<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Mar 21, 2012, at 12:00 PM, pascal maya wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;white-space:nowrap;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Hello all,</span><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;white-space:nowrap;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><br>
</span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;white-space:nowrap;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">This is an SOS call to the Mauritian Linux Community. Can you guide and help me locate a reliable supplier in Mauritius to purchase a </span><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space:nowrap">Synology DS412+ .</span></font></div>
<div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space:nowrap">Any other relevant/similar alternatives(Qnap, Lacie, Dlink, etc)</span></font><span style="white-space:nowrap;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">, your more than welcomed to suggest.</span></div>
<div><span style="white-space:nowrap;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif">Setting up a FreeNAS is not an option, I'm looking for a small compact solution with easy backup and restoration with RAID builtin.</span></div>
<div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space:nowrap">Is Dropo an expensive alternative to other similar products ??? BTW Dropo suppliers here in MAU ?</span></font></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>it's drobo. :-)</div><div> they're not cheap, but if you want a fire-and-forget solution, then this works well (i have one at home).</div><div>it's formatted for use with AFP (yes, go ahead and laugh logan, we only have macs at home!), and it Just Works (tm).</div><div>my non-technical significant other is trained to look at the three colours (green, orange, red, and act accordingly - ie. green=don't touch; orange=tell me; red=swap disk with spare, and tell me). i used to spend quite a bit of time travelling, and, ease-of-use, trumped all else, hence my decision to go drobo.</div><div><br></div><div>the local reseller is paoma, in curepipe - <a href="http://www.paoma.mu">www.paoma.mu</a>. very helpful - not that there is much to do! </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="white-space:nowrap">What could be the approximate cost for purchasing that kind of hardware here in MAU ?</span></font></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>i bought my 4drive unit 2 years ago, with 2x 1TB disks; it wasn't cheap at the time (+30K iirc) and i got a discount because i also purchased a UPS and other peripherals as well.</div><div><br></div><div>i've seen smaller synology units (2 disk) in stock at ct-zone at bagatelle for ±11K. </div><div>ispace-technologies - <a href="http://www.ispace-technologies.com">www.ispace-technologies.com</a> - in ebene also had QNAP units in stock, when i was there 2 weeks ago.</div><div><br></div><div>as ajay mentioned, most of these units use proprietary raid systems to give you the expandable raid array options (what drobo sells as the any-size disk-grow-as-you-need-raid-array). while this works great when it works, i've read lots of horror stories of people trying to get the data recovered when something fails. same with synology's SHR system - we recently purchased one for office use in ZA, and the supplier warned -against- using their SHR (expandable array) option for our data storage purposes. ymmv.</div><div><br></div><div>yo should also know that these raid5+1 systems take absolutely forever to rebuild - i recently swapped a 1TB for a 2TB drive to get to (2+1+2+2), and the volume rebuild took more than 30 hours! of course it's useable during this period, but that might affect your data usage/storage systems. (as a home user, this didn't impact me too much)</div><div><br></div><div>i've been thinking about a backup NAS, and, speaking from a drobo user's perspective, i doubt i will buy this again.</div><div>both qnap and synology seem to offer the same options at almost the same price point; both of which are well below drobo's.</div><div>while i love the simplicity:</div><div>* it's expensive by comparison</div><div>* there are cutesy home features in the other two that drobo lacks (built-in media server, etc.)</div><div><br></div><div>don't get me wrong - the unit works great. it's just expensive by comparison *for home use*</div><div><br></div><div>the single largest technical benefit i've seen is that even my old unit will scale to 4x 4TB. looking through the whitepapers for synology and qnap, most of their non-professional units will not support 4TB drives (some not even 3TB).</div><div><br></div><div>hth,</div></div><div>--n.</div><div><br></div><div>btw, if you're willing to look for suppliers in ZA for these, ping me offlist.</div></body></html>