What hardware to choose

March 8th, 2006

What hardware to choose

Posted by Ben in

Consider carefully what setup best suits your needs, and then have a look at some of the current offerings out there. Note that this is just a list of some companies and products that seemed good – inclusion here does not entail any sort of endorsement or testing by me. Caveat emptor.

Companies specialising in Firewire, USB2, eSATA, and NAS RAID boxes:

FirewireDirect
Cooldrives
Firewire Depot
OWC
TransIntl
RaidSonic
Nanopoint (same line as RaidSonic but in UK)
Lacie
Granite Digital
G-Tech
WiebeTech

Some two-drive RAID-0/1 enclosures:

2-drive Raid 0/1 FW/USB2.0 enclosure in UK, and in Germany
Mini Firewire800/400 RAID 0/1 portable system
Same enclosure here in Germany and here in UK
Mini eSATA/USB2.0 RAID 0/1 system
- AMUG review

Some four-drive RAID-0/1 enclosures:

4-drive Raid 0/1 FW800/USB2.0
4-drive RAID-0/1 in SATA/eSATA and FW/USB2.0 flavours

Some multi-drive Raid-0/1/5 enclosures:

5-drive SATA/FW800/USB2.0 mini system
WiebeTech RT5
G-RAID Pro (RAID-0/3)

Some NAS RAID 0/1/5 enclosures:

Infrant ReadyNAS NV
- Tom’s Networking review
- TrustedReviews Review
Infrant ReadyNAS X-6
Infrant ReadyNAS 600
- Ars Technica review
Buffalo Terastation & Terastation Pro
- Tom’s Networking Review
Lacie Ethernet Disk (JBOD only, not RAID)
- Ars Technica review

(Note: Of the consumer-grade NAS RAID products out there, quite a few reviewers seem to rate the Infrant line as some of the best in terms of performance, features, and support… they are definitely worth a good look)

Budget NAS gateways

Netgear SC-101
- Tom’s Networking Review
Freecom FSG-3
- The Register review
Linksys NSLU2
- Tom’s Networking review
Iomega StorCenter
- Tom’s Networking Review
Lacie Ethernet Disk Mini
- Tom’s Networking review