uteck
12-29-2007, 04:22 PM
Earlier this year I started to run low on space on my homemade fileserver and for various reasons adding more or larger drives was not practical. This time I wanted to go with a dedicated NAS device for the smaller form factor and reduced power draw. After shopping around, this is the unit I am using at home; http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3127552&Sku=SYXS-ST-989580. It is made by Intel but is not available directly from them. Its been up and running without any major problems since I got it (except for the bad disk it shipped with), but it is not perfect.
The main shortcoming of it is that it does not support SATAII. You can use a disk, but it will only transfer at SATAI speed. The other downside is that the firmware that comes on the unit does not see drives larger then 500GB, which is what the model shipped with (and they were the nice Seagate 7.10 with Perpendicular recording and 16MB of cache), so it is not that bad. There is a firmware upgrade to work with larger disks, but you will lose all your data if you apply it since it also changes the file format and other base settings.
On the plus side, it is a truly networked device with web admin page and dual Gigabit network cards that can each be set to a different IP on separate LANs. It works with all protocols, CIFS/SMB and NFS and you can control what IP's and users can connect. I configured mine for Raid 5 just encase a drives dies, and with 1.5TB of potential storage, I don't want to risk losing things. Which was just what happened as I was trying to get things set up. The unit shipped with a bad drive, but SystemMax got a replacement out within the week. The system reads fast enough to stream media to my MythTV box and that is what is really important.
The main shortcoming of it is that it does not support SATAII. You can use a disk, but it will only transfer at SATAI speed. The other downside is that the firmware that comes on the unit does not see drives larger then 500GB, which is what the model shipped with (and they were the nice Seagate 7.10 with Perpendicular recording and 16MB of cache), so it is not that bad. There is a firmware upgrade to work with larger disks, but you will lose all your data if you apply it since it also changes the file format and other base settings.
On the plus side, it is a truly networked device with web admin page and dual Gigabit network cards that can each be set to a different IP on separate LANs. It works with all protocols, CIFS/SMB and NFS and you can control what IP's and users can connect. I configured mine for Raid 5 just encase a drives dies, and with 1.5TB of potential storage, I don't want to risk losing things. Which was just what happened as I was trying to get things set up. The unit shipped with a bad drive, but SystemMax got a replacement out within the week. The system reads fast enough to stream media to my MythTV box and that is what is really important.