NAS for $150-$200

Skiiwee29 · October 2, 2014

So I am looking to buy a NAS to use as a file server here at my house as well as family members to share photos with. I do not plan on doing video streaming from it, but I wouldn't mind the option/speeds to be able to do it with. Color is no factor.

A few I am looking at.

Synology Diskstation

Buffalo 3TB

WD My Cloud

These are just a few, if you know of better ones or have experiences with any of these, please do list them and let me know what you like/dislike about them. You are more than welcome to share your own ideas, again my price range is no more than $200.. gotta convince the wife

Captain_WD · October 2, 2014

So I am looking to buy a NAS to use as a file server here at my house as well as family members to share photos with. I do not plan on doing video streaming from it, but I wouldn't mind the option/speeds to be able to do it with. Color is no factor.

A few I am looking at.

Synology Diskstation

Buffalo 3TB

WD My Cloud

These are just a few, if you know of better ones or have experiences with any of these, please do list them and let me know what you like/dislike about them. You are more than welcome to share your own ideas, again my price range is no more than $200.. gotta convince the wife

Hey there legacy99,

As these three NAS devices are pretty different, I would like to ask what are you looking for in a NAS device, besides sharing photos and probably video streaming? Are you looking for something with multiple drives and a RAID option for speed or redundancy?

The Synology one is pretty good for regular household usage as it gives you the option to add a second drive and use RAID. It has a decent processor and should be able to stream videos without any problems. As I haven't used it, I couldn't tell you if it's user-friendly.

The Buffalo one is a simple basic NAS device for storing and sharing files across the network. it has only one bay and no RAID options. Again, no experience with it so I cannot tell you if it's reliable or easy to use.

As for the My Cloud EX2, this is a more advanced 2-bay NAS (up to 12TB) device with good RAID support, powerful processor and enough RAM to stream huge files across the network to multiple devices. It does have a very easy to use app and is pretty easy to set up. It does have some professional features such as third-party apps support and integrated file server and more.

I could suggest checking out the more basic versions of it - WD My Cloud and WD My Cloud Mirror. They are pretty much the same but without the advanced features of the EX2. The My Cloud is a 1-bay NAS (up to 6TB) and the My Cloud Mirror is a 2-bay NAS (up to 12TB) preconfigured to RAID1 Mirroring but it can be changed to RAID0 or just JBOD.

Here are a couple of links:

WD My Cloud: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1140

WD My Cloud Mirror: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1200

Whichever you choose, I would recommend getting HDDs with built-in TLER and designed for continuous usage and NAS. WD Red drives are such ones. Here's a link: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

Hope this helps! If you have any questions about NAS or RAID, feel free to ask

Captain_WD.