Netgear ReadyNAS Duo RND2000

Now hear is an interesting NAS server. It is similar to past Netgear NAS servers, where they are provided without any drives, and you can add whatever size drive you like.

This ReadyNAS unit allows for 2 SATA drives to be installed into hot swappable caddies for quick access, and supports up to 2TB (1TB x2).

But what makes it even more interesting is that the NAS's software included as embedded Bit Torrent client, so you can download files directly to the nas without the need to having it connected to any additonal computers running Bit Torrent clients.

The base unit without any drives costs about £190 so it's also quite a good price.

You can read more about it here.

Or there are also some higher spec options in the Netgear ReadyNAS range.

The ReadyNAS Pro and Pro Pioneer Editions for example has 6 drive bays (up to 6TB storage), SATA II, RAID 6, multiple HD media streams to Xbox 360, PS3 and other devices. Read more about this one here.

But for the ultimate solution for someone with a lot of money you have the ReadyNAS 1100, which is a 1U server chassis to fit into a server cabinet. It has 4 hot swappable drive bays, so each unit could contain up to 4TB storage, and with a rack cabinet you could stick up to 36 of these in a single cabinet. ;) Making... 144TB of storage.

That one is for when I win the lottery! :lol:

However for a rack mounted solution I have seen 12 bay rack NAS solutions, so you could get 12TB in a single unit, but I think those are 2U in size, so you could only fit 18 of them in a 36 cabinet. But that would still get you 216TB of storage!

The Pioneer Edition looks nice, would have to read some reviews about it first though.

Just came across some NAS from FANTEC, they also got good reviews and aren't very expensive.

FANTEC homepage here!

Found another brand called Thecus.

Homepage here.

I've known of Thecus for some time. They never seem to win awards though due to being very expensive.