Help on choosing a NAS and HDD

[Ramo1203]

Hello everybody!

I'm in the market for a NAS but I don't know much about the brands and models. Between the Synology Disk Station DS112j and the QNAP Turbo NAS TS-112, which one is the best choice? They both fit my budget, but it's hard to choose as they both look nice!

The QNAP has better specs (faster CPU, E-SATA and more RAM), will that make a difference for me, as I just need a NAS for simple backup, storage, and Bitorrent, I'm not going to use any fancy features. And about the Bitorrent function, I can download without having my computer on? Is it right, that I could plug my printer to the NAS to have a network printer?

As for the HDD, are the power savings really worth losing performance?

Thanks for the advice guys!

[AthlonX2]

Both are single bay Nas' with gigabit connections. synology is more user friendly while the qnap has more of a enterprise feel. you wont be able to saturate a gigabit connection unless you use an SSD as your drive ,another thing to think about is heat inside the enclosure i would go for a green drive just because it saves power and doesnt put off so much heat

[newtekie1]

It might not be the answer you are looking for, but honestly I would avoid all of these stand alone NAS devices. They suck. They are usually slow. They have gigabit ports, but usually transfer speeds are bottlenecked by the CPU, and are usually under 15MB/s regardless of what hard drive you put in them. And they are a pain if you want to upgrade or add storage.

I'd cobble together a real machine and use it as a NAS device running some flavor of Windows Pro or even Home Server, or if you don't have one of those already you can use one of the free easy to setup *nix flavors designed for this purpose such as FreeNAS. Yes, it will be a little more expensive right now, especially if you have to buy the OS, and consume a little more power, but in the long run it will be so much better. It will be easier to add storage space, it will allow you to do more, and it will be much faster.

Just as an example, I just built a NAS system for a friend. The specs were:

Rosewill Case w/ space for 4 HDDs(5 if you use the floppy space, 9 if you use the 5.25" bays)
Celeron G530 2.4GHz Dual-Core
H67 Motherboard w/ RAID 0/1/5/10 Support and 6 SATA ports
2GB DDR3 1333(Overkill)
Corsair 80+ PSU

The total was $200 after Rebate($10 rebate on PSU)

Idle power consumption is under 90w, and never goes above 100w even when heavily hitting it with file transfers with 3x2TB hard drives in it. And it easily pushes 90-100MB/s file transfers, which you will never see on those NAS boxes.

[mlee49]

Originally Posted by Ramo1203

Hello everybody!

I'm in the market for a NAS but I don't know much about the brands and models. Between the Synology Disk Station DS112j and the QNAP Turbo NAS TS-112, which one is the best choice?(1) They both fit my budget, but it's hard to choose as they both look nice!

The QNAP has better specs (faster CPU, E-SATA and more RAM), will that make a difference for me, as I just need a NAS for simple backup, storage, and Bitorrent, I'm not going to use any fancy features. And about the Bitorrent function, I can download without having my computer on?(2) Is it right, that I could plug my printer to the NAS to have a network printer?(3)

As for the HDD, are the power savings really worth losing performance?(4)

Thanks for the advice guys!

To answer your questions:

1) Its a toss up, both are good choices. I have the 210j from Synology, over the last 2 years it's been a lifesaver and ran excellently.
2) Yes, you can download a file without your desktop on. Thats the whole purpose of separate box Its very easy to use on the Synology boxes.
3) You'll have to check each manufacture's site to make sure. I think the Synology does allow for it, but I have a wifi printer and have never used that feature.
4) I ran WD Blue drives which are a great blend of performance and power savings. I run 2 640 drives in Raid0 and the heat is easily handled by the built in fan.

Hope this helps!

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

It might not be the answer you are looking for, but honestly I would avoid all of these stand alone NAS devices. They suck. They are usually slow. They have gigabit ports, but usually transfer speeds are bottlenecked by the CPU, and are usually under 15MB/s regardless of what hard drive you put in them. And they are a pain if you want to upgrade or add storage.

Only lower end ARM based devices give poor performance. Basically any Celeron or Atom based NAS I touched was able to saturate a Gigabit line, at least with large file transfers.

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

Only lower end ARM based devices give poor performance. Basically any Celeron or Atom based NAS I touched was able to saturate a Gigabit line, at least with large file transfers.

Yeah, I should have been more clear here. The lower end units are what I'm talking about, the higher end units are faster, but usually cost well past the price of just building a machine, and they still suffer from from of the other issues I stated, such as being harder to add storage to in the case of 1 or 2 bay devices.

Things might have changed since the last time I looked, but AFAIK there isn't anything in the sub-$300 range that uses anything but an ARM based processor, and nothing in a 1-bay form factor.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

Yeah, I should have been more clear here. The lower end units are what I'm talking about, the higher end units are faster, but usually cost well past the price of just building a machine, and they still suffer from from of the other issues I stated, such as being harder to add storage to in the case of 1 or 2 bay devices.

All depends on what you require. Yes, building yourself tends to be cheaper, but isn't always as elegant.
Personally I went for an in between solution in the end. Home build server with 2 DAS devices. Best of both worlds, apart from the physical small it takes.

[Ramo1203]

Thanks for your answers guys!

As you said newtekie1, building a real machine seems much better performance wise. However I really wanted something that could fit next to my router, something pretty small and also less complicated. I will check out some build possibilities, with the specs you said.

[newtekie1]

You can go the MiniITX route, and build a much smaller machine, but prices go up when going smaller, and the cases have less flexibility.

It all comes down to your individual situation and what you really want out of the device. If you are happy with the features the smaller NAS devices give you, and you want a super small form factor, then go with it.

[Ramo1203]

I've decided to go with a QNAP Turbo NAS TS-112 with a ST2000DM001, 2TB with 1TB platters, should be a nice combo I think! :-)
I'll update when I get the stuff, can't wait to try it out!

[Ramo1203]

I finally got the hardware. It works really great. Only thing is that the NAS doesn't support magnet link for bitorrent download. Hope that they will update the firmware to add support for that! Or than that, yes it's kinda slow, but it does what I need, and I'm happy with it.

[AthlonX2]

As long as you are happy with what you bought,i would have gone with a Thecus since they generally run faster processors

[Ramo1203]

I mean for the price, around 150 dollars for a 2TB disk and a NAS, it's good value. I didn't wanna spend more money on my first NAS.