Storage Issue, help with a solution

[jnalpak]

I'm looking for a proper storage solution for my home. I have well over 370GB of data on my current workstation. I would prefer to move the data to the server but i dont want to add HD's the server so im guessing external.

My current setup:
2x 200GB HD setup internal on workstation.

What i would like:
500GB+ with redundency and the ability to upgrade down the line. The NAS solutions peak my interest the most as i can hook these up to the network and access them from any PC int he house. My collection has taken a long time to copy and catalog. If i was to lose the data i would have a breakdown so redundency would be important too but not the most important as i will have 2x extra 200GB HD's to push data to and store.

[CrashPat]

How much do you want to spend?

[jnalpak]

price is really not the issue. Its the idea of what to do without going overboard. With that said, i guess 500-1k would be where im looking to spend.

[CrashPat]

Without knowing what you currently have for a server, here is what I would think about:

1.) Using the current system + external hard drives
2.) Buying a consumer grade NAS appliance
3.) Buying a Mid Range NAS appliance/server
4.) Building from scratch

1.) I dislike this because external hard drives really are a pain. Each drive has a power brick, cabling, etc. I also think that managing a system like this would be painfully difficult.

2.) This option is terrible, most of the consumer products from linksys, tritton, etc are non-expandable garbage. They work for small amounts of data in a pinch, but do not sound like what you are looking for.

3.) This option is good, I'm looking at things like Infrant Technology ReadyNAS and the Intel SS4000-ENA.

4.) This option is good too, but would be more hassle. A NAS is just a computer with RAID, some drives, SMB, NFS, FTP, and some other services. Building your own is flexible, but you need to be able to manage a linux box.


I like option 3, followed by 4. While I have no experience with either the Infrant products or the Intel product, I think both would fit your needs. Basically they have some levels of RAID, up to 4 hard drives, and a web interface.

I would look seriously at the ReadyNAS 600, you can pick these up from newegg pretty reasonably, one with 4 250GB drives is 830 dollars. An empty one is 570. That machine is very user configurable, you can set up how you want the raid to work, etc.

The Intel box is probably very strong as well. I haven't searched for more than what is on the intel website.

I would probably look into both of these machines, and their competitors, and pick one. When you order it, if you don't get something already configured with drives you should make sure that it includes the drive trays.

Hope this helps