Nas

andrewjf

billn wrote: »

Thanks to you all for the replies. I know about the importance of backing up the NAS even if it has 2 hard drives set to mirror each other, I don't intend to stream music or movies from it so it would be used as a central storage to be accessed by all computers, maybe the Synology is a bit OTT for what I need, food for thought though.

Thanks

Strictly speaking, RAID isn't a backup solution. It's a fault tolerance solution.

bluesnake

A friend (very experienced it guy-not a noob) had a Synology, or drobo, or qnap - can't remember which one. It was an up to 4 drive one.

The problem he had was some disk he added it just did not like, even though they were the exact same make model as the original. It was finally attributed to newer disk firmware on the new drives.

After 9 months of owning it, the backplane died, so was supplied a new one by the company fairly quickly. The issue this time that it did not recognise any of his existing data on the disks and the company advised him to reformat his array as the firmware was different.

Personally at home, I would go with Unraid (http://lime-technology.com/) a positive point is that on the event of problems, you can mount individual disk on other systems and get your data back. Negative points are no double parity (raid 6) solution, probably a bit slower too.

garyk1968

I just got hold of a QNAP TS-212 which has 2 x 2TB drives in Raid1 configuration. Setup was pretty easy, plug in and run up the supplied qfinder app on my mac and did all the setup for me. You can also get a qmobile app for iphone/pad so can stream any media to those devices.

I got it for £295.

Gary

OGR

If you want to use your NAS as a backup solution then I would..

1: Map a drive to it and make sure you tell it to reconnect at logon.
2: Install some free replication software such as ViceVersa.
3: Create a replication job to a set location (target) on the NAS, tell it to copy any differences between wherever you save your documents on your PCs/Laptops and the backup directory on the NAS, save the job*.
4: Every time you are about to close down your computer run the replication job, it will compare the files at the 2 locations and copy anything that has changed or that is new and it won't take long as you are only copying changes**.

This way you don't have to manually manage it and keep copying files after you have saved them on your local storage.

Might seem a bit over the top to some people but I would want the process automated, I wouldn't want to be looking for my new files and having to copy them all the time.

* I assume you can save a job in the replication programs and don't have to reconfigure it every time you want to replicate. Personally haven't used any 3rd party replication software in a while since DFS can do it all now quite well in a server environment.

** The first time you run it there may well be a lot of files so it may take a while.

EDIT: Apparently Microsoft have something called SyncToy (link below).

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15155

Here is a tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiNZPzFxoSc

isofa

billn wrote: »

Thanks for that, I had nearly come to that conclusion but was not quite sure. Can anyone recommend a reliable NAS? I have looked at the Synology DS212J but it is quite expensive and still gets mixed reviews.

I moved a lot of our storage to a Synology ds212j last year and haven't looked back, it's fantastically reliable, the new DSM software (free from Synology) is amazing. I'd highly recommend it, I use it to store enormous sets of RAW image files across a mixed network, it's running 4TB of storage at present.

And rather than mixed reviews, in my research (before purchasing) it also received extremely good reviews, just 2 examples from PC Pro and Computer Shopper:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/storage-appliances/374536/synology-ds212j
https://www.expertreviews.co.uk/network-storage/1289776/synology-diskstation-ds212j

Just my opinion though.

stevemcol

For backing up, it's got to be cloud now for me. Inexpensive and more robust in the case of robbery or fire. I use my NAS (Iomega Home Media) as a combined local secondary backup and file sharer.
Not sure if it's the best but I've gone for Skydrive.

Lum

Cloud is only more robust until the company running it goes bankrupt or gets raided by request of a foreign government and shut down.

Anyone who chose MegaUpload as their choice of cloud backup solution will be familiar with this.

stevemcol

Lum wrote: »

Cloud is only more robust until the company running it goes bankrupt or gets raided by request of a foreign government and shut down.

Anyone who chose MegaUpload as their choice of cloud backup solution will be familiar with this.

...and obvisouly never rely on one backup.

bmewsd

stevemcol wrote: »

For backing up, it's got to be cloud now for me. Inexpensive and more robust in the case of robbery or fire. I use my NAS (Iomega Home Media) as a combined local secondary backup and file sharer.
Not sure if it's the best but I've gone for Skydrive.

Skydrive because it's free and you get to access a whole 7GB? or because it's Microsoft? Actually, it's ok but it's expensive once you get past the 7GB free, it's got quite a few limitations on file types and file sizes too. I use Excipere as it's automated and allows me to access my stuff from anywhere I have an internet connection without being restricted by my own upload bandwidth (which would be my effective download bandwidth, should I try to use my home NAS as my cloud sharing device)

The other thing to consider (also mentioned above) is that because it's a US company (even though they have datacentres in Ireland and Holland) they MUST comply with USA patriot act which effectively provides unfettered access to US government agencies. Check out the google and Microsoft transparency reports. CISPA (which may get passed by the US government later this year) is even more of a concern (so much so, that the white house is trying to hold it back because even they don't understand how much of your stuff the US government could access).

If you're in the UK, then ideally you want to look at UK companies with UK datacentres who only need to comply with UK and EU legislation and can provide some guarantee that your data won't get copied off to some other datacentre without your knowledge.

just my humble opinion.

bmewsd

Lum wrote: »

Cloud is only more robust until the company running it goes bankrupt or gets raided by request of a foreign government and shut down.

Anyone who chose MegaUpload as their choice of cloud backup solution will be familiar with this.

have to agree. Megaupload and its spinoff are always of interest to folk who think the internet costs nothing to run. There's no such thing as free which is why you'll find most cloud storage companies offering scant amounts of free storage and then having horrendous charges once you go above the free storage amount.

Others such as dropbox (which is run on amazon) or googledrive again do the small free storage followed by massive paid subscription (which subsidises all the free stuff). Companies who don't control their costs are the ones most likely to go bankrupt.

The cloud is where it's all heading, you've just got to let the ground settle somewhat.