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How Would I Manage To Have 5 Hard Drives... Outside of My Computer?

Personally I'd disagree with the building of a NAS. I used to want to do this, but I realized I preferred buying one.

If you can afford it, I would buy a bunch of new drives and a dedicated NAS box. I personally decided on one that could hold at least 4 drives.

Two popular ones:
- Synology
- QNAP


Here's why:

These things are designed to run on very low power and usually with no fans, low RAM, etc. This is important because a NAS server really is not something you want pulling 700-1000W of power like a desktop. It doesnt need performance, it needs to be more power economical. These dedicated NAS appliances are cool and very quiet and small.

You can then also setup a bunch of 2TB drives in a RAID-5 array. The drives you buy can be those "green" low-power drives. This again will help make the device more friendly to your electricity bill.

All of this will still be fast enough to stream HD over your network. And, it will have an added bonus of not being built with a bunch of hard drives nearing the end of their lives.


Additionally, these NAS offer things like mini web-servers, uPnP/DLNA, Dynamic DNS support, and even have apps for Android & iPhone.


For the older drives, I'd just recommend something like that docking station someone posted above so you can get the data off of there -- then maybe donate them and/or sell them or send them off with your old PC.
 
SUroot said:
Stay away from Thecus NAS's IMHO. I have one and I am massively disappointed with it.
Click to expand...

Now I'm curious - what disappoints you about it?

I have a Thecus N3200 with 3 drives used as a backup for a WHS. It was fiddly as hell to setup, but has been relatively trouble free since (apart from a couple of overheating problems when clogged with cat fur :rolleyes:)
 
It works as storage fine. Raid was fine. The gigabit port won't pick up an ip on my n4100+. The 10/100 is much closer to 10 on my network. Very slow.

It also seems to be incapable of ftp, usb volume mounting and many other functions.

Thecus connected remotely about the ftp and told me system files were missing. Advised to reset. I did to no avail.

Maybe only I've had this disappointment but the product was not what I hoped.

On a side note, the site I bought from said it was expendable but that's the n4100 pro, so now I'm stuck at 4*750GB

Wasn't too popular amongst modders so no alternative firmware to resolve these issues. No newer firmware to upgrade too. Flashing latest firmware doesn't help either
 
SUroot said:
It works as storage fine. Raid was fine. The gigabit port won't pick up an ip on my n4100+. The 10/100 is much closer to 10 on my network. Very slow.

It also seems to be incapable of ftp, usb volume mounting and many other functions.

Thecus connected remotely about the ftp and told me system files were missing. Advised to reset. I did to no avail.

Maybe only I've had this disappointment but the product was not what I hoped.

On a side note, the site I bought from said it was expendable but that's the n4100 pro, so now I'm stuck at 4*750GB

Wasn't too popular amongst modders so no alternative firmware to resolve these issues. No newer firmware to upgrade too. Flashing latest firmware doesn't help either
Click to expand...


Clearly you've sought to use your Thecus to a fuller extent than I have. Mine's always played a supporting role only in JBOD mode.
I'm sorry to hear it doesn't meet your requirements; it's always disappointing when tech doesn't live up to its specs.
 
All i want to be able to do really is copy data directly to USB via the USB port and access it via FTP. Should be quite simple really.
 
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