Raid 1 NAS under $500

[Marshall]

Can anyone recommend a NAS that will have Raid 1, and a usb port for an external drive, must be compatible with Mac and PC.
Has to be either under $500 or a little over and I need it to include the drives in the price.
So far my choices are the 1TB Lacie 2Big Network or the Iomega StorCenter ix2, I like the Iomega, but the drives aren't hot swapable, which is why I'm thinking of getting the Lacie, can anyone recommend any other brands.

Thanks
Marshall

[thiggins]

NETGEAR ReadyNAS Duo (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30462/75/).

[Marshall]

Thanks Thiggins,

I had a look at the Netgear readynas duo, but then I read the review on this site which had cons:
• Can't configure to JBOD or RAID 0
• Backup to external NAS problems

So due to external NAS problems I thought it best to leave it, also I read some other reviews that have had problems with Mac OSX.

[pascalv]

I was browsing the forum mainly because of my disappointment since I bought LaCie 2Big:
- the On/OFF/AUTO at the back aren't doing anything
- noise level after 20 minutes running; which gets better when "playing" with power connector (?!!)
- the apps to connect to NAS never worked well (that's why I forgot the name), losing IP address, hanging for ever, etc. I bought Expandrive for Mac as a replacement.

I'm aware that not being an expert in small network I may be missing something. But LaCie's products are more generic/easy out-of-the-box-set-up type and I shouldn't have had such experience.
Look at it now, product like Drobo looks very attractive...
good luck with your set!

[Marshall]

Thanks pascalv for your reply.
Anyone else had any problems with Lacie Products?

This NAS is going to be replacing my IBM file and mail Server, I do have the option of just uninstalling MS Exchange and using as a file server.
But I thought with NAS I wouldn't have the other expense of Antivirus and Maintenance.

[beisser]

Thanks Thiggins,

I had a look at the Netgear readynas duo, but then I read the review on this site which had cons:
• Can't configure to JBOD or RAID 0
• Backup to external NAS problems

So due to external NAS problems I thought it best to leave it, also I read some other reviews that have had problems with Mac OSX.

uhm where did you get that info... thats heavily outdated. the readynas duo can do x-raid, raid1, raid0. it just cant do real jbod.

i also never heard of backup-problems to an external nas (define external nas first).

in terms of backup you wont find anything that beats a readynas in terms of flexibility :)

[thiggins]

uhm where did you get that info... thats heavily outdated. the readynas duo can do x-raid, raid1, raid0. it just cant do real jbod.

i also never heard of backup-problems to an external nas (define external nas first).

in terms of backup you wont find anything that beats a readynas in terms of flexibility :)
I checked with NETGEAR. They said that they added Flex-RAID support last year due to user demand. It will support RAID 0, but not JBOD. So you can add a second drive for capacity expansion. But if a drive dies in RAID 0, you lose all data.

The backup problem was discussed in the review (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30462/75/1/4/) (bottom of the page). I don't know whether NETGEAR has fixed it.

[beisser]

would be interesting to find out what exactly failed there.

[Marshall]

Thanks for all your replys,

I decided not to buy a NAS under $500.
I was trying to replace our IBM Server 206x, which we use as a File and mail server. If we replaced the server with a NAS we were going to just POP the email and use the NAS for file sharing.
Our server runs MS SBS 2003 with MS Exchange, we paid around $12000 for it, it has tape backup and Raid 1. It costs a lot to maintain but it does the job and I don't think I can replace it with a NAS.