QNAP TS-109 Pro II

My 600GB NAS that I built with Slackware Linux on an IDE-CF card, has been running quite smoothly over the last four years.  I have filled it to 83% capacity so far.  I think this NAS can go on for easily another few years by adding another 320GB drive to the RAID-5 array, but will I run it for that long?

The fan has been fairly noise over the last couple of years.  Because the NAS sits in another room, I don't really hear it so it does not bother me much.  Whenever I go into that room however, the noise is quite irritating.  I don't know how guests that are using that room can stand it.  Also, I kinda prefer a GUI interface for controlling the system instead of all command-line now.

Well, today, I decided I would buy a quiet NAS.  I found a QNAP TS-109 II on Craigslist for $165.  I went out last night to pick it up.  The NAS came with a 2TB drive, way more than my current NAS, but there is only one drive.  Eventually, I need to connect an external drive and configure the NAS to auto-sync to it (i.e., creating a RAID-1 system.)  Soon, my current NAS will be decommissioned .....

One note about the QNAP TS-109 II ... this NAS is Linux but does not support NFS out of the box.  However, I found an article that talks about hacking the NAS so it appears as a QNAP TS-109 Pro II, which will show the NFS option in the menu.  I followed the simple instructions and now got NFS shares running.  George Zhu's blog was where I found the instructions:  http://george.insideiphone.com/?p=614.

In case George Zhu's website is no longer accessible, I am copying and pasting the relevant instructions here:

1. SSH onto your TS-209 II, then enter:
   
   mount -o loop /dev/mtdblock5 /tmp/config
   cd /tmp/config
2. Now edit autorun.sh, add the following lines:
   
   ln -s /sbin/config_util /sbin/set_hwtype
   /sbin/set_hwtype 2
3. Then unmount the partition:
   
   cd /
   umount /tmp/config
4. Reboot

The instructions are for the TS-209 II but it works for the TS-109 II as well.  (I noticed a number of people use WinSCP and other tools for editing autorun.sh.  I just used the built-in "vi" editor to create the file--yeah, the autorun.sh did not exist--and set its permission with "chmod u+x autorun.sh".)  There is a second method mentioned in the blog but the first method seems to work just fine.

So now, I am going to order a 2TB external SATA drive and will connect it to the TS-109 Pro II NAS.  I think I will start shooting in RAW mode from here on since I have so much more space for RAW storage now.