I LOVE MY QNAP!
Features…CLICK HERE
I realized many years ago that I needed a storage solution that would offer me reliable and quiet operation. I had all my data spread over multiple drives. The data was not backed up and I didn’t even make any copies. Well, needless to say the with me being a seasoned IT professional, this was unacceptable. Having over 4TB of data including my Family home movies, audio library,movie library, personal documents, disc images and application store, I had to make sure my purchase was well researched and a reasonable price. I had to make sure that I wasn’t going to end up with a huge USB drive or a nas that only supported JBOD. I needed something robust and reliable that I could trust to handle my data and not worry if i lost a drive.
After over 2 months of reading and deciding and going back and forth I decided to go with the QNAP TS-419P+
Here is a quick overview of the NAS from the manufacturers website:
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The TS-419P+ is QNAP’s new generation four-bay Turbo NAS with iSCSI, especially designed for small business and home users who are looking for a large storage center to store, back up, share thousands of multimedia files or expand the storage capacity. The NAS is equipped with latest powerful 1.6 GHz embedded CPU and 512MB DDRIII memory, supports 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA hard drives, and delivers ultra high speed performance yet maintains extremely low power consumption. The powerful system can let you build the RAID5, or RAID 1 mirroring for hard disk redundancy.
The TS-419P+ takes the lead in the current small business and home NAS market with the outstanding specifications, hot-swappable hard disk design, great expandability by two eSATA and multiple USB ports, dual Gigabit LAN ports, handy LCD screen, high reliability, and numerous all-in-1 software applications. It is a reliable, powerful yet affordable mini storage server which can be easily deployed for various application environments.
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I have had the unit for over a year now and its been running problem free.
Not only do I use it for storage, but its a GREAT DLNA / Fileserver – I stream my 1080p movies over my gig-e network without issue.
I am using 3TB Seagate drives which have been tested by QNAP and appear on their compatibility list located here
http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?lang=en&sn=3877
I have 4 x 3TB drivers installed which gives me 8247.59 GB of usable space (RAID 5 setup claims the other 4TB for redundancy overhead)
Costs were approx $550.00 CAD for the NAS and I was luck enough to get the 3TB drives for $99.00 CAD each from NCIX on a black friday sale.
Total was approx $900.00. This may sound expensive but if you really think about the features and how much usable space you are getting with redundancy, I think you’ll agree that in the end, you are paying for peace of mind. Besides, I have double the space I require. This is a long term solution meaning that I won’t have to worry about storage for years to come.
Finally I would like to add that this is a back up and storage solution but your important data still needs to be archived.
If I lost 2 drives at the same time I would be in a world of trouble. RAID 5 in a 4 drive set can only handle 1 drive failure at a time. This means if a drive dies I have to run out and buy another one ASAP and install it so It can rebuild before another drive fails. I still ARCHIVE everything to Blu-ray disk. I cannot stress this enough
I purchased a Blu-ray burner for $80.00 CAD and a pack of 50x25GB Disks and I archived all important data….Documents, Family Videos and Pictures.
I make 2 copy sets and I keep one up north at my summer getaway so in case we have a disaster of any kind here at home, I still have a copy set stored up north far far away and I haven’t lost my kids childhood memories :) (and my wife won’t kill me in my sleep for losing everything)
I do not archive my Movie collection or my audio since both can be downloaded from the internet or Itunes
(but I do have a second copy that automatically goes to a 2TB usb for my Movies.)
I hope this small quick review has been helpful and informative.
–sam