I have been looking for a good solid SOHO Network Attached Storage device for a while. I was all set on the Lacie 2big 1.5TB Network device, it is attractive does what I needed – not much more than share files – and supports multiple drives.
Problem is I have since discovered that Lacie UK are the most incompetent people on the planet. I placed the order with them after their site showed they had the unit in-stock on a 3 days delivery time, after placing my order site said the same so I was confident it was all in order. Needless to say the device never came. I emailed their sales lines, no response, I emailed their supports lines, no response. I called them (after spending about a hour tracking down phone numbers) they didn’t reply to voice mails.
After about 10 calls I eventually spoke to someone who was unhelpful to say the least, I was told next-week, next-week etc a few times, next week came and went and no drive unit so I eventually just canceled my order. No more Lacie devices in my future ever that is a certainty.
Some searching later I found a few excellent reviews over at SmallNetBuilder for this and other devices, they even have a very awesome tool for comparing different NAS devices for speed etc, I decided based on their review to get the QNAP TS-209 pro.
The TS-209 pro is an attractive yet very well built little system, all the screws and connectors are proper solid bits of kit like you’d expect on real hardware. It is a Linux box and you can ssh to it:
# uname -a Linux vault 2.6.12.6-arm1 #2 Thu Nov 1 03:31:14 CST 2007 armv5tejl unknown # cat /proc/cpuinfo Processor : ARM926EJ-Sid(wb) rev 0 (v5l) BogoMIPS : 332.59 Features : swp half thumb fastmult # cat /proc/mdstat <snip>
md0 : active raid1 sdb3[2] sda3[0] 731423296 blocks [2/1] [U_] [==>..................] recovery = 10.6% (78181504/731423296) finish=144.0min speed=75574K/sec
So a proper little box then, I put 2 x Seagate 750GB drives into it for the same amount of storage as I would have had in the Lacie, the total price ended being about GBP50 more or so.
That GBP50 is money really well spent in this case. The device has hot swap drives – I tested it by yanking one out live without any problems, a few beeps, a few emailed alerts and log entries:
The device has a ton of features, the usual SMB shares are there but also NFS, Appletalk, FTP, Web access. It has a MySQL server built in, a webserver with php so you can deploy whatever you want on it. An iTunes server for your MP3s and a typical UPNP media server that will work with your PS3 etc.
This is a really capable device built on solid technology, so far I am very happy with it and will recommend to anyone. If anything significant change on my experiences I’ll post more later but I suggest you read the review linked above and seriously consider this for your SOHO NAS needs.
