Silkroad Online Forums

Hi everyone,

I'm debating whether to get a NAS or not.
Basically, I'm looking for storage space and media center, to backup files on and
link to my TV. One of the main reasons for me to consider a NAS is that I hear
they are very energy-efficient. I have some spare PC's laying around which have
more than enough storage space, but I don't want them to run 24/7 because they
cost me too much.

The option I'm currently looking at is giving me the most storage for my money.
But I have no idea what to look for in a NAS.

Any tips?

Ps here's what I'm looking at right now..
http://www.sicomputers.nl/western-digit ... t-3-5.html

English:
http://www.storagereview.com/western_di ... ive_review

Nah... I don't have any good tips.
But "NAS server" seems like a great solution! xD

I don't get it.

It's alright, but it's nowhere close to a good setup for future proofing

I personally run cheap servers (dual L5420, 8gb ram, dual 1gbit ethernet) on a 20u rack having the hard drives located in a 3u enclosure while the server is in a 1 enclosure. Sounds expensive but it's really not, well under a $500 setup and it's extremely future proof You can also turn around and sell it for more to a small business if you want to downgrade/upgrade/switch

Not so sure what you mean with future proof here, care to elaborate? :]

I don't have a lot of knowledge about servers, the most important thing for me is
that it is cheap in power consumption, quick enough to access files from anywhere
and especially to stream movies to my TV, and I don't want to pay too much money
for storage space.. So the things I'm currently looking at are 3TB net storages that
are easy to install (plug n play) and low in maintenance and energy consumption.

Would you have any more concrete suggestions? Like should I build my own server,
could I use an old PC for that, won't that take too much power, isn't it easier
to just get a ready-made one, what's so good about RAID 0, etc..

Any help is welcome ;]

You Just don't get it... do you? xD

Yeah, I don't. Mind elaborating on what's so funny?

Funny as hell... who said that?
Anyway, I Just thought it was a really cool idea.

ordered this..

http://www.ibood.com/nl/nl/

A solar panel?

I had several old hard drives lying around and needed more storage for my new media center setup (I killed my cable). Went with this: StarTech Dock

I want a more permanent/beefy/future-proof setup, but this was all I could afford at the time. A Synology or Drobo disk station would be ideal.

I also like Giage's idea of building cheap servers. When I finally build a home it's going to have one sweet data closet full of servers, switches, routers, you name it.

hehe. it's a 1-day discount site, so it changes..
the one i got now is a iomega storcenter ix4-300d, which had 2 2tb disks built
in and i bought 2 extra so i could run a raid-5.
but that's as far as my knowledge goes so i also got it to try and learn something
from it :]

Oh, I see. Good call on the raid 5 setup. My dream setup would be a huge raid 5 with a hotswap. That's what we use at work on several servers. Had a drive fail and didn't even notice it as the entire system failed-over to the hotswap without even shutting down windows, it's amazing.

first weekend with my nas:

was very excited, unwrapped it, plugged in 2 extra hdd, powered on.
selected raid 5 (parity) and it started to 'rebuild' (since it's a
software raid it could take ages, as i read on forums). during rebuild
i received a message that one of my hdd had data on it that had to be
overwritten (one of the new disks). i accepted the overwrite i think
10 times and it wouldn't budge. so i resetted it back to factory settings
with all 4 disks in it. started sunday around noon, monday before i went
to work (around 5.45am) it was at 42%. hoping that when i get back from
work i will be able to actually use it for something, or that at least
all disks work properly..

little sidenote, according to my server, the 4 disks have 3 versions of
firmware among them.. 9YN-something- on the disks that came with the nas,
1CH1 and 1CH164 on the two i bought to expand.

so yeah, pretty much a short rant.. but if anyone has any pointers or any
remarks, they are most welcome. i like a little challenge but this thing
is supposed to be plug and play. it's not, and there's not much information
about it.

What do you need these things for anyway? Hosting a site?

two reasons i decided to buy one:

- personal cloud, so you can access your data anywhere but
the physical server is secured at your own place

- also, i will use it as my personal local movie database
and stream from my server to my tv

Ok so the company that sold me the hdd told me to format it
and check if it worked then; also told me that
- if my pc recognizes the disk, the failure is not the disk but the nas
- manufacturers put data on harddrives to test them, which is why my disk had data on it

second point i think is bull but ok, i formatted. no budge.

contacted iomega for support, couldn't call their number with mobile (they
blocked it, which sucks because i was at work and use my work mobile there)
but got an answer in live chat mode: format the harddisk on a pc with the
cmd DISKPART command, then CLEAN (or CLEAN ALL).
anyone have experience with DISKPART? is it like a low-level format and do
you recommend diskpart or rather i use the seagate low-level format tool?