NAS device for resilient storage?

Ximian

S0litaire wrote: »

Currently looking for and playing around with NAS software.

FreeNAS or NAS4Free are pretty good:

http://www.freenas.org/download-releases.html
http://www.nas4free.org/

I'm running an older build of Nas4Free (the original FreeNAS) and it's great, has a built in Torrent client, FTP, CIFS
Built on an old AMD PC that was no longer needed, bought 3 x 1 TB drives (RAID 5), SATA controller card, turned an unwanted PC into a useful machine for a small price.
I tried a few of the various NAS solutions in VMware first and preferred FreeNAS but there have been many changes and updates since then.

FreeNAS alternatives:

http://www.techshout.com/alternatives/2013/18/freenas-alternatives/

S0litaire

I'm using TurnKey Linux "Fileserver"
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/

It's debian based and I can get around it a lot eaier than "freenas" and "nas4free"

Also had to manually format my 2 x 3Tb drives since most of the NAS interfaces can't handle formatting 3Tb drive at the moment.

cookie365

DazedAndConfuzed wrote: »

At the moment they are between 15-25gb. I've got an ok internet connection at home but I can see uploading and downloading them should I need to make amendments might be a royal pain in the !!!!?

I'll tell you what would really be a pain: keeping your NAS in the same location as the originals, and losing everything in a fire, flood, or burglary.

pauldreed

I agree with Cookie365, in that backup data needs to be sited away from the primary data. What if you were burgled or there was a fire? you would lose the lot!
Thats the reason why I opted for a online backup service, and let the experts sort out my data storage.
I use copy.com which is owned by Barracuda, and at the moment they are giving new sign-ups 20GB free storage.
They use a combination of public private key RSA encryption and AES 256 bit symmetric key encryption to encrypt uploads as well as storage, and they also have revision control, so you can recall older versions of a file.

I've been on the receiving end of a failed hard disk drive, and it's just the worse ever feeling!!

Paul

Jivesinger

pauldreed wrote: »

I use copy, which is owned by Barracuda, and at the moment they are giving new sign-ups 20GB free storage.
They use a combination of public private key RSA encryption and AES 256 bit symmetric key encryption to encrypt uploads as well as storage, and they also have revision control, so you can recall older versions of a file.

That latter feature looks useful.

One of the things that put me off a simple sync to a cloud folder is that some modern "ransomware" can encrypt all your files on local and network drives, with a key known only to the crooks, and then demand money from you to unlock it.

If your backup is a permanently-connected network or local disk, or your computer automatically syncs all updated files to the cloud, it would be no protection against this kind of attack.

But being able to get at previous versions of files might save you...

pauldreed

Jivesinger wrote: »

That latter feature looks useful.

One of the things that put me off a simple sync to a cloud folder is that some modern "ransomware" can encrypt all your files on local and network drives, with a key known only to the crooks, and then demand money from you to unlock it.

If your backup is a permanently-connected network or local disk, or your computer automatically syncs all updated files to the cloud, it would be no protection against this kind of attack.

But being able to get at previous versions of files might save you...

But isn't that one of the cloud's strengths, not weakness?
The majority of cryptoviral extortion attempts do not really encrypt data anyway, they just appear to, panicking people into paying an unlock fee. But, if your data was clean at the time of uploading to the cloud, any subsequent viral infection on your PC would change your local files, and therefore the cloud would store both your last known 'uninfected' file together with the most recent version - possibly infected.
So you could role back to a known good version.

If however you were storing locally, what's to stop your entire system to become infected?

Sorry if I haven't explained this clearly - I'm rushing...

Paul

sancho

HP Microserver. Software RAID (eg Drivepool). Back up the server once a week to an external drive which you store at work/mum's house/friend's house.

pauldreed

sancho wrote: »

HP Microserver. Software RAID (eg Drivepool). Back up the server once a week to an external drive which you store at work/mum's house/friend's house.

That sounds like a lot of hassle to me!
You would have to purchase the hardware - the cloud would be free (depending upon size of backup)
You would have to physically collect/deliver your harddrive.
You would have to remember to run the backup.

Not for me.

Paul

Jivesinger

pauldreed wrote: »

But isn't that one of the cloud's strengths, not weakness?
The majority of cryptoviral extortion attempts do not really encrypt data anyway, they just appear to, panicking people into paying an unlock fee. But, if your data was clean at the time of uploading to the cloud, any subsequent viral infection on your PC would change your local files, and therefore the cloud would store both your last known 'uninfected' file together with the most recent version - possibly infected.
So you could role back to a known good version.

If however you were storing locally, what's to stop your entire system to become infected?

Sorry if I haven't explained this clearly - I'm rushing...

Paul

I was reading this week about something called Crypto Locker which really does encrypt your files.

What I was getting at re:the cloud was that some systems sync automatically and almost instantly to a local copy- for instance I've used Skydrive which does this. So if a file was encrypted by the bad guys on my local disk, the Skydrive version of that file might be encrypted too, before I had a chance to disconnect.

The site you linked to above seemed to be more sophisticated and therefore better (which was what I was getting at).

closed

Nas/raid/cloud overcomplicates things and increases the cost - one internal drive for the master copy, 2 or more usb2/3 drives, in a rotated backup cycle.