NAS Enclosure Recommendations

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter
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Peter

I know this is probably more suited to a networking group, but I've been
subscribed to a.c.h.p for quite a while and I have seen this discussed
before here, so I was wondering, as per the subject, if anyone here had
any specific recommendations about this type of hardware.

I've had a brief search around and they generally seem to be quite thin
on the ground, whilst at the same time the NAS HDs don't seem to be
getting any cheaper and actually seem to be going up in price a little.

I would like the enclosure to support SATA at the very least and to be
as easy to setup as possible, without needing any kind of software
install on any of the PCs on the network, or where possible, not needing
any kind of remote setup for it to be recognised by the PCs on the
network.

Obviously, putting a brand new HD in it is going to require partitioning
and formatting, but hopefully everything else should be pretty
transparent. Is that attainable?
 
I know this is probably more suited to a networking group, but I've been
subscribed to a.c.h.p for quite a while and I have seen this discussed
before here, so I was wondering, as per the subject, if anyone here had
any specific recommendations about this type of hardware.

I've had a brief search around and they generally seem to be quite thin
on the ground, whilst at the same time the NAS HDs don't seem to be
getting any cheaper and actually seem to be going up in price a little.

I would like the enclosure to support SATA at the very least and to be
as easy to setup as possible, without needing any kind of software
install on any of the PCs on the network, or where possible, not needing
any kind of remote setup for it to be recognised by the PCs on the
network.

Obviously, putting a brand new HD in it is going to require partitioning
and formatting, but hopefully everything else should be pretty
transparent. Is that attainable?
Click to expand...

Well, I recently bought a NAS box (without drives) and installed a
pair of 500 GB eSATA Seagates with no trouble at all. It was very easy
to set up, and although it's only a week old, is working flawlessly so
far. I wouldn't go so far as to recommend this unit yet, but I would
say it is at least worth your consideration.

The unit I bought was by D-Link, a model DNS-321, which I bought at
Fry's, but I've seen it and other models available from Newegg also.

The unit comes with a CD that contains the basic setup as well as
backup software (which I deleted after installing. The included backup
software takes up a lot of dedicated space on my main drive, and I
really didn't think it offered me anything I wanted). I chose to do my
backups using batch files and MS Robocopy, which works just fine, and
only when I tell it to.

A little research will quickly show you that there are boxes with more
features than this box has, so you need to first decide what features
you need (and are willing to pay for). I also looked at a box that had
ports for copnnecting additional external drives, and also a DVD
writer built in. However, it was a lot more expensive than the approx
$100 this one cost, and I didn't see a need for the DVD burner, or the
additional external drive connections.

With 500 GB drives going for just over $50 and the box at about $100,
I have 500 GB of mirrored storage, available to all the computers on
my home network, for a little more than $200. (Of course, mirroring
the drives is optional.... I could have striped them for 1TB, or
simply left them as 2 separate volumes for 2 500 GB backups).

The formatting of the drives is done without any extra effort, once
you load the CD and recognize the drive. You can elect to map the
drive to each computer on your network, or just address it by it's
networked name. Connecting it to your wired network gets it an
assigned IP address via DHCP.
 
On re-reading my post, I noticed a mistyping....

The drives are SATA, that is bare SATA drives, no enclosures so saying
eSATA was just a mistake on my part.
 
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