Any recommendations for a network storage (NAS) device?

[mikeorr]

It appears that my Iomega Storcenter ix2-200 NAS is perhaps dying. I would like to replace it with something similar/equivalent - does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations?

- want a local/physical device (yes, I'm aware there's plenty of free/cheap online cloud storage options. Not what I'm looking for)
- 2TB+
- I don't want to spend $$ thousands....

[mthibodeau]

Not sure on the price but at my old work place we used qnap Nas boxes and they were great, definitely recommend them

[mikeorr]

That's the second recommendation for QNAP that I've gotten - I had never heard of them before lol. Will check them out. Thanks!

[Timelord_]

I can't say enough good things about the synology line of NAS devices.

[mumblecrunch]

I can vouch for QNAP devices being capable, although I should couch that by saying the one I worked on was mid-size (in the $1-2000 range, 8-bay/16TB or something).

In making the recommendation to the person who bought that it was pretty clear that QNAP and Synology are the two brands to buy, but you're going to pay a little more. For a 2-bay ARM architecture unit you're probably looking at $300 + drives for a QNAP or a Synology whereas you could probably do another brand for 25% or so less. For a 2-bay with x86 architecture or a 4-bay you're looking up over $500 (although everybody's prices are quite a bit higher for 4-bay).

The interface on the QNAP is quite polished, it's got an excellent tooling and setup utilities and a good package manager with a wide variety of useful packages. Synology apparently checks all those boxes too. If you are a command-line Linux jockey it can be a little bit frustrating because at heart it's embedded Linux, not your favorite distro; the sheer number of symlinks crossed up all over the place will make your head hurt. That said, all "in-a-box" devices will be like that and to avoid it you pretty much have to build your own and running FreeNAS or the like on it.