Can anyone recommend anything? Piss on TrekStor crap.

I built my own, it's very easy.

I used a cheap Gigabyte mini-ITX motherboard (doesn't need to be high end).

I have Ubuntu Server running on a USB key with Samba, 2 SATA hard drives, and I use rsync to do backups. It works very well!

It cost me about 300 Euros total and it's open, I can replace parts and I can install what I want on it.

I didn't do RAID because from what I read, software RAID is unreliable, so you need an expensive RAID card, and if the card breaks, my understanding is that you might need the exact same card to recover your data.

I've been eyeing this

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-301421U-Network-Attached-Ethernet/dp/B0024R57UU

> I've been eyeing this

Are you sure? 3/7ths of the reviews are poor - http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-301421U-Network-Attached-Ethernet/product-reviews/B0024R57UU/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar

Depends what you mean by "reliable".

One of my requirements was that if something dies inside the server, I can pull out a hard drive and access my data from some other computer.

I believe that if the HD is part of a RAID array, you can read it only if you have a RAID card (or RAID software) that uses the same formatting. This is why one of the users that commented had to go to a data recovery company to get his data. And, this is why I chose to stay away from RAID.

RAID 5, sure. With RAID 1 the drives are simple mirrors of each other.

http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/Building_a_Green_Low_Cost_Good_Performance_Home_File_Server/

Served me absolutely brilliantly and has been a great solution.

Mac Mini Server - $999

You get a Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb RAM, 2 500gb hard drives, Bluetooth, WiFi, and OS X Server (normally $500 by itself).  Just add USB keyboard, mouse, and DVD drive,

The OS can mirror the internal drives for you to create a 500gb volume.

You can also mirror any external USB drives (I have 2 1tb drives mirrored to a 1tb volume for music, downloads, etc)

You'd spend about as much for an external RAID-5 array that doesn't suck, and not get the ability to run Apache, Subversion, MySQL, etc. under a really nice UI.

The Mac Mini has amazingly low power consumption numbers.

Netgear ReadyNAS.

How well are these setups protected against a nearby lightning strike in the main power?

1. Software RAID is totally ok.
2. RAID5 with drives larger than 250 Gb is now considered a bad idea. Instead RAID1 or 6 or 10 or Z.

>> How well are these setups protected against a nearby lightning strike in the main power? <<

If it's close enough - all the surge protectors in the world won't make any difference.

(Lightning bolt travels 8000 feet through the sky -- only to be stopped by a semiconductor a half-inch wide?)

Surge suppressors are only good when your neighbor's big-screen TV & satellite receiver already absorbed nearly all of the energy.

>> 2. RAID5 with drives larger than 250 Gb is now considered a bad idea. Instead RAID1 or 6 or 10 or Z. <<

RAID-5 also is bad for use with solid-state drives.  The RAID XOR engine can't keep up with the write speed of the drives and ends up being your bottleneck.  Maybe a future generation of XOR logic chips will address this..

Nix to LaCie. Their wallwarts fail and the unit itself runs very warm.

Netgear ReadyNAS.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013FW8XS?tag=r5un7ejl-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B0013FW8XS&adid=1BBS6Y50THDDD1GJCFYJ&

Pop in a disk, it starts working. Pop in a 2nd disk, it duplicating files across both drives. Pop out a disk, it keeps working. Pop in a newly formatted disk, it starts duplicating files across both drives.

If surge protection is important for you, get a good, solid, heavy UPS for it - the same with any of your computing devices.

-----"Surge suppressors are only good when your neighbor's big-screen TV &  satellite receiver already absorbed nearly all of the energy."-------

And let's hope he wasn't repairing them at the time! The person directly across the road from me in Sri Lanka repaired TVs for a living. He was repairing one three days ago when there was a massive lightning strike in the middle of the road. Apparently the trip switch and breakers in my guardhouse have all gone, but this guy's funeral was yesterday.

Oh man, sorry to hear that.

What luck.