Which NAS for dumping ground/iTunes server?

[El Kapitano]

HI all, I was wondering if any of you have any experience of the following NAS boxes, after scouring the net for reviews and reading the wiki's etc. My heads rolling so I'm looking for some real user input here please.

Icy Box IB-NAS4220-B, Stardom SL-3620-2S-LB2 or the D-Link DNS-323

The only one I can't find any info on at all is the Stardom, the others seem to have followers/issues/living wikis and ongoing linux participation.

I've also had a stab at FreeNAS with iTunes (mt-daapd) and could get the freenas box up OK but couldn't work out how to install the mt-daapd, possibly something to do with needing to alter the daapd config file but I'm not at all Linux savvy (Anyone?).

Main usage will be a backup dumping ground for images of the four PC's, iTunes server for the family so it frees my PC up from MP3 filling duties and photo/video storage.

[Tipstaff]

I have the D-Link 323. Great little box. Almost all the issues I've had are all but gone, and the one that is left I can deal with if it ever crops up again (the HD spinup/spindown issue with the onboard print queue, but if you don't use it as a print server you will never see this issue).

Although I don't use it as an iTunes file server (cuz I hate iTunes), I've tired it, and it works. All you do is turn on the iTunes server on the box, and the NAS will show up in iTunes under "Share". Simple as that. I also pretty much do everything with the box that you mentioned, along with using it as a print server (and don't mind the small list that D-Link has for supported printers.. it's incomplete). I even have my Outlook PST files on it, so I can access my email from any machine, I have the FTP setup and running, and now that I'm up to Gigabit speed I find I stream a lot more movies than I did before.

Of note, though, if you are going to be going the NAS route, switch over to a Gigabit setup. Running on a 100mb network for as long as I did was painful to transfer anything large back and fourth. Switching over to Gigabit has all but relieved that problem. Now I can actually dump an image of a hard drive directly over the network to the NAS, and back again, and it won't take hours. Makes life a whole lot easier.

[El Kapitano]

Hi Tipstaff, thanks for the reply.

Finally went for the QNAP TS-209 the review's for the pro but the 209 vanilla doesn't differ apart from a couple of extra apps/services that aren't really any use other than corporate workgroups.

Two Samsung SATAII 500Gb Drives in raid 1 and we're up and running

'tis very good Even if it wasn't on the original shortlist (and came in at twice the price of the NAS units that were -but don't tell the missus )

I got a gigabit switch (Zyxel GS108A) at the same time but since found out it doesn't do jumbo frames

Three hours, two mains sockets, 40 metres of cat 5e, some telephone cable and a quick RJ45 crimping session and I've now got an official gigabit lan going on with everything housed neatly in a cupboard at the top of the stairs. Now I've just got to get round to wiring the rest of the rooms in the house (When the wife's away of course).


The box



My "Comms" Room (AKA The dumping ground) - Work in progress

[H3X4D3C1M4L]

Nice setup. You should see mine, I spent quite a while wiring the house

[El Kapitano]

It's not really moved on any from the piccies above, still to run 4 more points downstairs (Inc one more to my "den" to make use of the Nvidia gigabit teaming feature) and four more points upstairs.

Just waiting for the wife 'n' pan lids to go away for the weekend so's I can go ripping up the floors and stuff.