Hi there.

Just ordered 2x 4TB 3,5" HDDs for RAID-1 and a NAS of LogiLink, only to learn that it supports only 3TB and cannot be upgraded - manfacturer's site and the sellers site or the datasheet don't tell, only the packaging & telephone support do... *rolleyes*

Well. I was looking at the Buffalo Linkstation 220, a review said you can't see things like the RAIDs / HDDs health status on their web interface, which seems pretty useless then. Also the web interface is said to be horribly slow.

So I'm looking again for new options. I won't buy WD for bad experience with their NAS products and customer support (if they even have diskless ones).

Can you recommend one you're really satisfied with?

Short Specs:

- must support at least 2x 4TB = 8TB total without gasping for air all the time
- helpful web interface or other convenient way that allows for monitoring the things status, so I'm warned early when something's bad (emails for that are a nice plus but not enough alone)

- I'll use it only at home, not over the internet, so I don't care for anything that concerns that
- mainly from windows machines

I thought the price of the Buffalo thing (about 80 EUR) was okay. Might go somewhat higher if justified, but not much.

Thanks in advance,

- unshaven

Only have good things to say about Synology (and only bad things about WD). Price tag on Synology somewhat higher than 80 euros, but worth every cent.

Owning a 4-bay, 2-bay, and an ultra-lowcost 2-bay "SE" version. The latter is a bit weak on the CPU side, but does the job nevertheless. The 4-bay version is just awesome.

Only have good things to say about Synology (and only bad things about WD). Price tag on Synology somewhat higher than 80 euros, but worth every cent.

Owning a 4-bay, 2-bay, and an ultra-lowcost 2-bay "SE" version. The latter is a bit weak on the CPU side, but does the job nevertheless. The 4-bay version is just awesome.

Could you mention those good and bad things of each?

I've been happy with the Synology stuff, but it is expensive.

Synology or Drobo for turnkey NAS, neither are bargain-players. Personally, I like to roll my own using a NAS case with buit-in hot-swap bays and an ITX board. That route is also pricey and takes a time investment, but is more flexible.

This is my current NAS case, 4-hotswap bays on front, and space for two 2.5" drives inside. I've got 10TB of storage, plus an SSD that it boots from. It doubles as my mediacenter/TV-gaming PC, so mines a little beefier than the average NAS -- I've got a 35w quad-core I5 and a single-slot 6670 inside, with 16GB ram. If you were just using it for NAS, I'd recommend maybe a quad-core silvermont ITX board.

Unfortunately, by saying "80 EUR" with "8TB" you automatically put yourself into the garbage hardware bucket. You might find something that works well enough for a single user to back up data at slow speeds, but you won't find anything that supports big transfers or high load.

Like most hardware, there is the cheap version and the expensive version.

It looks like you're asking about the cheap version. They are cheap single-user devices. They are tiny, low power, and mostly work okay. If you don't like one brand for whatever reason, pick a different brand. You are NOT paying for quality builds with any of these products. Personally I've seen several of them used, and the WD MyCloud systems are not particularly worse than the other brands. Even then there are tiers, the better tiers offer swappable disks but are still not high end. For all of them transfer rates will be slow since they use the cheapest and slowest drives and processors on the market, but you will have a NAS for personal use.

If you're asking about the expensive version, that is going to be a large rack mounted enclosure containing a bunch of drive bays. They start around $1500 / 1200 EUR before you add the drives, but you can throw in a bunch of SSDs if you want, plus they'll handle heavy loads and extended use.

Could you mention those good and bad things of each?

Synology:

• Put in one disk, it formats the disk and everything works.
• Put in two disks, it makes a RAID (you get to choose which one, or whether to use the disk as hot spare, of course)
• Put another disk into an existing system, it enlarges the RAID. System is very slightly slower while it does that, but fully operational.
• Pull out disks one by one and plug in a bigger ones, everything keeps operational and RAID size is enlarged.
• Have a surveillance camera? The NAS comes with software for it.
• Want to host photos/blog/videos? Two clicks.
• Want a DVB recorder? Sure.
• Need a minimal Git or Subversion server? Two clicks.
• Need anything advanced? Linux system.
• VPN server? Sure.
• Download slave, P2P, proxy server, mail server, what you want.
• Fully automatic monitoring
• Linux 3.2 system with root access via SSH
• Looks cool, consumes only a few watts (44W with 4 disks, so the station itself can't take much more than 5-6W).
• Does cool stuff (like link aggregation, which if fucking awesome)

WD:

• Disk configured to park the head every few moments, load cycle count comes close to "fail" within months. Can be fixed, but that requires building a low-level tool (and knowing about it in the first place).
• Slow.
• Sluggy, half-assed management interface. Things that should take one millisecond (like, add a user) take 5-6 seconds.
• Linux 2.6 system with root access via SSH (actually that is one good thing)
• Management iInterface did not work any more after half a year (for no apparent reason).
• "Load factory settings" suggests that you may lose some settings, but are able to use the management interface again afterwards. It really means "delete all shares, and disable console access so you really can't do anything any more on the box".
• Disk is formatted with a weird block size so you can't rescue your data if your NAS doesn't work any more. Not without a custom-built Linux kernel anyway.

Especially the last point is a dealbreaker for WD. It's the same kind of shit that Panasonic is doing with their DVD/harddisk recorders -- deliberately getting into the owner's way and doing the maximum to make your life unhappy. As if a non-working NAS wasn't enough distress, they must make sure that you can't get to your data even when you open the case and take out the disk.

