There are many NAS on the market. I have had a few over the past 5-6 years. Here is my requirements:

1. No client SW requirements.
2. Good spin down mode.
3. Gigabit ethernet interface.

Everytime I opened the box and read that a client SW needs to be loaded to work, I would box it back up and return it. There is no need to go thru this trouble.

Spin down mode is very important for home use since accesses in an home environment is actually very small. This prolongs the life of the drive and save power too. This would eliminate all the PC based solutions.

Gigabit ethernet came last and I've only had it in the last NAS box acquired. With a gigabit ethernet switch, 11n access point and GE port on newer PCs, GE port on NAS only make sense.

The first few boxes were Tritton SOHO NAS. This box worked very well but went out of production. An early Maxtor Shared Storage failed. Now I have a Maxtor SS2 with GE. This box has an USB port to connect a backup drive.