I'm rapidly running out of space on my laptop's 500GB HDD. I have the option of adding a second HDD or upgrading my external HDD. One thing that struck me was that I could have a NAS device and stream stuff through the router. Most of my space is taken up either by music or videos/films. I also plan to rip all my DVDs and Blu-Rays.

I'm looking at RAID setups for back up purposes.

Does anyone have a NAS? Any recommendations, hints or tips?

Synology. Not the cheapest, but the software is streets ahead of the competition.

We are using a Qnap TS-659 Pro II at work which seems to work fine

Set as Raid 5 and connected to network etc

Show-off!

This is for home use only - just streaming films/music so I don't need huge amounts of storage. There are a few on Amazon for £200-400 with 1TB storage.

Amazon have D-link, Buffalo, QNAP and Synology all on offer. The reviews tend to be variable for each. The QNAP seems best but I prefer the design of the Synology (black). The only QNAPs that have USB 3.0 are the higher/more expensive ones but they tend to be better/more reliable from what I can gather.

Synology does seem to have problems with photos - they seem to generate thumbnails which take longer than creating them manually! Some have been told it will take weeks to create thumbnails for their 3000+ collection of photos, which is the only thing that concerns me.

RAID is not a backup

No, but a backup can be a RAID.

I know RAID is not back up but the idea is to have a NAS that can act basically as media server, as well as using say a partition for backup. Ideally back up would be off site but for me, it's about what happens if the laptop HDD is screwed.

I've had a chat with my boss and he has both a QNAP (2-bay one) and a synology (4-bay) device.

I'm personally leaning towards Synology since I think QNAP is too advanced for my needs. I also believe the Synology units can be linked together so I can get another 2-bay unit and then have essentially one 4-bay unit, which would be cool in the future. Was also interested in adding IP cameras which would then record to NAS (though I've literally just read about the camera licenses you have to buy if you want more than one camera!).

Also, any views on HDDs to use? I'm after a couple of 1TB units to fit in the NAS.

Given what you plan to use it for, I'd suggest (for a 2 drive NAS) you can span, so 1TB drives would be... bare minimum probably. Personally I'd go for 2TB ones as the price increase isn't that much, as oppose to up to 3TB which are ruddy extortionate.

For a 4 drive NAS I'd probably stick to 1TB drives to keep the expense reasonable, which would give you either 4TB or 3TB if you went for RAID-5 redundancy to give you some fault tolerance. You could possibly drop to 750GB drives if you've got a 4-drive NAS filled although again I'm not sure how much that would save you over 1TB drives. 2TB drives in a 4-drive NAS makes the whole thing unjustifiably expensive, for me at least.

Is it me or did I recall Win7/XP unable to handle HDD over a certain size?

I'll have a look at some 2TB drives.

Have you considered thisHP MIcroserver

About £140 after cashback, and it's actually quite good. includes 250Gb disc.

OK you have to mess about with an OS but that might not be too difficult. WHS or linux?

I'm using one as my only computer at home right now. I bought it to use a NAS, a job for which it is eminently well suited. 4 hot-swap drive bays, plus an internal USB port if you want to boot something like FreeNAS from a stick.

It's very well built. My only worry is the rather light-weight PSU is a non-standard size, but given the general build quality I hope it to outlast 2TB SATA drives.

Right. Decided to take the plunge and go on a spending spree.

In theory WD Live Streaming + NAS should mean fun times. Am looking at the newest Synology DS213+ with either 2TB or 3TB drives. Any recommendations on the HDD? Have decided to use two external (IDE, I think) HDDs for back up of files instead.