What model are you looking at?

219P+ is the leading contender.

219P+ is the leading contender.
I'm using the QNAP TS 219P+ at home with 2 2TB WD green drives and its simply amazing.
I can transfer Blu-Ray rips to the NAS at a rate of approx. 60MB/s and it can easily support delivery of 1080p HD movies concurrently to 3 devices (and maybe more).

I previously had the TS209 and it couldn't handle delivering 1080p to more than 1 device at a time w/o causing buffering issues..

wow 60MB/s, that's like 3x my DNS323

QNAP TS 219P+ has been ordered with 2 x 1TB WD Green drives. Also needed a switch as part of the overhaul.

My data will be REALLY safe shortly.

I'm in the biuld your own with Linux camp.

FreeNAS is quick and easy but last time I looked at it it was built on BSD and the Samba performance with BSD is known to be horrid.

I'm looking into doing an iSCSI SAN and Openfiler looks nice.

i am using FreeNAS 7.0. I need the UPNP and iTunes support.

Yup that is the version I have played with on abd off for the past while for fuppies :)
and UPNP.
Dan

All the bits for my QNAP arrived yesterday so in between other jobs I:

1. Reconfigured the network connections to make room for it.
2. Moved stuff around on the A/V shelf (where it will live) to make room for it
3. Got all the H/W pieced together
4. Downloaded and installed the firmware, and verified that I can see it on my network from two different computers, one Win7, one XP.

Tonight I'll actually spend some time configuring the volumes and other services.

First impressions are that it is a physically solid piece of gear.

^^^^ is it inappropriate to ask where you purchased it and how much $$$ you paid?

I'm still in the market for the very same unit or the 4 bay version.

Thanks!

I got mine from NCIX. It was the lowest, by about $10 of all the usual suspects.

The big killer right now is disk drives. Thanks to the flooding in Thailand disk drive prices are going through the roof.

That's where I priced it from the last time... the only thing that prevented me from pulling the trigger was they recommended against using the WD Green drives in it.

Please keep us posted with your progress! :)

Thanks.

I have the WD Green in them so I'll let you know if I have any issues.

This is what QNAP has to say about those drives in the 219s;

Note5 (WD Caviar Green & Seagate Green)
These hard disk drives have passed QNAP lab's initial verification of compatibility. However, because many users have reported unstable experience with these hard disk drives, we do not recommend using these had disk drives with QNAP products.

Sadly the listed "compatible" drives push everything out of my current budget - things are much worse now with the price hikes too.

I've been interested in the QNAP NAS devices. I look forward to hearing how jvincent's experience is in the coming weeks/months.

Just a side note to this conversation RE WD green drives. I've had some bad experiences with them in a raid 5 setup. Out of 16 drives over the past 2-3 years we've replaced at least 9 of them so far.

I splurged on the SATA3 Green drives, so hopefully that will prevent any issues.

I've started the process of moving all the data/pictures/etc that is scattered across the various computers onto the NAS. No issues so far.

phaeton:

Just a suggestion, but any time you have that high a failure rate, something is very wrong. I remember reading some posts on the web that the WD Green drives were not recommended for use in any RAID/multi-disk configuration.

From the WD Green brochure:
"- Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Green Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or
expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications."

I don't know if this just applies to heavy duty-cycle environments, like servers and business, or if this applies to ANY RAID/JBOD/muti-disk systems such as these home environments. You may want to Google for more info.


Brainer

The QNAP has been up and running for a couple of days now.

Performance seems fine. I`ve streamed some HD video to the PC (connected via GigE switch) without any issues.

The only complaint I have so far is that the box is not completely silent. I don`t know if it`s because of the disk drives or the QNAP box but it makes what sounds like a drive seek noise every few seconds. Since the unit is located in the AV shelf it is kind of annoying.

I've had a number of WD Green drives in service for several years and never had a failure. That includes a couple of Linux NAS servers. In that time I've seen other brands fail in the same systems. If high failure rates are experienced, I would be looking at operating conditions. High temperatures are a common source of failure for any drive. Some small NAS servers are known to have poor ventilation and should be avoided.

According to my googlage, the noise issue I am experiencing is likely related to the heads parking on the WD Green drives. In a nutshell, they park/unpark the heads a lot.

There are a couple of ways to fix it, so I'm going to look at those.