Wot No Drobo?
That is all
More and more Register Hardware readers started storing files in network-attached drives this year, and we began our coverage of this hot topic in earnest. We haven't looked at every model from every manufacturer, but here are the Nas boxes that most found favour in 2009. Qnap TS-219P Turbo Qnap TS-219P Turbo Nas RH Editor' …
Did El Reg miss a new 2009 version? surely you cant be meaning a 19" rack mountable DroboPro? more of a professional box not really a home NAS and so hence outside of el Regs scope I fear.
The Original Drobo review on here is 2008 so doesn't really qualify for best of this year. it got 70% as it was nicey but pricey.
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/20/review_drobo_droboshare/
I've been ranting and raving about QNAP for years..
Now el Reg agrees Superb Result!
Its a great little Linux Server box albeit a lite version. and very easy for the non linux user too with builtin web server mysql download manager. and if thats not enough there more QPKG downloadable apps from vpn to mldonkey.
now if only theuy would sort the price out for the 419 and 519...
....the best kept open secret I've seen in a while. £400 for 4TB of storage INCLUDING drives. OK, so you get to put it together yourself and the drives aren't hot-swap, but that's hardly a big inconvenience for the target market for this type of device. The stock (EDS) firmware won't set the world alight either, but that can easily be replaced with WHS or Linux -- with the blessing of Intel, who sell this as a system builders box (hell, they even do a version without the firmware in the first place, for exactly that reason).
Mubes
We have one at work and it's been nothing but trouble ever since it arrived.
The web interface is clunky, the AD integration drops out all the time (at least once a day), it's backup routine stops working for no reason just simply says error and quite a lot of features are missing such as the ability to choose which days it backs up on and being able to change security settings more than just the shares etc etc.
If you want to bang your head against a brick wall go ahead a buy one.
Not surprised about QNAP as I keep coming back to it in my research as the best all round.
Problem is however that whilst it has the maximum geek features, they're not great for bang for buck, especially when it comes to the number of drive bays and included (or not) storage in the price.
I'm a big fan however of Atom based systems for stuff like this, having been impressed by Atom for netbooks. Great for low power but yet aren't too slow for the kind of tasks a NAS would be asked to do.
I'm astonished that no Synology NAS made the grade, they have a compelling range of NASs to suit every pocket and their interface is what QNAP spends all it's time catching up with. The range of applications out of the box are top drawer (apart from rtorrent which is a bit stinky but you can replace it with transmission via the same package manager as the QNAP) . Also they are all DLNA and UPNP-AV media servers for all your consoles, media clients and compooters.