Looking to get a 500 GB unit, and wanting spend around $140-$200.

Looking for reliability, internet access of stored content is a plus, and security/software is important too as I'll want to shar portions of the drive, and keep other portions secure.

So far I'm thinking about the following:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822100016

Any other ones I should look at?

7/26/2007 12:35:06 AM

tomshardware.com for pretty good range of reviews.

That one may be good, but it looks really sketchy. And as much as I HATE to admit this, visual build quality on peripherals like this is usually a pretty good indicator.

7/26/2007 2:26:43 AM

I have the buffalo linkstation. Its pretty speedy and it allows ftp with security for different shared folders. As for reliability...mine still works after a year of 24/7 on time.

there was a review of the 120gb linkstation, along with others as Noen said, on tomshardware a while back

7/26/2007 8:48:55 AM

bttt

8/2/2007 2:48:56 AM

Been thinking about one of these. The one you linked to is only 100M, not 1000M though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165021

Buffalo makes some nice ones.

8/2/2007 9:21:07 AM

i've been keeping an eye on them too. read a review on tomshardware and arstechnica last week but wasn't impressed with what's out there right now. i think i'm going to wait until windows home server comes out and maybe build my own media server -shrug- let us know what you get

8/2/2007 9:35:08 AM

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30111/75/

Kinda expensive though.

8/2/2007 9:41:55 AM

an alternative is to take an old computer and get some 500gb drives during the next slickdeal for 100 bucks each or less and run http://www.freenas.org/ or http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ (<- would require more work config wise) from an old flash drive or something similiar. i have an old shuttle pc running it with 2 hds and no cdrom. my case doesn't yield itself well to additional drives for expansion, but works for me so far.

[Edited on August 2, 2007 at 9:52 AM. Reason : .]

8/2/2007 9:47:22 AM

^ that's what i've been doing so far too. but i want something that's more power-efficient and quieter, and something my wife will let me place in the living room

8/2/2007 9:56:22 AM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124036

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/

8/2/2007 10:23:35 AM

bttt.

Quote :

"i want something that's more power-efficient and quieter, and something my wife will let me place in the living room"

btw, what are my chances of getting something that will work with my xbox360 and/or SA8300HD?

10/23/2007 12:35:49 AM

u want a NAS device that will work with the SA8300? I'm assuming you have to direct connect a hard drive to the dvr unit.

now maybe you could find one that has both a network connection and a usb, maybe that would work.

10/23/2007 8:53:24 AM

yeah, pretty much. you can get external drives for tivo now

if i can't do both at once, i at least want to be able to occasionally rip the SA8300 recordings and put them on a media-server enabled NAS so that I can get to them from the xbox360

[Edited on October 23, 2007 at 3:28 PM. Reason : you can rip dvr recordings, right?]

10/23/2007 3:27:35 PM

Quote :

"rip the SA8300 recordings and put them on a media-server enabled NAS so that I can get to them from the xbox360"

gl with that. have you heard of people successfully getting content off of their TWC SA8300?

http://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=459125

10/23/2007 3:32:36 PM

i remembered seeing mentions of it here and there over the last couple years, though i knew it def wasn't officially supported or even obvious how to do. haven't really researched it a whole lot yet, but i'll post if i find a solution

10/23/2007 3:40:34 PM

Buffalo or Lacie

10/23/2007 4:02:51 PM

fti:message_topic.aspx?topic=493313

10/23/2007 4:04:11 PM

fast forward 6 months, what's the new hotness?

[Edited on April 29, 2008 at 10:28 PM. Reason : see message_topic.aspx?topic=524493 for related discussion]

4/29/2008 10:27:42 PM

Quote :

"http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124036 http://www.nslu2-linux.org/"

4/29/2008 10:37:17 PM

i know its tech talk, but it had to be done

4/30/2008 12:09:01 PM

I second the FreeNAS idea - I looked at half a dozen consumer devices, both bring your own disk and disk included, and nothing compared to the flexibility to cost ratio of an old 500MHz POS computer with 256MB of RAM (free to $20) with two 500GB hd's ($100 each). Not to mention the POS computer will use standard parts - ATX motherboard and power supply, PC100/133 RAM, so on, if something burns out replacements are readily available and free to cheap.

4/30/2008 7:05:14 PM

^ With that setup you get raped on power consumption. You'll be using 10 times the amount of electricity that you need to.

5/1/2008 4:59:11 PM

exactly. that's pretty much what i've been doing for the last 6 years. time to join the 21st century

5/1/2008 5:32:40 PM

Power consumption is ~20w idle, and still under 100w when active. I can buy tons of electricity for the cost saved over a 1TB all in one NAS. Also - electricity is cheap out here.

5/1/2008 10:32:53 PM

hard drive aside.. (since they are all about the same $/GB)

~$70 for NAS
~$25-$40 for USB enclosure
~??? for extra computer?

With NAS you'd have Gigabit LAN, RAID 0/1 support, and most NAS devices run on 400mhz/64MB of memory and run at 20W as well.

so $70 for a piece of crap computer, or $70 for small form-factor that's portable

5/1/2008 11:35:31 PM

We have a Buffalo Terastation Pro II at work and it has been running flawless for about 2 years now (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).

It has 4 bays, with 250 GB SATA drives in each (upgradeable to 500 GB drives). The bays/drives are hot-swappable and supports RAID 5 (which is what we use). It also has a 10/100/1000 ethernet port and 2 USB ports on the back for additional storage devices.

It was ~$800 2 years ago but should be much cheaper now since prices on drives have gone down so much.

Nevermind - just checked and it's still $600 - $700. Oh well - if you want a great NAS though it's a good one.

5/4/2008 8:54:18 PM