Home NAS suggestions?

[Wired]

Looking for a home NAS for a couple TB of space (preferably with lots of redundancy). I'm definitely looking for 4+ HDD capacity. Partially for RAID 5 and more redundancy, also for more storage.

Initially looking between the new Synology DS411+ and DS1511+, but a friend recommended QNAP, so I pulled up some random models around the same price (TS-509 PRO, TS-459, and TS-559 Pro+) - NewEgg Comparison Link

Also glanced at the Synology DS411j and DS410, but I'm not sure if one's an older model, or what the j stands for. I like ReadyNAS products as well, but when they got bought out by Netgear the prices skyrocketed. Not cool.

Features I'd like:
to be able to add HDDs at will (hot swappable would be nice as well)
Being able to host a web site (I think both Synology and QNAP do this)
DLNA support
Awesome that both Synology and QNAP products can provide storage for virtualization servers. That's really tempting, but I may or may not run VMs at home. It'd be nice, but I could always do that on local storage. In fact that may be preferred if I get some SSDs.

Not deal breakers:
bit torrent / NZB client built in (Synology only I believe)

So, does anyone have a preference between the two or any experiences / reviews they'd like to share, or other make / models they'd recommend?

 

[Walter]

If you don't need the small size of a NAS may I throw an alternative in?

Why not build it yourself? It's pretty easy and this way you are free to use as many HDDs as you like. I'm currently using a 6 TB RAID 5 setup with 1.5 TB HDDs and will upgrade it to 3 TB HDDs as soon as the price is right.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I like Unraid.
http://www.lime-technology.com/

 

[Wired]

Looking for a prebuilt solution so I can save space and throw it into a corner, or right under an AP.

 

[Toxic]

Synology are great NAS's but locked down to a degree, whereas the QNAP allows so much more hands on experience in adding applications you want.

 

[-GR-]

I just built my own NAS/Media server. Couldn't have been happier with my decision either.

I think in all total including the hard drives I have around $700 in it. I could have built it a lot cheaper if I was only doing the NAS part but I also do distributed computing projects so I wanted a quad core. I used an Intel Xeon E3-1230 and a Asus P8B, 8gb gskill ddr3 and (4) 1.5tb 7200 rpm hitachi hard drives in a raid 10 array.

If you are mainly looking for just NAS you could cut the costs considerably and also run FreeNAS.

 

[-GR-]

I also wanted to add, I have rsync setup and it syncs the home directories on the webserver every night and I also sync all of the mysql databases as well from the webserver.

 

[Riven]

I just bought DS1511+, Put 5x2T WD green drive, quiet and fast, Very happy with it.

 

[Reeve of Shinra]

Built my own using Windows Home Server. I love it!

 

[Wired]

Synology are great NAS's but locked down to a degree, whereas the QNAP allows so much more hands on experience in adding applications you want.

Totally forgot about this thread lol! Bought a Synology DS1511+ months ago. Works great. Locked down how?