Could you mention those good and bad things of each?

Synology:

• Put in one disk, it formats the disk and everything works.
• Put in two disks, it makes a RAID (you get to choose which one, or whether to use the disk as hot spare, of course)
• Put another disk into an existing system, it enlarges the RAID. System is very slightly slower while it does that, but fully operational.
• Pull out disks one by one and plug in a bigger ones, everything keeps operational and RAID size is enlarged.
• Have a surveillance camera? The NAS comes with software for it.
• Want to host photos/blog/videos? Two clicks.
• Want a DVB recorder? Sure.
• Need a minimal Git or Subversion server? Two clicks.
• Need anything advanced? Linux system.
• VPN server? Sure.
• Download slave, P2P, proxy server, mail server, what you want.
• Fully automatic monitoring
• Linux 3.2 system with root access via SSH
• Looks cool, consumes only a few watts (44W with 4 disks, so the station itself can't take much more than 5-6W).
• Does cool stuff (like link aggregation, which if fucking awesome)

WD:

• Disk configured to park the head every few moments, load cycle count comes close to "fail" within months. Can be fixed, but that requires building a low-level tool (and knowing about it in the first place).
• Slow.
• Sluggy, half-assed management interface. Things that should take one millisecond (like, add a user) take 5-6 seconds.
• Linux 2.6 system with root access via SSH (actually that is one good thing)
• Management iInterface did not work any more after half a year (for no apparent reason).
• "Load factory settings" suggests that you may lose some settings, but are able to use the management interface again afterwards. It really means "delete all shares, and disable console access so you really can't do anything any more on the box".
• Disk is formatted with a weird block size so you can't rescue your data if your NAS doesn't work any more. Not without a custom-built Linux kernel anyway.

Especially the last point is a dealbreaker for WD. It's the same kind of shit that Panasonic is doing with their DVD/harddisk recorders -- deliberately getting into the owner's way and doing the maximum to make your life unhappy. As if a non-working NAS wasn't enough distress, they must make sure that you can't get to your data even when you open the case and take out the disk.

Oh, that was surprising. Especially the last point. I guess I'll personally try out Synology.

It looks like you're asking about the cheap version. They are cheap single-user devices. They are tiny, low power, and mostly work okay. If you don't like one brand for whatever reason, pick a different brand. You are NOT paying for quality builds with any of these products. Personally I've seen several of them used, and the WD MyCloud systems are not particularly worse than the other brands.

If you're asking about the expensive version, that is going to be a large rack mounted enclosure containing a bunch of drive bays. They start around $1500 / 1200 EUR before you add the drives, but you can throw in a bunch of SSDs if you want, plus they'll handle heavy loads and extended use.

Yes I'm definitiely asking for single-user systems, no real servers - and within that frame, there ought to be something in the 100 bucks price range that's not total crap? I mean, it's not rocket science. It seems ridiculous that I buy a damn glorified HDD controller for more than double or triple of what my actual main computer costs.
Low power usage is a nice plus.

Concerning WD, I'll tell you my experience with the "MyBook" of a few years ago. 6 months after I got mine, new, it started to hum like a bees hive - nothing that inspires confidence to put valuable data on, which is kinda bad, considering it was supposed to be a backup drive that I only turned on once in a while, nothing near like the 6 months permanent use. I RMA'd it, got one back that lasted almost exactly 6 months again. I RMA'd again, that time I guess since the year was over, they sent me an obviously used one - which was dead on arrival - they did not even bother to check the crap they're sending, and their support was, let's say, less than helpful, they had trouble understanding the connections between events and items I tried to explain to them repeatedly, giving completely useless answers & suggestions... eh..

Well, good that I kept the 2nd turned bee hive one, and sent back the DOA turd. So now my WD is a spare drive that I rarely use - for what it is that was too expensive.

Let me add - this experience (after 6 months the thing humming like all screws are loose) I found reported many times in amazon reviews, too.

Yes I'm definitiely asking for single-user systems, no real servers - and within that frame, there ought to be something in the 100 bucks price range that's not total crap? I mean, it's not rocket science. It seems ridiculous that I buy a damn glorified HDD controller for more than double or triple of what my actual main computer costs.

What you pay for is getting a system that works reliably and that holds your data with redundancy. This is something that matters for single-user system as much as for systems that serve a thousand users. Losing data sucks big time. Restoring from backup sucks as well, even if you don't lose much.

The Synology 214SE (their cheapest model) costs 129€ without disk, so if you add the price for the disk, that's about twice as expensive as a cheapish WD thingie. But you can trivially configure it to use RAID-1, and it's like 3 clicks to have it automatically back data up onto another diskstation or onto one of several supported cloud services (among them Strato HiDrive, Amazon Glacier, and Elephant). With versioning, if you want.

Yes, you can hack together a script (say, bacula) on a MyBook live, too. But it's nowhere like the same level of comfort, and the overall level of reliability is totally different.

Making a WD MyBook live unresponsive is simply a matter of running Peazip "Extract here..." on a large archive and select "Scan for Viruses..." from the context menu on the containing folder. Congrats... you can now pull the cable so your NAS reboots because Samba froze up the box, not even SSH works any more. Do the same on Synology, and it just works as expected. Of course it does, what else. That's what you pay for. It's not just a disk controller with a network plug. It's a system that offers a certain level of reliability and robustness against everyday abuse.

Harddisks start making noise? Pull them out one-by-one, plug in new ones, and worry no more. Data is still there and you need not interrupt your work for one minute. That's what you pay for.