Looking for info on NAS

[jeremyy]

Yep. Just swap n go.

[stilly]

I have tried FreeNas and NAS4free on about 10 systems with 4 drive so far ranging from all SATA, all IDE, a mix of IDE for the OS and SATA for the data drive, another mix of SATA for the data and USB flash drive for the OS, and USB flash for the OS and IDE for the data, and it only booted to the OS on one after install. Like many distros these seem to have issues with mixed drive types (I think there was a Kernel-related issue?).

Slackware works better, but Pear Linux and Ubuntu variants have come a long way. Slack and Pear seem to support more hardware OOTB.

Ahh that sucks for you. I hope it was an older version, like 5 years older because the version I grabbed and installed (9.x I think) seemed to work fine on an older machine even. Well, the machine was a socket 939 with like 2GB of RAM or something and that was about all. I did like that it was headless and used the pc speaker to signal when it was up and running and when it was shutting down with the tones it emitted. I have not yet loaded up Slackware nor have I loaded Pear (and got it to work) but in another thread, I was trying to get a usb drive that I could put a slackware and pear OS on as a boot option and select which one (among others) I wanted.

[Sparrow99]

QNAP and Synology all the way.

Another vote for Synology! DS1511+ owner here.

[the86d]

Another vote for Synology! DS1511+ owner here.

If the Synology hardware dies, can you pull the data off the drives with anything else, maybe a newer version of their devices?

I would be scared of the Synology for the same reason I wouldn't get a DROBO... if the device dies, can you put the drives in a newer model and get your data, mixed results from what I read regarding the DROBO, so I assume it might have the same issue.

The benefit to Linux Kernel RAID (even a different Distro, or Version of Distro) is that the Kernel sees them for what they are, and you can just mount them without rewriting/rebuilding the RAID volume from scratch, and pull data...

Anyone had to replace device with the same drives?

[Son of BAR7]

I've had a 1TB LG NAS running without problems for about the last 2 years. It has USB expansion capability, remote access via LG DDNS service, print server capability, and a DVD writer, and is basically plug and play for the IT illiterate among us.

Pretty good for the $$, IMO, for a turnkey solution.

[the86d]

I've had a 1TB LG NAS running without problems for about the last 2 years. It has USB expansion capability, remote access via LG DDNS service, print server capability, and a DVD writer, and is basically plug and play for the IT illiterate among us.

Pretty good for the $$, IMO, for a turnkey solution.

Right, but if the device dies, can you plug the drives into a new device and get your data off?

(I do multiple backups, but others don't and would rely on this as a backup device, I assume...)

[Son of BAR7]

Supposedly, "Yes" (according to LG).
The LG's onboard OS is Linux, so I assume (I know... that word) you could use another Linux box to recover data should the NAS fail.

[gogohopper]

Thanks for the varied recommendations that I am sure work great for each of you. I think I'll go with a Synology DS213j in a RAID1 configuration for 4 TB capacity. I am planning to also hang an HD off the back, for backup purposes of the DS213j. Some of this data will ONLY be on the DS213j, so to be safe another device is needed for a truer backup scenario.

I did end up going with the above, shortly after that post. LOVE IT. media serving, remote wireless cams, device sync, personal cloud, access from anywhere, so many things you can do with it.

THANKS FOR ALL THE INPUTS