Yes i've still been pondering over which new nas to go for and like a woman i've ended up back at the first product I looked at *sigh* namely the HP Microserver.
I did look at the Acer Aspire XC-603 which ebuyer were selling for £130 as I liked the fact it was of reasonable spec and had a media card reader built in. However looking at 2.5" 2tb drives they were coming in at over £100 each when a 4tb 3.5" can be had for the same money.
I again considered the shuttle but like my current one power consumption is a little on the high side and due to previous hardware failures don't appear to be designed for 24hr usage.
Alas it was back to the microserver with it's 4 HDD slots and numerous USB ports it's surely a no brainer. I copy pi sd cards quite regularly so wanted to put in a media card reader but there is only a single external 5.25 slot so couldn't have a optical drive as well, or so I thought….. after some searching I came across the Startech Optical & 3.5in Hard Drive Mounting Bracket for 5.25in Front Bay (wow that was a long name to type) which can be had for around £20 posted. I've specced a slim DVD RW and card reader and will be ordering them shortly.
Next decision is HDD, i'm probably going to go for WD Red's either 2 or 3tb in RAID 1.
This project will take a while to complete due to limited funds but at the end it's should be a nice little setup.
