Do I really need a NAS?

yorica

Hi

I have a burgeoning digital media collection - movies, photos & music and hardly any room left on the hard drives of my 2 laptops. I would like to consolidate my collection on one device using either a NAS with a hard drive or just a hard drive - but the more I read the more I get confused about what I actually need. Ideally I think 3tb is the minimum I need at the mo.

I also have a very under-used WDTV live media player which was given to me a few years back but it has only been used to access Netflix on the odd occasions I've managed to get a free month's subscription.

Does the WDTV player do away with the need to have a NAS?

Can you please offer any advice on the best & most cost effective way to proceed.

danthemoneysavingman

DO you need access to all of your hoarde, all the time?
If not (and I can't imagine you do?), then why not just get an external drive (many cheap high-capacity ones available at the moment) and fill that up - then plug and play as required? That's what I do.
But then again, you're not me :-)

Sorry cant comment on the WDTV thing.

bluesnake

The problem is also when your huge, and ever expanding lump of data does bad, so you may need a raid system, but raid system can not expand past its initial configuration size without breaking the raid set which means loosing all the data on the disks.

Ways around this could be linux LVM - this not my area though. ZFS storage, or Lime Technology - unraid.

RobTang

bluesnake wrote: »

The problem is also when your huge, and ever expanding lump of data does bad, so you may need a raid system, but raid system can not expand past its initial configuration size without breaking the raid set which means loosing all the data on the disks.

Ways around this could be linux LVM - this not my area though. ZFS storage, or Lime Technology - unraid.

There are product based solutions for adding extra disks from Synology and drobo as well.

TBH I don't think this is a massive issue, given that with the size if drives today raid 5 has fallen out of favour and raid 6 your quite likely to be filling all your NAS bays anyway. so expansions really means a new unit (prob raid 1) Not to mention multiple drives are expensive.

yorica

I have no idea what the last 2 people are talking about

danthemoneysavingman

They're talking about NAS set-ups. I suspect you're only thinking of a single drive plug'n'go solution. NAS set-up can get quite involved...

Quiet_Spark

bluesnake wrote: »

but raid system can not expand past its initial configuration size without breaking the raid set

Expandable RAID lets you do just that.

bluesnake

yorica wrote: »

I have no idea what the last 2 people are talking about

Ok, the problem with a very big drive is nothing last forever. It will fail, no matter how much you paid for it, or whom the manufacturer was. Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, but it will fail. You will loose all the data on that drive unless you either (a) back it up = lots of DVDs for 3T disk, (b) have a spare disk lying around which you have you constantly keep copying and removing data (syncing), but it is works, however the novelty soon wears off. (c) you use technology like RAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID, but there are other methods.

If 3T is the minimum you need at the moment, what would need in the future. Blu ray are bigger, are 3d still bigger? Possibly you will need a storage device that can expand and keep expanding with your needs.

****************
RobTang, i agree business will buy another unit, but home, cheap, tight aas users like me, will often do the cheapest/easiest method.

On the other hand an ex-colleague bought a 4 bay, either a drobo or synology box (can't remember which) and the back plane went bad. The company quickly replace the box, but the newer firmware would no longer recognise his old disk configuration (he did number them and put them back in the same locations), potentially loosing all of his data. Not sure what he did as he had found a new job while this was happening. This has tinged my outlook on these.

danthemoneysavingman

I might suggest alternatively, how attached to these digital media items are you? How upset would you be if you lost that copy of Back to The Future 3? ;-)
It may be worth rationalising your collection to get rid of "the !!!!", as it were...???

yorica

My photos take priority and so I'm planning to also upload these to Flickr as well as keep them stored locally. My personal videos would be uploaded to box.com where I have a 50gb account but I imagine uploading them would be a very laborious job.

Movies & music are easily replaced if lost.

S0litaire

Just wondering. what ISP are you with is it BT?

The BT Home Hub usually has a USB port on the back you can use with a External USB drive as a basic NAS setup.

If you're Not with BT then this might not be any use. Though some other routers may have the same ability.

a NAS is just a hard drive connected to your network that can let any machine on the local network (i.e your house not the rest of the internet!) get access to files and data stored on it.