Upgradeable NAS

I'm looking for a NAS that I can add drives to over time and has some form of redundancy, starting at ~4TB. I was looking at the DroboPro but at $1,400, and from what I can tell has 2TB partition limits, it has a lot of horror stories. Are there any alternatives to Drobo that doesn't involve the high startup cost of buying all your drives at once?

I have also heard some stories where rebuilding 6-10TB RAID5 can take over a week.

I need to start with ~4TB of storage, so hopefully 2x3TB drives, after that I can contribute my 2x 2TB drives to the mix and 2x 0.75TB. After that I would like to start adding new 3TB and replace the 0.75 drives. This is why I think drobo would be the best option however the company seams to be making crap lately.

I would like to keep it under $1,000 including 2x 3TB drives, I don't have any issues with using Linux preferably Debian. If it's a computer tho I would like to have it as a dual purpose, either play XBMC, router/firewall, downloader, something to justify keeping it powered on all the time.

Edit: I just came across unRAID, anyone have experience with this? Specifically http://lime-technology.com/products/rb-1200-server

Edit2: I just noticed this ended up in Scraper Development, damn you $_SESSION!

I just bought my first NAS for my HTPC. I researched it for a while and finally settled on the Synology NAS DS1511+. I am really impressed having it now for about a month at what a gem this thing is! Here are some of the nice things I like about it:

• About $800 on Amazon and you can add just two 3TB drives to start
• Holds up to 5 3TB drives for 15TB storage!
• Can also control 2 additional Synology slave units for 45TB total!
• Is super quiet!
• Will support running transmission natively for torrent use!
  

Here is a link to it on the Synology Site:

http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS1511+/index.php

So far it has been flawless!

Thanks that looks interesting however I think I'm gonna go with unRAID. I put together a system on newegg for $825+140 for unRAID including 3TB+3x2TB drives upgrade-able to 10-11 drives.

scotepi Wrote:Thanks that looks interesting however I think I'm gonna go with unRAID. I put together a system on newegg for $825+140 for unRAID including 3TB+3x2TB drives upgrade-able to 10-11 drives.

good choice!

using unraid myself (though originally used as storage for films to stream to ps3) now using xbmc with unraid

been running it for approx 3 months , 24/7 no issues at all.

To use unraid with 3TB , you will have to use the beta version of it.