QNAP TS-412
The TS-412 is essentially a clone of the TS-419P II, sans the LCD and lacking in USB 3.0 support. It’s still Marvell powered though, with a 88F6281 chip running at 1.2GHz keeping things in order with its 256MB of DDR2. eSATA and dual gigabit Ethernet are still here as well as all of the software perks of sharing the QNAP OS.
As for performance, you’re looking at mid-50MB/s, which puts it between the Netgear NV+ V2 and the D-Link DNS-345 in the sub-£300 unpopulated bracket. If you don’t mind losing 10MB/s in favour of more software features, then this is a strong contender.
Reg Rating 75%
Price £269 (unpopulated)
More info QNAP
Synology DiskStation DS412+
Topping the class in performance today is the DS412+, with a dual-core 2.13GHz Intel Atom D2700 CPU and 1GB of DDR3 this is hardly surprising. There’s an array of connectivity options including USB 3.0, eSATA and dual gigabit LAN. To complement all of this is Synology’s fantastic DiskStation Manager operating system, which is by far and away the best designed NAS OS out there.
In addition to standard RAID levels, these servers also support Synology Hybrid Raid, which makes expanding volumes with new disks a much less painful experience. As far as unpopulated systems go, it’s a little on the pricey side, but it’s worth it.
Reg Rating 95%
Price £509 (unpopulated)
More info Synology
Next page: Synology DiskStation DS411j
COMMENTS
HP Proliant Micrpserver
At a fraction of a cost of these NAS boxes and with more flexibility, I'm glad I've opted for 2 of these instead of a NAS.
Re: HP Proliant Micrpserver
Totally agree, the price of these NAS devices is ludicrous considering a Microserver is £120 after cashback, comes with 2GB of RAM, a 256GB drive and supports ECC. The 5.25" bay is also useful if you want to install an optical or tape drive or even another 2 HDs for a total of 6.
Granted they don't work out of the box, so you're going to have to fill it with drives and install and configure your favourite OS, but I don't think that's beyond most Reg readers.
Re: What I'd be looking for in such a thing
I agree. A good postscript to this article would be similarly brief round-up of build-your-own options using freeNAS (and the rest). I'm happy with my HP ProLiant Microserver which I know many people have on here and cost a less than £150( (with cashback). No doubt the good burghers of this parish will be along soon enough with suggestions for the latest and greatest.
Re: I don't get NAS boxes...
I do...
I bought a Synology DS-413J for £275. It arrived, I stuffed 4 disks in and turned it on (hybrid RAID FTW!). A fair bit of whirring and clicking later, it's all working. Job done.
It sits quietly in the corner and acts as a printer server and media server for all the devices in the house. It runs on 30W.
My gas-guzzling PC with the 6 fans and 1000W PSU doesn't need to be on 24/7.
Easy to like.
What I'd be looking for in such a thing
Quiet operation
Properly managed cooling of the disks
Disk vibration dampening
Caddy-free disk mounting
Hardware crypto acceleration for full-disk encryption
Gigabit ethernet -- getting more or less standard, not quite there yet
Own OS support -- I'll be running a *BSD, sporting NFS, maybe AFS
And optionally feeding it a mere 12V
Somehow all I'm getting is "web interface"
Back to building things by hand then. *sigh*
