Hello PL.
I'm looking for a NAS, as I'd like to take advantage of RAID 1: Mirroring a
pair of drives (minimum) to RAID 5: Striping + Hot Spare.
If all I wanted was an external enclosure, I've found various 4 Bay, USB &
E-SATA attached enclosures that either do RAID 0: Just Big Old Disk ("JBOD")
natively, or other RAID styles but require a physical Controller Card to do
so.
I'd really like to get the NAS box for the RAID, but if there aren't
software RAID programs out that are Accessable, or the on-board RAID
hardware's User Interface ("UI") isn't Accessable, then I may be forced to
go with the simple Enclosure.
If I can get the NAS, then I seem to have two main options: Getting it
Diskless, or with the Drives.
If I get one Diskless, then it costs less for the physical Box, but then I
have to pay for the drives to put in it.
I've found a 4 Bay NAS from Fry's Electronics for $150 USD, so that's a
fairly nice price, but the 3Tb drives to fill it with are another $200 each,
making the final cost nearly a thousand bucks. *OWCH*
If I get it pre-configured with drives, then I can find a 4 Bay, 12Tb NAS
for "only" $800+, which is still painfull.
If I drop to a 2 Bay Box, then the NAS itself (diskless) is down to $130
(also from Fry's) and the drives would add another $400, making it a
*little* easier to stomach.
If I go 2 Bay pre-configured with drives, then I can find a 4Tb NAS for
under $350 from various sources, which price wise is MUCH easier on the
wallet, but makes me wince that it's only 2Tb of Mirrored storage.
I've already got a 2Tb Western Digital Passport, as an external USB Notebook
HD, that I paid less than $200 for six months ago, so paying more to get the
same capacity in a NAS box irks me greatly.
I'd try to go with a NAS that will accept 4Tb drives, but the cheapest one
I've found that will, is over $1,200 as a 2 Bay, included hardware RAID,
Drobo unit.
Nice, it's already got the drives, has USB 3.0 & E-SATA connections, but
again, it's over a thousand bucks for what amounts to 4Tb of space.
*Wince*
If I can find a NAS box that accepts 4, 4Tb drives with on-board hardware
RAID 1 Mirroring, at a reasonable price, then that's the way I'd like to go.
If not, then I'll end up getting a simple External Enclosure with either a
USB or E-SATA connection.
Even after buying the drives, I'd end up paying less for it than a
similarly-storage-sized NAS.
But I *really* want the security & peace of mind of the RAID.
-ShadowSystems
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