what is the difference between a "Diskless" NAS and the other type of NAS?
228611
Diskless does not come with any hard drives in it, if one is advertised as 12 gb it has the actual drives installed in it, diskless you have to buy your own.
228612
You have to buy the hard drives separately. If you want to have anything but a paperweight.
228613
I have a diskless version. I did buy the disk separatly and did not have any problem.i idid buy wd red label hd.
228614
The diskless NAS does not have any drives installed in it. I bought the diskless thinking I would use the four matched drives I had in an existing server. That would have been perfect, but the drives were not supported by the EX4. If you have existing drives, and they are on the WD EX4 supported list, this would be a great way to make use of them. Otherwise, you might as well purchase with disks and have a single warranty covering the entire NAS and drives.
228615
You can purchase it with or without hard drives. If you have your own hard drives then get the diskless model and it will be empty and you populate the slots with your hard drives.
228616
There is no difference, Diskless means that this unit came without any HDD inside from manufacture. You will have to buy them later yourself.
228617
Diskless just means that the disks don't come packaged with the MyCloud EX4. You would have to buy the disks separately because they are still needed. Be sure to compare the prices closely. When I bought mine, there was absolutely no advantage to buying the disks with the base unit. I saved about $100 buying everything separately.
228618
You have to provide the hdds for a diskless NAS, whereas a non-diskless NAS already has the hdds included. Consequently, a diskless NAS will typically be cheaper, but a non-diskless NAS will be simpler to purchase and set up, and my potentially be cheaper after factoring in the price of the hard drives. You also need to be somewhat selective about which hdds to add to a diskless NAS, and if you don't know much about hard drives and RAID, you're probably best off not getting a diskless NAS.
2181554
It depends upon how it is being used. Stand alone or in a raid setup. The less expensive unit is fine as a standalone. The other is better in a raid setup.
274167
2 disks versus diskless, the disks are standard off the shelf and can be replaced without issue if the warranty has expired. Very happy with the unit.
252683
The WD Red Series are the only drives I put in mine (17 of the 3TB ones). I would strongly suggest the 3TB or 4TB versions of the WD Red NAS drives for this unit and nothing else.
1863851
I would get a NAS. I would avoid this particular product. I had a bad experience with this one. I did get a NAS, because I have the same configuration at home where PC and MAC need to live together.
184227
Price?? This is cheap compared to my Synology NAS that I use for shared storage. This particular device is great for network storage or as a backup device for a 1:many scenario. It is not difficult to setup, just read the documentation. I have had mine running now for 2 years without a hiccup. If you have problems call tech support up. The tricky part is understand one has to claim a volume before one can use it.
597595
One downside to using this in a stand-alone PC is that it doesn't have nearly the error recovery capabilities of a desktop drive. A desktop drive will spend more time trying to fix a bad sector than a NAS drive, because in a NAS, that data is expected to be replicated elsewhere. Thus, when your drive starts failing, you're likely to lose more data with one of these if you aren't running it in a NAS.
2081231
This is a very good NAS if you know how to set it up. I use Cobian backup software to backup my files. Its free and very easy to use.
1654304
The model WD20EFRX is a bare drive which means there is no documentation, cables or anything else included with the drive. The WDBMMA0020HNC-NRSN is optimal compatibility for NAS systems Tested for 24x7 reliability. A Free Acronis True Image WD Edition cloning software is included with the drive. This is the only hard drive designed for use in NAS systems up to 5 bays.
1236892
It's best to get this NAS it's own set of drives. The point of this NAS is to RAID the drives to protect against failures, swapping drives won't work as you'll just be constantly rebuilding the array. I suppose you could just have 1 drive and move it back and forth between two of these NAS units, but what would be the point there?
1263241
It comes with no disks, hence diskless, you purchase your own disks. Thus giving you the ability to save data
1666227
I purchased the 2-drive version, but if the same thing applies to this as other 4-drive NAS's, you'll want to install them at least in pairs (if doing RAID 0 or 1). If you're going to want RAID 5 (and if the 4-drive unit supports it, which I assume it does), you'll want to install all 4 for best results. Edit: The 4-drive NAS's I've used only allow for 2 arrays, so don't plan on having 4 separate single-drive arrays.
1600417
It is confusing/missleading on Amazon. The DS213+ priced at $399 does NOT include disk drives. Amazon have a seperate listing for a DS213+ 2200 with 2 * 2TB drive priced at $799 (showing out of stock on 12/15/12). I am still very pleased with my DS213+ which I fitted with 2 * 4TB drives. It certainly wasn't the cheapest NAS but so far has worked flawlessly.
1555558
I wrote a non-techie review of my 64g and 128g. I compared writing 37.3 gig of data - the San Disk disk took 5:55 minutes for the 64g and 5:50 for the 128g. The other 2 (not cheapies) took between 25 and 36 minites. All were done with the same source data on the same computer using the same USB3 port. They were all USB 3 drives. Not sure what the specs are, SanDisk has them on their website, but I can tell you it is faster than any of the others out there except maybe the Lexar and the price on those is much higher.
1824429
It is not really a NAS in my estimation since it is really for working on large files across a network. Additionally, the RAID element of it is not really terribly "safe". I returned mine and got a Drobo instead for the hot-swappable no data loss aspect to it. I run a busy multimedia studio that, in addition to other services, offers photography and video for our corporate clients. I use the Drobo for this purpose and it works great with 5 people accessing the Drobo 5N.
697989
Doesn't matter both have similar specs. I have these and WD black drives in my system, I run them both in raid 0 and both arrays perform about the same.
956446
Yes-set up the NAS as raid drives. Mirroring is automatic. If a drive goes bad, you replace it & it will be rebuilt automatically. Note-drives are not independent. They are part of an array.