Hi, I'm at the point where I think I need a centralized area to store documents, etc from computers around the house. I've been looking at NAS solutions like Synology and Drobo, but I'm not sure they're the solution I'm looking for.
Anyone have any thoughts on the Addonics Raid Rack as far as shareable storage goes?
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_tower/raid_rack.aspI've got a Time Capsule and a MacMini already hanging out in my equipment rack. I'm wondering if the easiest and most Mac Friendly solution is to just run one of these as a RAID 5 and plug it into the back of my Time Capsule or Mac Mini and share the disks to the rest of my machines.
The device holds 20 drives as 4 sets of 5 drives. At $1220, that's not too bad. The Synology 1010+ plus the 510 expander would be almost $1350 or so at current Amazon prices. I'd still have room for 10 more drives.
I do understand that I wouldn't have all the cool features of the Synology and other NAS's, like iTunes servers, etc, but I'm not sure how much I need those. I always my MacPro on, running iTunes and Squeezbox server, etc.
The other thing I'd be missing is the opportunity to expand the system slowly using the mix and match approach...e.g. a synology NAS filled with 2TB drives, swap one of the 2TB drives out for a 3TB, then another, etc....
But as prices drop, I'd have the option to just add another set of 5 2TBs than try to upgrade to 3TB.
And it seems like since there are essentially 4 separate drive setups, I could mirror two of them for backup (knowing that if the whole unit got fried, I'd still be out of data, but I'm just thinking from the perspective of RAID failure).
Curious to any thoughts people have with some experience in this area.
Bhavesh
