Home-grade 4+ bay NAS?

The wife and I desire more space on our desks, and we're going to eschew the standard monitor-and-tower setup for all-in-one computers, so we need some sort of NAS where we can dump all of our music and video and whatnot. 

Therefore, I'm looking at home 4+-bay NAS that aren't rackmount form factor and has gigabit ethernet. The Synology DS413j ( http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Network-Attached/dp/B008U69LC4/ ) appears to do what I want for $380, but before I pull the trigger on that, was just wondering what others are using. 

QNAPs are good too - sometimes slightly cheaper.

I'm using a ReadyNas Ultra 4. Runs very well and I've yet to have any issues with it. It's also got a pile of backup sync jobs running off it every day - hasn't missed a beat yet.

Synology gets my vote. Can't beat their CloudStation (I have it sync up between my laptop and a Windows VPS, the Windows VPS runs CrashPlan so it's versioned also, I also have a cronjob nightly for my important directories to rsync to another VPS).

I've also heard good stuff about Synology, but it's big and expensive enough that I figure, why not just use a PC?  That gives more flexibility about OS's, security, disk encryption, etc.  So far though, I've just bypassed the whole NAS thing and have most of my storage-intensive stuff on servers (i.e. in data centers) rather than at home.  My home computers are all laptops and I have some USB hard drives for backup and occasional bulk storage.  If I needed more space I'd probably go for a USB or eSATA RAID enclosure rather than a NAS, since some very small and quiet raid enclosures are available relatively cheaply.  The main drawback is not being able to use from multiple computers simultaneously, which isn't a serious issue for me.

I prefer Synology over QNAP.

But I would recommend OP to build his own NAS, its not very difficult and its more cost effective.

A Synology NAS is like a small server, it can run pretty much anything on it. Aside from using it as a storage device, I also run a VPN server, web server, mail server, FTP server, Photo Gallery (PHP based), video surveillance, music server (streams to my phone), media player (I can watch movies from my NAS via any browser), and for a while I was running a LDAP directory server off it to play with.

The biggest benefit for it is the power usage though. My DS110j uses 13 watts at 100% CPU (currently running a virus scan), assuming I run it at full load 24x7x365 it only costs me $5.24/year in power. Now that's only the 1U model, the model @Damian is looking at uses 31.56 watts under normal usage according to Synology so that would be $12.73/year for me.

KuJoe said:

The biggest benefit for it is the power usage though. My DS110j uses 13 watts at 100% CPU (currently running a virus scan), assuming I run it at full load 24x7x365 it only costs me $5.24/year in power. Now that's only the 1U model, the model @Damian is looking at uses 31.56 watts under normal usage according to Synology so that would be $12.73/year for me.

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Where did you happen to find that number? The number I found was indeed in the 30-watt range, but that was with the drives spun-up and being accessed. I found an at-idle value of 6 watts, which since it'll probably be at-idle most of the time, would be rather appealing.

GIANT_CRAB said:

But I would recommend OP to build his own NAS, its not very difficult and its more cost effective.

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I haven't found any small form-factor cases that hold four 3.5" drives, and I'm not aware of any modern Atom board that idles under ~30 watts or so. So yes, while i'm paying more for the shiny box, that shiny box is what's drawing me in. But if you happen to know of any small cases that hold that many drives and can idle under 10 watts, then do point me in that direction.

Damian said:

Where did you happen to find that number? The number I found was indeed in the 30-watt range, but that was with the drives spun-up and being accessed. I found an at-idle value of 6 watts, which since it'll probably be at-idle most of the time, would be rather appealing.

I haven't found any small form-factor cases that hold four 3.5" drives, and I'm not aware of any modern Atom board that idles under ~30 watts or so. So yes, while i'm paying more for the shiny box, that shiny box is what's drawing me in. But if you happen to know of any small cases that hold that many drives and can idle under 10 watts, then do point me in that direction.

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6 watts is with the "hibernate" feature, I did a search on Google for "Synology DS413j watts" and the first 3 or 4 results all stated 31.56 under normal usage with "under 7" with the "hibernate" state. Assuming you set it to spin the drives down and don't have it loaded up with apps like I do I'm sure you can get it under 10. I leave mine running 24x7 with the hibernate feature disabled since I use it to sync my files in real-time as they change.

Damian said:

I haven't found any small form-factor cases that hold four 3.5" drives, and I'm not aware of any modern Atom board that idles under ~30 watts or so. So yes, while i'm paying more for the shiny box, that shiny box is what's drawing me in. But if you happen to know of any small cases that hold that many drives and can idle under 10 watts, then do point me in that direction.

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I've had thoughts of getting something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816322004

There are several models and they seem to occasionally appear on Newegg's "deal of the day" at the equivalent of $100 or so.  "Equivalent" means (e.g.) there was frequently a combo of that enclosure and a 2TB HDD for $200, when the 2TB drive was worth about $100.  At 6.5in. x 5in. x 8.5in it is pretty small for a 4-drive box.  Note that it's just a RAID enclosure and not a NAS.  Intel NUC (sort of like a Mac Mini) might be a good companion PC if you want a dedicated computer to control it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102053 has a Haswell processor with hardware encryption and there is also an Ivy Bridge i5 model. These have built-in GPU's and either of them could make a nice media center in its own right.

addonics.com also has some interesting enclosures and NAS products.

That's a good idea, I was using an old PC with HDD's on it and was shared the network between them

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/09/the-2013-htpc-build.html

Damian said:

I haven't found any small form-factor cases that hold four 3.5" drives, and I'm not aware of any modern Atom board that idles under ~30 watts or so. So yes, while i'm paying more for the shiny box, that shiny box is what's drawing me in. But if you happen to know of any small cases that hold that many drives and can idle under 10 watts, then do point me in that direction.

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Chenbro makes a line of mini-itx hot swap cases.  ES34069-BK-180 and SR30169.  Fractal design also has one that holds 6 drives but isn't hot swap.  In any case, the i3-4130T haswell idles at 15 watts if that's close enough

All that said, my vote goes to QNAP or Synology.  Less software hassles.

edit: stupid mac autocorrect, it's ITX!

I ended up pulling the trigger on the Synology DS413j. Amazon will have it here Wednesday (yay prime!)

Thanks for your input, everyone.

Damian said:

I ended up pulling the trigger on the Synology DS413j. Amazon will have it here Wednesday (yay prime!)

Thanks for your input, everyone.

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Welcome to the Synology family! I've been wanting to get another NAS and colo it because there are some awesome clustering features Synology added so you can have geographical redundancy.