Educate me - should I buy these prebuilt NAS (which is better) or make my own?

Posted by user29336 on Super User See other posts from Super User or by user29336
Published on 2011-02-10T23:23:44Z Indexed on 2011/02/10 23:27 UTC
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I'm trying to learn as much as possible, and I think I've learned quite a bit so bear with me here under my confusion.

I found a coupe NAS setups. I'm not sure if one is better than the other, other than the price being higher on some, and some coming with drives VS not.

Let me list my setup so you can get an idea of what I want to provide: Macbook Pro Macbook Mini for Media streaming (so far) Windows 7 Gaming Computer Xbox 360

I'd like to provide a storage system for all these devices so they can access files very easily, I'd also like any of these devices to be able to stream media from this storage system.

I'd like this storage system to be hassle free in terms of my confidence in the data integrity. If a drive fails, I want to know that I can replace the drive and all my files will still exist.

I'd like to access this storage system OUTSIDE of my LAN. If I'm out on a job for work I'd like to go in, or be able to have people DL some files. This brings me to a question, is this what iSCSI is?

I'd like this data system to be able to download torrents.

I want to mount any drive on this storage system onto my OSX laptop as if it were a local drive attached. (Is this with iSCSI is?)

I'd like this system to have a GOOD web based GUI. I don't want to install software to use it.

I believe those are the most of my requirements. If I'm missing something that I have no knowledge about, can someone educate me?

Here are the systems I found:

$729ish on Newegg Lacie 5Big Network 2 (comes with 5TB of space. iSCSI / mac compatible, torrents, nice ui, + others?)

Is this overpriced for what it provides? It almost seems like a great deal to me because of the 5TB of space it comes with vs the other NAS systems that don't come with storage but cost $600-700.

Should I get a different NAS system? Netgear? Others? Do they have same features? Better? Is it better to buy your own disks?

What about making my own? I'm tech savy all around. It seems cheaper to buy a premade one especially with the support/warranty it provides...

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