In Search of NAS...Part I

In my last post I discussed the failure of my four and a half-year old home NAS.  Here are the three solutions I evaluated for a replacement:

Drobo FS

The Drobo or "Data Robot" has a an extremely loyal following.  I like to think of the Drobo as the "Mac" of NAS devices.  Simple, elegant, attractive.  Drobo's claim to fame is the ability to add any combination of disks (at any time).  This not only protects your data, but allows you to mix disks of different sizes - very easy!  Drobo started with USB and Firewire-based models, but now has a true NAS -- the Drobo FS.


Microsoft Windows Home Server

I've long been a fan of Microsoft Windows Home Server or WHS.  I actually attended meetings at Microsoft in 2005 -- before we all had TeraBytes of data in our homes -- and asked the question: how do you propose people manage this onslaught of data?  The Microsoft product manager winked at me and said they'd have a solution for that soon.  That product would be WHS.  HP released a line of WHS-powered devices that were well-regarded, but never quite took off.  The product line was recently discontinued.  Nonetheless, they are readily available "new" from a variety of retailers.

Netgear ReadyNAS

Netgear now owns the ReadyNAS line and markets it to both prosumers and small businesses.  ReadyNAS offers a similar technology to Drobo -- supporting hot swappable drives of varying sizes.  Like Drobo, this is essentially a proprietary abstraction layer built on top of the venerable RAID standard.






I used the following criteria to evaluate these products:

1. Storage Technology
2. Basic File Sharing
3. Advanced Media Sharing
4. Remote Access
5. Direct Backup to the Cloud
6. UPS Protection
7. Applications
8. Automated PC Backup
9. Flickr Synchronization
10. Pricing

I'll walk through each of these criteria in my next post.