Just ordered one of these.

D-Link DNS 323 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure - NAS server


- Gigabit
- 2 SATA bays with no capacity cap
- Can run linux
- RAID
- FTP / Bittorrent / print server etc
- Power saving features
- Supports fun_plug, Twonky etc Huge community

Slightly cheaper at ebuyer and BT Shop.

Thought it might suit some of you as well, especially with all this talk of a tek off-site backup network. 

I'm so tempted...

Ordered, along with a single 1.5Tb hdd.

Damn you, I don't even need one but that's cheap!

Someone on DVD Forums is selling 6x Seagate Barracuda 500GB RAID Hard Drives for £120 + del too... Bloody storage!

Quote from: sexytw on February 16, 2011, 16:26:03 PM
Just ordered one of these.

D-Link DNS 323 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure - NAS server


- Gigabit
- 2 SATA bays with no capacity cap
- Can run linux
- RAID
- FTP / Bittorrent / print server etc
- Power saving features
- Supports fun_plug, Twonky etc Huge community

Slightly cheaper at ebuyer and BT Shop.

Thought it might suit some of you as well, especially with all this talk of a tek off-site backup network. 

Come on... you could have at least credited Hot UK Deals for this one

(Just saw it up one there, and out of stock now, otherwise I would have got one too!)

I'm going to transfer the recently purchased 1.5tb drive into this unit with the new one, install twonky and transfer my music/movies/tv collection on to it.
Retire one one of  my Linkstations, as I'm having to hang two USB drives off the back of it.

Sod it... just ordered one from eBuyer for an additional tenner!

Edit: Main reason for purchase is so I can do my automated backup without having to turn on my media centre remotely, as I've given up getting the remote shutdown working on Win 7! Will probably run a 2GB Mirror, just need to investigate drives now

nice...
I really want a QNAP
they support lots of stuff
http://qnap.com/QPKG.asp

I keep eyeing up the QNAP and Synology kit, especially the expandable bay units Synology offer. the long term prospects for RAID and dropping in HDDs every so often is very appealing.

Quote from: XEntity on February 16, 2011, 18:26:27 PM

Quote from: sexytw on February 16, 2011, 16:26:03 PM
snip

Come on... you could have at least credited Hot UK Deals for this one

(Just saw it up one there, and out of stock now, otherwise I would have got one too!)

Haha, yep, I really should have.

I havent decided what drives to put in mine yet, wether to mirror or just go for 4tb. Also not sure i have the cash for 2 x 2tb at the moment.

Decisions decisions. I'll be looking to get the USB port unlocked as a priority so I can run a hub off it with printer and a few other drives. Lots of hacking fun to be had!

Yep, I saw something that said that it has a 1.5TB limit, but didn't fully investigate yet, but think I'm going to run 2 x 1TB (mirrored) as wont need the extra space for ages..

Maybe we need a seperate guide thread for hacking this as well

Nice price but I don't get all these pretty box NAS solutions, you could probably get a full atom system for under £100 and make your own. Put one HDD in it, and one in your normal desktop, no single point of failure.

Redundancy without RAID and all that.

Raid would give you real time redundancy however, and for £50/60 + HDD you can get a  dual disk NAS, which I expect will consumer less power and easier to manage?

Not saying Atom isn't the way forwards, but everything taken in to account it's not cheaper to purchase or run and in most atoms you will be limited to 2.5" HDs, although you could potentially get more flexibility (but really only if you are going to use the extra features that are not possible with a £50 piece of hardware).

I had considered an Atom build, but wanted the raid really

Quote from: XEntity on February 17, 2011, 11:08:06 AM
Raid would give you real time redundancy however, and for £50/60 + HDD you can get a  dual disk NAS, which I expect will consumer less power and easier to manage?

Not saying Atom isn't the way forwards, but everything taken in to account it's not cheaper to purchase or run and in most atoms you will be limited to 2.5" HDs, although you could potentially get more flexibility (but really only if you are going to use the extra features that are not possible with a £50 piece of hardware).

I had considered an Atom build, but wanted the raid really

Well you can chuck an atom board in anything tbh, sure off the shelf solutions exist but you don't have to buy them.

I hear you on the RAID though as I guess it's nice to have, I just think of it as a bit over-rated sometimes and not actually necessary, I'd rather have the 2nd mirror HDD in a completely different place.


eg. What happens if your NAS box got fried? it is without a doubt a single point of failure, so then you could backup the NAS, but what's the point in having the NAS with RAID if that's the case

I see your point as well, but the chance of the NAS box having such a critical failure that it would take out the HDs as well would be relatively slim.

My setup personally will be over protective, so will be running the RAID and also a copy on a seperate machine (of some of the more important data, and potentially an off site back up as well, but looking in to software etc for that, as if I lose some of the stuff I'm backing up I could lose some very important stuff to me.

Some of the stuff on the NAS box however will only exist on the NAS, so the RAID will still be important.

I guess it's just down to what you are storing, and how valuable the data actually is. Obviously you don't even need to use the raid just run two disk for extra space and at £50 for the unit you can't really complain for something that will work out of the box and then not have to touch.

£50 would potentially only cover the cost of a windows licence bare in mind, although appreciate there are other options like freeNAS, but then you lose the benefits of other functionality.