NAS recommendations

[mmmonkey]

Hi

Thinking it's about time I started backing some stuff up properly. I want to be able to backup from a couple of laptops and a desktop. I like the idea of a NAS device, but not really sure what I want as I keep thinking about other uses for it.

Most are wired, all my machines are wireless, and a wireless NAS would be nice as my BT Home Hub 3 isn't really in a convenient place to use machines wired. I'm aware the HH3 has a USB port which can be used to share out a USB hard drive though. I have seen some USB powered devices which will convert ethernet to wifi, I guess I could add one of those.

Thinking about using RAID1, this is for backups after all and that seems like a good idea. Means I could use it to archive some stuff away and not keep it on machines and feel a bit safer about doing so.

I guess I could also use it to stream some of the stuff to consoles? That'd be handy for looking at photo's on the telly using a PS3, which I believe isn't possible using the USB port on the HH3 as that's SMB only? You can store your itunes on it?

So, that's a few boxes to tick, do you have one that does all that? Should I forget about wifi as it would be slow enough to drive me nuts?

What are you experiences with these things?

Many thanks
Pete

[briareos_kerensky]

I'd go QNAP or Synology. I'm a very happy user of a QNAP TS-219P (two bays, RAID 1 with WD RE4 drives), which I use for backup, streamling, online repository and essentially replaced data storage for all computers in the house. It's fully Twonky and UPnP compatible and it's picked up by the PS3 automatically. I guess the easiest way to hook it up wireless (but I don't reccomend it, unless you go n) is with a cheap switch and a wi-fi hotspot...probably connecting the extender to the NAS itself will work but I've never tried.

[mmmonkey]

Lovely, ta

[smouty]

I'd go for either a QNAP or Synology but they are expensive. You could build one yourself using a HP micro server N40l.

[nigel1210]

HP N40l with unraid here.

[Adrock]

I had unraid myself but in the process of changing it all around. Snapraid is my new solution.

Are you purely using it for backup or will you be regularly accessing the stuff on it? That would make a big difference to recommendations in my opinion.