NAS Storage Help

Umiq88

I've been asked to purchase a Nas hdd for my workplace and im having a bit of trouble finding something.

Work uses a network with domains i've not much of a clue how it works but basically the laptop needs to be plugged in somewhere and permissions given to certain people to access it.

Ive tried passing other things by my boss ie usb harddrive mapped from a computer and theres a server in work which would work but thats not what he wants

Can anyone shed any light on the issue what hdd's would work with the setup ideally im looking for something under 140 thats the budget but if this isnt realisitic thats fine.

Thanks

Rew

Whats the budget, amount of storage needed and number of users?

humaxf1

FreeNAS is yerman for the job.

I had the chance to mess around wih a Zxyel Nas box. It is slow, bloaty and over priced!

Although, bboth can be integrated into a domain

Umiq88

It will be placed on the network there will be three users that are already on a domain that need to access it but thats it doesnt need very much storage maybe 100gb or so say 160gb

Rew

Thsi will integrate in to an Active Directory Domain and Komplett sell them:

http://www.buffalo-technology.com/products/network-storage/linkstation/linkstation-mini/

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=362103

Haven't used one my self but I have used similar products. There very simple and straight forward.

One thing to watch out for if your doing this is makre sure the harddrives are in RAID 1 if there are 2 disks or RAID 5 if there are more then 2. This ensuyres you have some protection form a disk failure. Id also consider backing up to somewhere like a USB disk thats taken off site.

drBill

I use a Buffalo Linkstation at home purely for backup purposes to save messing around with CDs/DVDs/etc and from my experience I'd say it's ok for that purpose but probably not much else.
- It's slow both in terms of data transfer, and its admin console. (were they just having a laugh when they decided to put a Gigabit network interface in it?!)
- It frequently freezes up for several minutes at a time, although it usually comes back eventually. But annoying if you're playing a bunch of MP3s from it because it will rarely get more than halfway through an album before getting stuck.
- it doesn't have RAID
- it uses a proprietary disk format. i.e. only LinkStations can read this disk. So if say, its power supply died, you couldn't swap its disk into a PC to recover your data, you'd have to buy another linkstation to get at it.
My 2c worth!
Billy.

MunsterCycling

FreeNAS and a cheap / old pc with a gigabit card. Sorted

http://www.freenas.org

Using FreeNAS for years and it the dogs danglies for what it is, a free open source project that just plan works.

MC

ethernet

Another vote for FreeNAS. Put it on a fairly decent machine and it works a dream -- samba and all working out-of-the-box after ticking a box. Had some issues with permissions across Mac OS and Linux but nothing that couldn't be fixed manually.