Do It Yourself NAS

We talk with James Nixon from the FreeNAS project which lets you have a disk storage system on your network at home.

via TWiT.TV.

What is FreeNAS you say? Put simply, its is an operating system based on FreeBSD that brings with it a snazzy web interface for management, and all the protocols you need to share files between Windows, Mac and Linux. In other words, a perfect solution for your digital bookshelf. Lets get to it.

via Engadget.

This compact product working with 2.5”hard drives brings low power consumption “green” solution, quiet operation, reliability and easy disk replacement in a small size. The operating system, Synology DiskStation Manager 3.0, delivers rich features for multimedia, Internet sharing, data protection and energy-saving options. Read more in our review.

via X-bit labs.

We have been playing around with the QNAP TS-659 Pro II unit over the last month or so. Based on the Intel Atom D525 platform, it has 6 bays and dual GbE ports, making it a candidate for the high end SMB market.

via AnandTech

A detailed blog post which covers hardware and software choices.

For the hardware, I ended up with a fanless MiniITX motherboard Intel D510MO, which has a Atom processor, Gigabit ethernet (all my home network is Gigabit, so it does make a difference). I am also using a 2GB 800Mhz Kingston RAM memory, and both two SATA connectors. The MOBO has up to seven 2.0 USB and one mini PCI Express, in case I want to add more SATA drives in the future.

via DanielAndrade.net

A quick review with a few benchmarks.

Thecus is the first dual-bay NAS box manufacturer we’ve seen to ditch the usual ARM or Marvell processors found in mainstream models in favour of a fully fledged 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 CPU.

via bit-tech.net

AnandTech published a great overview of building your own file server, with overviews of current operating system and hardware options.

Whether your budget and storage needs are modest or extensive, we have you covered in the latest builder’s guide to file server systems.

via AnandTech

A professional rackmount version of a DIY NAS, with link aggregation and redundant power:

The N8900 is based on a dual-core Intel Core i3-2120 processor with 8 GB of DDR3 memory and Thecus Dual DOM flash memory.

via SmallNetBuilder

According to iXsystems developer James T. Nixon III, FreeNAS 8.0 includes major architectural optimisations and is more modular than previous versions. It features a redesigned GUI, built using Python and the Django web framework, that is aimed at making the OS easier to use. ZFS and UFS2 file systems are both supported – ZFS is used as the primary file system.

via The H Open Source

AnandTech dissects, thoroughly reviews, and benchmarks the Synology DS211+:

Synology has a sensible model number nomenclature in which the last two digits refer to the year through which the model is intended for sale. The first set of digits refer to the maximum number of bays supported. Some models have a + at the end, signifying higher performance. Today, we have the DS211+ for review. The DS refers to the product category, Disk Station. 2 indicates a 2 bay model, and the 11 indicates a 2011 model. It is supposed to have a higher performance compared to the DS211 which was released in November 2010.

Soon after it’s discovered that the next version of Windows Home Server will be dropping its drive extender feature, HP decided to drop its Windows Home Server products.

Lifehacker reviews the Boxee Box and software, which is capable of scanning a SMB share of a NAS,  finding all the media files, and getting them ready for playback on a TV.

But how do you get your files into Boxee? The pre-built Box has no accessible internal storage, but it can can access shared files on your home network, on dedicated network-attached storage NAS, or on any USB drives you connect or SD cards you slide into its side.

As you could probably surmise from the title above, the only notable difference in Data Robotics’ newest storage robot is the addition of USB 3.0, but the triple interface ensures that eSATA and FireWire 800 users are also taken care of.

via Engadget

AnandTech takes the brand new 3.0 TB Western Digital internal hard drives for a spin.

Today, Western Digital takes it one step further and announces availability of the internal drive as well. The Caviar Green line is now home to a 2.5TB and a 3.0TB model, priced at $189 and $239 respectively.

This particular NAS box also makes a big song and dance about iSCSI. This allows you to allocate portions of an existing volume as targets. In the speed stakes, the TS-210 lagged behind the more expensive TS-219P and both Synology NAS boxes in all the tests. However, it was still streets ahead of most of the other NAS boxes we’ve tested. For example, it averaged 35.4MB/sec in the large file-reading test. The TS-210 is an excellent example of how easy a NAS box should be to configure and use. It’s only let down by its unexceptional transfer rate.

via bit-tech.net.