NAS appliances cover the middle ground of extra storage

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The GCN Lab tests four 4T — and one 5T — NAS systems that are capable of a variety of RAID configurations.

It's not uncommon to see the storage needs of a particular workgroup increase faster than that of the rest of an organization. In these situations, adding a huge storage server or storage-area network for a single group could be overkill, not to mention expensive. On the other hand, a single external hard drive, while ideal for a single user, probably wouldn’t be enough of an upgrade if an entire workgroup needs the space.

In this GCN Lab comparison report:

What is a RAID?
A breakdown on common RAID configurations
Buffalo TeraStation III
LaCie 5big Network
Sans Digital EliteNAS
Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440
WD ShareSpace
Gaining Virtual V-locity

Network-attached storage (NAS) appliances are a good middle ground between too much and too little. Administrators generally can set them up within an existing network architecture, and the appliances are usually easy to install. They often come with a variety of Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) settings, making it possible to pick the one that best suits a workgroup’s needs. And at $200 to $300 per terabyte, a NAS can fit into most organizational budgets.

We received five NAS appliances for this review, from Buffalo Technology, LaCie, Sans Digital, Seagate and Western Digital. Four of the appliances had four drive bays, each with a 1T drive, for a total capacity of 4T. The LaCie had five drive bays and a 5T capacity.

We tested to see how easy it was to set them up and connect them to our test network of 10/100 port switches. Then we conducted transfer tests by copying a 2G folder of files of various sizes to the NAS from a networked computer (upload) and back in the other direction (download) while the NAS was in RAID 5 mode.

In addition, we looked at the appliance's additional features, such as backup software. We also considered the price compared to the devices' performance.

NEXT STORY: David Hodgson on the role of mainframes in Web 2.0 computing

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