Topic: What NAS should I buy?

I wanna buy a Network Attached Storage with possibility to RAID two disks, and which I can access over the web, streaming music from it at work etc. Also I am in the process of creating some websites which I am thinking of hosting on it. I have absolutely no experience in networks or Linux or stuff like that, so a simplicity is also an issue.

I have been looking at these two, but I'm not sure I know which one would be best suited for me

http://netgear.com/Products/Storage/Stora.aspx

http://netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASDuo.aspx

Re: What NAS should I buy?

illmatic... oh

cuties don't exert

Re: What NAS should I buy?

smartass ;p

Re: What NAS should I buy?

the netgear stuff is ok for home use, sharing files across machines on a local network (like "streaming" music files to several machines on a local network), although I am not entirely sure why you need a nas for the web sites you are talking about. the duo doesn't have a web server so all you would do is use a machine with apache or equivalent and point to the webpage files sitting on the NAS? also, would you want a raid to mirror your data or to increase performance/bandwidth?

Re: What NAS should I buy?

You totally lost we at "webserver". Like I said, I know nothing about this stuff big_smile

I want a RAID to mirror my disk, yes.

6 (edited by cimabot 2009-12-04 12:59:26)

Re: What NAS should I buy?

sorry, i'll try this way:

a nas is a great appliance to share files amongst machines over a local network, providing you do not require concurrent file level access. if you want those files to be accessible from the outside (i.e. your nas is at your home and you want to access those files from work) then you would have to make your local network accessible from the outside. there are a number of ways (protocols) to do this, depending on what you need to do with it.

Web (http) is good if you want to host websites on it. To enable it you would have to run a webserver on a computer on the local network (if you use mac, Apache webserver is inbuilt in the OS) and you would have to purchase a public IP from your internet service provider.

FTP is good if you want to share files between locations and with other people, regulating access to those files on a username/password basis. same goes for this though, you would have to run a webserver/ftp server.

streaming....ouch! that's tough. Configuring a streaming server isn't easy, and you normally need to run it on a server with server OS. in a nutshell I don't think it's viable just to be able to listen to your music library elsewhere than at home.

for web and ftp it's much simpler to just buy hosting from a company. in certain cases they offer media streaming capabilities although i would imagine they would charge a lot for it, and then again the website through which you stream the files would be for you to develop, and can be quite difficult.

I put all this down very "high level", without covering further technicalities smile and there are a lot more ways to access your LAN remotely but don't think they'd apply to what your trying to do.

I hope it helps... smile

Re: What NAS should I buy?

hm, ok, that filled in some gaps for me, thanks. About the web server, well, I don't have anything but my PC-lappy at home right now. I want to get the NAS for backup and to be able to access my stuff from anywhere. I was under the impression that you could stream your media over the web with these Netgear thingies hmm
They both have FTP, but the more expensive one has FTP-S (as well as https)

this is what is specified for the Duo:

    *  CIFS/SMB for Windows

Re: What NAS should I buy?

cool smile didn't realize they have inbuilt web/ftp services. providing the specs are accurate, all that's left to do is for you to get a public ip so that you can access your data back up from an external location. sorry, this is too big a topic to discuss lightly, i don't want to confuse it further but as  a last piece of advice, if you're not too confident with setting the whole thing up, I would consider the nas or a raided set of disks for your precious data backup, and a reliable isp for ftp/http sharing of assets you might need elsewhere than at home smile

p.s. the S at the end of http and ftp means Secure. good feature to have.

Re: What NAS should I buy?

ok, so streaming music should work then?

Re: What NAS should I buy?

i got this a few months ago no problems, but its mainly for office use as a back up server. its not a big brand so it was much cheaper than others and allows up to 4 hard drives inside. http://mrtcommunication.trustpass.aliba … y_Nas.html

also we have WD world edition. they have a connect with mionet for remote access.  but again i dont know about streaming or web hosting. as RAID and remote access to files, it works good. once in two years a drive failed but it was easy to replace and nothing was lost
http://www.mionet.com/products/MBW_MioNet_Overview.aspx