Originally Posted by
gfunkdave
Yeah, I had a bad experience with a Thecus NAS a few years ago. Synology has been good to me. The reason I mention Drobo is that a friend who has an IT services firm swears by them. I like their "BeyondRAID" technology that lets you hot plug new drives of varying sizes without rebuilding the RAID array. But they are expensive - the cheapest one I can find with an ethernet port (instead of USB) is almost $1000.
Agreed that Synology makes fine units; the Drobos for home use would probably be great too, and can be found without drives for <$500. Also take a look at the DROBO mini, holds 4 2.5" drives + an optional MiniPCI SSD, has enet interface and is about the size of a hardcover book. We started using these for dumping down raw video at remotes and so far they have been flawless. Iomega has some home units that have been pretty well reviewed as well. Also look at Smallnetbuilder.com, they have reviewed quite a number of business/home NAS solutions.
It sounds like the OP is pretty tech savvy, they could consider FREENAS running on pretty much any recent I86 PC. Load it up with WD Red or RE drives, install the software on a USB boot drive and you are good to go. Just be sure the PC you are using can accept a standard power supply as that is what is mostly likely to fail, (many PCs from Dell and HP do not accept standard PCs). It can run as a DNLA provider with the right add ons too.
Cheers