I’ve been looking to buy some kind of external storage for a while now, and this page is pretty much my scratch-page for collecting data.
Requirements:
- Hardware (requirements)
- Space for 4-6 3.5" HDDs
- Quiet enough to be unnoticeable from a few meters away
- Should be around the same size as the hard drives put together (with some space in between of course)
- Gigabit ethernet
- Hardware (nice to have)
- Possibility of mounting 2.5" disks
- Fans should be still when the drive is not in use
- Some high-speed connection, like eSATA or USB3, which can be connected directly to another computer
- Software (requirements), if I can simply install linux on the machine, then the features below are not required
- RAID 10
- Samba
- Logging/status (CPU, Memory, Storage, Temperature)
- Access restriction on a user level + anonymous access
- Software (nice to have)
- RAID 6
- Wake-on-Lan
Alternatives to investigate:
- NAS Servers @ prisjakt
- Uses its own OS, which usually includes a lot of services
- Usually needs to flash the ROM to change OS
- Price range is 1.5-10k SEK
- External Storage Chassi @ prisjakt
- No OS, just connected to another machine
- Price range is 1-4k SEK
ZyXEL NAS540/NAS542
Type: NAS
Price:
Total price with hard drives: Around 7k SEK
Requirements (see above):
- Hardware (requirements)
- ✓ - Space for 4 3.5" HDDs
- ✓ - Whisper quite according to reviews
- ✓ - Not too big
- ✓ - Gigabit ethernet
- Hardware (nice to have)
- ✓ - Possibility of mounting 2.5" disks
- ✗ - Fans never go to sleep
- ✓ - Has USB3
- Software (requirements)
- ✓ - RAID 10
- ✓ - Samba
- ✓ - Logging/status (CPU, Memory, Storage, Temperature)
- ✓ - Access restriction on a user level + anonymous access
- Software (nice to have)
- ✓ - RAID 6 (Might be too taxing for the CPU though?)
- ✓ - Wake-on-Lan
Possible hardware to investigate:
Icy Dock ver?? youtube, Approx 1k-3k SEK depending on version