QNAP SS-839 Pro 8-Bay 2.5" SATA NAS

Ok - Take a cube a little over seven inches on a side, and squeeze in eight 2.5" hot-swap drive bays, more features than you can shake a stick at, and a whole lotta software and server goodness. More or less the same size as a Shuttle-X, and how many people have a desk-top micro-mini 8-bay RAID? It runs cool (34W RAID 5 with 8 500G drives), and I have one in mint condition, never used or unwrapped. (The carboard box is slightly scruffy :-)).

Why don't I want it? Because I have a large set of 3.5" discs to RAID (ooops). Which is a shame, because the low power and wake-on-LAN features mean that it can be put almost anywhere, and that it's otherwise ideal for the media server I want it for. With 1T 2.5" drives now on the market this can stash a serious amount of data as securely as you want, with RAID 0-6 or JBOD or hot sparing, and if paranoia is necessary, you can encrypt everything with a 256-bit key. iSCSI, LAN failover, yada, yada. (Note that QNAP are currently testing the WD 1Ts. They are physically larger at 12.5mm, and whilst there have been concerns about airflow, the low-power nature of the 2.5s and the unit should mitigate that). Specs on the Scorpio are here.

Here is the QNAP product website that should tell you all you need to know about this box.