Qnap, LinkStation or something else?

[dick]

Hi everybody,

I've been running an LinkStation II for that past 9 months or so and have generally been quite pleased. The performance can be a bit sluggish but that's the trade-off with such a low power device. I've recently added a USB drive to it to increase the capacity.

However the problems with upgrading to Slimserver 6.5 has made me wonder if there may be a better solution and have the following open-ended questions...

* Would a Qnap be a better option than the LinkStation?
* Would an ITX PC with Linux offer much better performance and upgrade ease than a NAS?
* Would a miniMac be a better option than a similarly priced Windows XP PC?

I know there are many variables here but I would be interested in the debate.

TIA

[roamingstudio]

I went through the same decision process recently - and decided that for now I would take the QNAP and upgrade the ram - see other threads. There is an options to get a Synology DS106 with extra ram from www.brack.ch - but they dont ship out of CH. Both systems I believe are 266MHz PC's with 64mb Ram as standard.

If you want to do anything other than simple file serving, print serving or media streaming then Mini-ITX probably makes the most sense. It certainly has more performance power!. A good resource is the www.mini-itx.com website. Prices work out at slightly more than a QNAP / Synology with 500GB hard disk... but it is also a PC! (and can serve as a video source as well). This will be my project for 2007!

[KBP]

There is an options to get a Synology DS106 with extra ram from www.brack.ch - but they dont ship out of CH.

Why do they not ship out of CH?

[roamingstudio]

No idea - but ask them. If you get stuck PM me.

[KBP]

No idea - but ask them. If you get stuck PM me.

Here is the answer they gave me:

"Dear Mr. Kasper

Thank you for your interessts. Unfortunately we can´t ship
goods to foreign countries. Cause we´re unfurnished to handle this.
Thank you for your understandnig.

Freundliche Grüsse

Brack Electronics AG
Yves Staubli
Verkauf"

[aubuti]

I haven't used the Qnap, ITX, or Mac mini, so I probably can't tell you anything about those that you don't already know. But I have been running slimserver on a LinkStation HG for the past 8 months, and running 6.5 on it since March or April. For me, re-flashing the LS to FreeLink (debian) made the upgrade path to 6.5 pretty simple. Even though the LS II has a different processor from the HG, I think you'll find that the upgrade to 6.5 is much easier with a FreeLink'd LS than an OpenLink'd LS. I'd say at least give it a try before laying out the money for one of the alternatives.