason the one on my NAS doesn't work with ISO. Another option is to slap a hard drive on the WDTV's USB port.

 

^ Ah. Good to know.

 

FreeNAS wouldn't install on my flash drive, so I'm going with unRAID. Setting it up now.

 

I think I am having success. It should be done copying the files tomorrow afternoon.

 

Just ordered myself a Dlink DNS-320 + 2-1TB drives to replace a Buffalo single-drive NAS that has a clicking hard drive. I was thinking today about storage. Some would question why I got 1TB drives and not 2TB drives. My server has two 100GB drives in RAID1 and my Buffalo NAS is only using 350GB. How the hell do people consume so much storage and how do you find anything in it?

 

Movies, music, pictures...etc.

As for 1 vs 2TB, you probably should have gone ahead and gotten the 2TB drives since prices are so close.

 

I guess I'm old fashioned, since I still have all my movies on DVD. And I'm probably pretty selective since my music collection is <50gb. I'm actually going to trim out a lot of stuff I don't care about anymore.

I figure at my current rate of consumption, by the time I'm ready to upgrade, I can get the latest capacity, which will probably be 20TB.

 

$80 for a 2TB drive is dirt cheap.

 

What is the best way to go about a NAS in a network with a Mac and a PC. I don't want to build a server or anything of that sort. I really would like a relatively simple NAS with redundancy (at least two drives). Would the drive have to be formatted in FAT32 in order to read AND write from both a PC and MAC? Isn't the total drive space allowed in FAT32 nowhere near the drive sizes these days? My info could be way off as I have not been dealing with computers all that much over the last 8 years or so.

Incidentally, I did just buy a LaCie 2 TB USB 3.0 drive for the iMac I just got. The computer only has a 160 GB drive in it, which although isn't that small, will fill up quick with all the RAW files I will be dumping on it. Each picture I take with my camera is approximately 15 MB, I then copy and process them, so each picture is typically over 20 MB total between RAW and processed. I take a LOT of pictures too, so having the extra space is needed. I still want the ability to back it all up to a NAS however.

 

So I just got a Seagate GoFlex 2TB for my birthday on Wednesday

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Seagate+...ci_sku=1147607

So far I am loving it regardless of the mediocre reviews its getting. Its plenty fast for me and allows me to see my files anywhere via web browser which is really slick.

The Web Flash interface is its only downside as it can be a bit slow to respond at times, but it still works and that's all that matters. I've mapped a drive to the NAS from all my computers at home including my Mac with ease and now all devices/computers at home work directly off the NAS. Mapped drives is super fast.

Also the Android app is awesome as well as the built in Print server.

I give it a 4 of 5 stars. Most of the negative ratings are from people who dont know what a NAS is or how to use one.

 

Bought my wife an 8tb Thunderbolt-equipped RAID storage unit. Works as advertised!!

 

Macs don't support USB 3 at all. You'll get USB 2 speeds instead.

 

And what's equally sad about this is that unlike a Desktop PC, we can't upgrade the components to support it. I'm stuck with USB 2.0 on my iMac till it dies or I choose to get rid of it.

 

Deal over at NewEgg.com....

Sucks that hard drive costs are still so high because of the flooding in Thailand.

The drives I bought the first half of last year for $80/drive, were $199 just a couple months ago.

 

Which one did you go with?

 

I've been thinking of doing this for a while now, and there are just so many brands out there.

What are some of the brands you guys use and what are your opinions of them?

I am looking at the Netgear ReadyNAS NV +v2, is that a good brand and how reliable is it? Netgear Link

 

How much space do you need?

What kind of a connection?

What kind of transfer speeds?

 

Space, humm the more the better but I am thinking 4TB

It will be a USB 2.0 connection and wireless 10GB throughput

 

I have a readynas 1100..it's obviously not the same one, but the throughput is terrible. no more than 13 MB/s.

Thought about a drobo?

 

No on Drobo!

Go QNAP. http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?sn=180&lang=en

 

Bought it today + four WD 1 TB hard drives, Cost me $1041 at Frys!

Let's see how well it does, now I gotta also get a UPS too.

 

which one did you get?

 

what model do you suggest?

 

FWIW I've had a ReadyNAS NV+ for a while now, upgraded RAM... had 4x320GB drives, swapped them all out for 4x1GB, when one of the 320GB drives failed - all went smoothly, RAID did its job and I didn't lose anything. I have a WD USB drive hooked up to it and it does diff backups nightly, just in case.

Performance, reliability and flexibility are all fantastic. You can root it and have SSH access, so basically you have a small linux box at your disposal. This lets me do things like kick off a wget download directly from the NAS.

 

Its all about the cloud now man.

 

Depends on how much disk you need. I'd go with a 4-bay, anything that is a 4xx would suffice.

 

I'd think about some offsite backups or an iosafe as well if you have some very important data. A nas can give you redundancy but if there's a fire or flooding, it could all be destroyed. We just picked up an IOSafe for work to backup some stuff.

 

I got the one in my first post, but here is the link again, but I got the 4 TB one.

http://store.netgear.com/store/netge...oryId.43977100

 

Threads merged.

 

Well so far I am liking it a lot! I can remote to it via it's own "VPN" client from anywhere (you'll have to install a small client to your PC) though. Or you can use WEBDAV, getting access to it via the web browser. Either way works well.

And like the OP said, you can keep on expanding the volume as your resources permit via it's XRAID technology. I have 2.7 TB of space with RAID 5, plenty for me right now.

 

Glad to hear it's working out for you.

Is there a reason you went with RAID 5 as opposed to XRAID?

 

I am just used to RAID 5 and the XRAID is fairly new, so I am not too sure about it. Just a personal preference I guess.