Finally my NAS has arrived: After quite some research I chose the Raidsonic Icybox IB-NAS4220-B. Here a short resume of what the Icybox 4220 has to offer:
- Gigabit ethernet
- Dual nas supports 2 harddisks (RAID 0, 1, Span, JBOD)
- 2 USB-Hosts (for USB sticks, external hard disks or a print server)
- Samba for Windows networks, NFS (for Linux, Unix), FTP (to access your files via internet), DHCP (automatic network configuration)
- etc.
This is just to mention the most important characteristics. For more details just download the Icybox 4220 datasheet as PDF.
As harddisks from Samsung seem to cause problems with the Icybox 4220 NAS I orderd 2 WesternDigital WD Caviar SE16 500GB SATA II 16MB. I hope those will do just fine. I will configure a Raid1 for better data security and those hard disks will be backed up to a external USB hard disk every week or so. This gives me space for 500GB of data, the second disk will contain an exact copy of the first hard disk.
While not ensuring perfect security, this will be enough data security for me. Togehter with the Icybox I have also received a Western Digital Passport portable hard disk with 250GB, which should do well for transportation purposes and additional backups.
As the time around Christmas is fairly busy and we will get some visitors within the next days I will probably have to wait until the new year to get the Raidsonic NAS up and running. I will give some updates about the product as soon as I had the time to go more into details.
My first impressions:
- The Icybox 4220 is smaller than expected and the product pictures make you think.
- The built quality looks really good: no plastics, all metal.
- It is fairly nice looking. Not really important for a tool like a NAS, but when on your desk the good look won’t hurt, right? ;-).
- It comes along with a good hand book in really good German. Not comparable with some other products, where you just can not understand anything. There actually some good explanations, even on basics like the advantages and disadvantages of different RAID levels, etc.
Interesting links regarding the Icybox 4220
- A forum with a lot of information and a lot of posts (in German): http://www.planet3dnow.de/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=319399
- A wiki about the Icybox NAS 4220 with information about hardware compatibility: http://en.nas-4220.org/
I will keep you updated about my progress. I hope my version will not cause any trouble and the two hard disks will work fine with my Raidsonic Icybox IB-NAS4220-B.
When you review it can you give us an idea if it is quiet or not.
I got the synology, and the fan is really annoying. Not really loud, but the whine from the fan is just at the wrong frequency to ignore it.
Hi Matt,
To be honest, the sound doesn’t really matter to me, as the Icybox is in my home “office” and I am never really there. đŸ˜‰
But I will see if the NAS makes noise or is relatively quiet. What I can tell already: I wouldn’t want to sleep in the same room, where an Icybox 4220 is running.
Hi Holger
You refered to the Icybox 4220 having problems with Samsung drives, I have a 4220 and two 500gb samsung drives. And yes they are giving me problems. Will the only solution be to replace them?
Hi André,
The incompatibility is a know issue since day one. So far I haven’t read of anyone who could fix the problem. I do not know if all Samsung hard disks are affected.
Have a look at the wiki I have mentioned above, there are problems described and solutions provided which helped others.
So far most have changed the hard disks to WD or other fabrics and the Icybox worked well.
Do you know if there are any issues regards using this along with a mac?
Hi Anthony!
Currently I don’t know about any issues with Macs, but I will give it a try soon and will let you know.
But generally it shouldn’t be a problem. It is just like a normal server in your network.
Regards,
Holger
Just bought Icy Box Nas 4220-B, I am useing a lot of BTorrent client, so that’s why I bought NAS for, but I have discovered that it doesn’t upload after downloding the file, it shares the file while downloading, but when the download is finished it stops. Am I right and is there any solution for that? Sme torrent trackers have ratio where u have to keep certain level, otherwise u will be banned from the tracker.
Hi Oscar, sorry for the late reply. Your comment must have slipped through somehow. I am not using BTorrent, so i can’t give you any advice on that, sorry.