

Ask HN: what do you use for a home NAS? - niels_olson

I'd write a poll, but I don't know enough of the brands. Joe Armstrong apparently uses a Synology. FreeNAS obviously supports iXsystems. Personally, I use hand-me-down Dell towers with SuSE because the upfront cost is $0 and YaST over SSH is good enough for NFS.<p>I recently got bit by my set-up though when I finally figured out that a disk that chronically drops out had a bad cable, not a bad disk.<p>So, between that and Armstrong's usesthis post, I wanted to ask HNers: what do you use? And why?
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SEJeff
I've got a NetGear ReadyNas Pro with 6 drive bays each containing a 2Tb
seagate low power drive for 12Tb of usable space. It allows me to rip dvds in
pretty much raw form to the nas and then transcode them (using
<http://handbrake.fr>) to whatever format I want. My wife wants to watch some
RomCom on her phone/android tablet during a long plane ride? No problem! Get
it at RedBox for $1.20, rip it, and transcode it to the proper size and
format. The resulting file is only 300-450Mb, so her phone and tablet can hold
gobs of them. Also, netgear has some pretty decent forums.

As a Linux guy, massive bonus points that the ReadyNas boxes are just modified
Debian and they will let you get root on them. <http://www.readynas.com/forum>

I'm a HUGE fan. You can get a diskless 6 drive bay one for:
[http://www.amazon.com/Readynas-Pro-6-Unified-
Nas/dp/B004S9JX...](http://www.amazon.com/Readynas-Pro-6-Unified-
Nas/dp/B004S9JX52)

It is also a great time machine backup for my wife's crackbook pro lappy.

~~~
niels_olson
I didn't know the NetGear was that hackable. Cool.

Have you ever had to do a network install of, say, OS X? Yardie reports he was
able to do that with Synology (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4340947>)

Also, any experience with AeroFS?

~~~
SEJeff
A network install is just a PXE for any operating system. It would be pretty
trivial to setup tftp on the readynas. If it isn't builtin already, Id be
surprised if there wasn't a community extension to do it on the forums
already.

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migrantgeek
I just bought a Mac Mini and attached some external drives. I run PS3 Media
Server for Mac to stream content to my PS3 and app enabled TV.

It's not super slick or cool but I don't care. I spend at least 8 hours a day
at a Linux or Solaris terminal. When I'm ready to relax, I want everything to
just work.

~~~
niels_olson
Do you remotely access your mini at all? Like with AeroFS?

~~~
migrantgeek
Just SSH and the built in screen sharing app since it's headless and just sits
on a shelf.

Admittedly my needs are easily met. I really just wanted the following

* stream downloaded content to PS3

* host virtual machines for testing (I use Parallels)

* run Jenkins for building projects and running tests to keep it off my laptop

* download torrents

* host local backup

I'm sure there are better solutions but I don't feel like it's worth
investigating for myself.

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mcrider
I could never afford a real NAS, and I've used many DIY setups (linux boxes,
mac boxes, with software raid) but I've settled on a WD MyBook for its pure
simplicity. If you just need a file server and don't need tons of space (2TB
is plenty for me) I'd definitely recommend it.

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mike-cardwell
A HP Proliant Microserver. Has room for four disks, but I've only got two in
there atm. It runs Debian with Samba for network file access. I intend to
configure up NFS but haven't got around to it yet.

~~~
chrisrickard
^ this

Plus besides using the Proliant as a NAS, it doubles as a great mediacenter &
is super quite.

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edude03
Got an Acer Homeserver on eBay for $100. Installed Ubuntu server 12.10 on a
USB drive, picked up 4 2TB Seagate drive on black friday for $80 each. Have 3
in Raidz and one as a hotspare. This acts as my Time machine server, torrent
box and media server. Running Plex on it, but Plex insists on transcoding
everything, which the Atom isn't really powerful enough for.

~~~
niels_olson
How is your RAiD set up? Mine is just RAID 0, because that's what philg said
to use. Hadn't thought of Acer

~~~
niels_olson
Just for posterity, let me note I meant that to read RAID 1.

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VPrime
I use a netgear readynas nv+. It's their consumer model, but it does the job
for me. It's not the fastest, but has good features and support from the
community. You can even easily upgrade the memory ( voids the warranty I
believe).

Only issue is if you only put 1 disk in (of 4 potential slots) the fan goes
nuts. Runs full speed off and on.

