currently eyeing on Synology 212J....

I bought a WD MyBook Live 2TB NAS a few days ago. Worst investment I ever made. It takes 2 days to transfer my photography  collection (45GB in all) from my notebook to the HDD, both attached to the same home LAN.

The device is running the latest firmware some more.

I found that if you back up a single file, its fast enough. However if your files are in nested folders say 3 or 4 levels, you die standing. Just to delete one single zero-byte file using Windows explorer or OS X Finder can take you *hours,* and the file explorer freezes while it tries to figure out how to delete one file.

I scanned through WD's customer support website for help. Seems that lots of ppl have similar complaints and strangely enough, the company has been unresponsive to the angry posts. Biggest letdown I ever had. (Now my WD Live has become more of an expensive paperweight than anything.)

any user of Dlink DNS-320?

The more I think about it, the more its starting to look like the MBL is suffering from a file management problem than a network bottleneck. This likely points to a firmware issue and/or the MBL's 800Mhz CPU, which is slower than its direct competitor, Buffalo Linkstation Pro's 1.6GHz CPU. Can't think of any other reason why my old Ubuntu notebook performs up to 50x faster as a file server on the same LAN compared to the MBL.

*cut**

Want to ask.
Is there any user out there using HP Microserver N40L?
How does Acer Aspire Revo Center fare against HP Microserver?
One benefit I see on Aspire Revo is Hot-Swappable Harddisk. Convenient for offsite backup.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

I'm using the older microserver.. has been running for 1 year plus non-stop.. great little bugger.. haha

Looking to get one more microserver to backup the server in case anything happens. But prices of HDD now is crazy.

since there is no some "introduction" about NAS in the first post
may I ask, what is the real benefits of a NAS?
becoz i think any PC can be a cheaper/better NAS right? while it is already readily available
why should we waste extra money for a dedicated NAS?
Some 1 pls enlighten me

edit: is it the only way to access home NAS from outside = FTP?
what about CIFS/SMB, routable thru WAN?
webDAV possible?

but due to malaysia slow upload speed, getting large file from home NAS when outside is quite a pain right?

try check out HP reseller at digital mall pj. They carry some stocks the last time i went there ( couple months ago).

I can ask my office HP supplier to check if they have this stock. How many units u guys expect to buy?

My reasons to buy a NAS: First, I use a diskless MacBook Air with 128GB SSD. Not enough for me as a mobile photographer/videographer. Portable hard disks do crash (I already lost 2 that got banged around in the field) and I already have too much gear to carry so a private cloud was an ideal solution.

Second, I have to routinely access my stuff from different systems. Windows, Linux, MacOS, IOS and Android. Again, a NAS is an ideal solution for it.

By the way I've managed to solve the speed problem of accessing my home NAS. I just swapped Unifi's standard D-Link router for a gigabyte router, the TP-Link WR1043-ND. Now I can transfer a 16GB file in 30 minutes when previously it would take about 20 hours, possibly more. It was the network after all.

I am using Unifi 10MB at home and I can download the files from my NAS when I am at the office at speed around 1~2MB/s which is quite acceptable

Yes, unfortunately. I'm quite blur about tech stuff so I had to learn by trial and error, both frustrating and expensive. Luckily I managed to sell my WD to a friend. Am pretty happy with my Synology so far. 

dyndns now sux... after they revamp the system for free account..

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Added on February 3, 2012, 10:27 am

yes its possible to forgo the dvdrom and install another hdd..

its also possible to use an external 4 bay usb enclosure and link up

and using freenas u can boot/run off usb together

Yes you can. I have replaced my optical slot with a sata hdd. So my 4 slots are free to run RAID drives. BTW, it's only storage server. Using SSD is overkill. You still have network bandwidth capped at 1gbit. This is slower than a standard WD green drives.

well u can let the backup run.. at night ... what.. hahahah

if not use the esata interface it does have esata with PM (port multiplier function) right ?

else u can get a esata card with PM and link it to probox( a brand of ext enc 4 bay)

His is N36 I think, not the latest N40. I will check with my office server provider see if N40 is available in Malaysia. I seem to be inclined towards Acer Revocenter because it's cheap about RM1.1K with a 1TB drive and a 250GB(for OS) and hot-swap drives. Will get it later on when hard disk price drop so I can get everything together. I will just do with my external drives at the moment. It's seriously not worth purchasing hard disk now unless it's essential.
N40 should be more expensive.

try check out HP reseller at digital mall pj. They carry some stocks the last time i went there ( couple months ago).

**CUt**
I can ask my office HP supplier to check if they have this stock. How many units u guys expect to buy?

It was 250GBP shipped to a UK address, but then there is a 100GBP cash back rebate plus since I am shipping it out of UK I will try to claim back on the VAT which is 17.5% or 43GBP. Shipping to Msia is going to be between 30-70 GBP. So I am expecting it to be around <RM900 shipped here.
Even if it was RM1000+ I would still be fine with it since it is near impossible to find one here (ready stock). I would still save sufficiently to get a HDD or two