Choosing a NAS, what do i need?

forgotmyname

Fair few computers in the household, desktops, laptops, tablets and phones.

So many TB of storage spread across them all. Dedicated media centre has the most storage and it was a pain in the whatsits when 2TB of data was lost. The media stuff was not an issue, just having to sit there for a rfew days feeding discs back in and rip them. But were were unsure if there was any other data like pictures not saved elsewhere.

All rather disorganised. Now considering a central storage unit but how many drives and how to setup?

Losing the media is a right pain but it would be seriously costly to backup or mirror all the media.

I did think about building a NAS from an old PC, but with the power consumption it may pay for itself with a low powered prebuilt NAS.

Anyone got one? How is yours setup? I like the idea of having my photo's on my phone automatically saved to my NAS instead of my dropbox which is full.

Doshwaster

I have a 4TB (2 x 2TB) Synology NAS. It's probably at the upper end of the cost options but it would do everything you want it to do and more - there are a lot of functions which I haven't even touched.

Remember that if you have more than one drive you will lose storage space if you want to do data replication or mirroring. My 2 x 2TB setup only gives me 1.8TB of usable space after formatting and RAID1 setup. That means that I can survive either disk dying but not both.

I'm currently running at about 95% capacity which means that soon I will have to start deleting stuff or buy another one...

pmartin86

I've personaly got a Synology NAS, thought I suspect there might e cheaper options out there (got mine second hand) Ive got a 2 bay one with 2 x 4tb drives, set to mirror (so 4tb of usable storage, automaticly backed up) Of course, its all down to how much data you have, how many people are using at once and how much cash you want to throw at it

pappa_golf

dlink dnl320l , bought almost 2 yrs ago , started with just one h/drive , but later changed to 2 x wd red 2t drives in raid one.
can be fast , can be slow but it works quietly in a corner.


amongst other uses , I copy customers files onto it when doing them a drive change/upgrade , then copy back and delete from nas .

forgotmyname

Ive seen reviews on the dlink 320 and they say the interface is crap and its not a high speed unit, but they seemt o price it at £40. The only places that seem to have it listed at that price are the ones that dont have any. closer to £70 elsewhere. they have the 340 (4 drives) at £115? bare.

I need to be up and running for as little as possible, way under £200 to start with would be ideal, even if thats just a 1 or 2 TB single drive them mirror it later. As with most things MSE the cheaper the better as long as it works.

So a single drive cloud unit add more as required or a double drive mirrored array again adding larger drives or more units as needed or get a 4 bay one to start with and just add a single drive to keep costs down and add more later?

Did you make the wrong choice first time around or wished you had something else?

pappa_golf

it does its job , and I will not change it unless it goes wrong , when I bought mine it was about £70 , from amazon I think ,


I hardly use any of the additional features apart from file storage , there have been a couple of "bios" updates over its lifespan , but as the model has been superseded they are slowing down now.


after the initial setup , and format of the drive(s) its run and forget , so the interface does not matter.


my build path was


dnl320l + old 500g drive
then
dnl320l + 1 x 2t wd red (2t)
then
additional wd 2t red
and create raid


when I said "slow" , this is particularly bad when copying over 100s or 1000s of small files , but to copy (to and from) a 1 gig vid file its quick


at my setup , any machine on my network can see it , add or receive files , 2 media players can stream vid/audio clearly without buffering .


set up and forget

zarf2007

forgotmyname wrote: »

Ive seen reviews on the dlink 320 and they say the interface is crap and its not a high speed unit, but they seemt o price it at £40. The only places that seem to have it listed at that price are the ones that dont have any. closer to £70 elsewhere. they have the 340 (4 drives) at £115? bare.

I need to be up and running for as little as possible, way under £200 to start with would be ideal, even if thats just a 1 or 2 TB single drive them mirror it later. As with most things MSE the cheaper the better as long as it works.

So a single drive cloud unit add more as required or a double drive mirrored array again adding larger drives or more units as needed or get a 4 bay one to start with and just add a single drive to keep costs down and add more later?

Did you make the wrong choice first time around or wished you had something else?

Get one of these and start with a single drive (4tb ideally)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00OZ0CTAU?keywords=synology%20ds215j&qid=1451655887&ref_=sr_1_1&s=computers&sr=1-1

You can use the cloud sync app to sync photos/important video to the cloud (I use amazon cloud service). Seriously, synology are hard to beat for useability and features.

forgotmyname

Synology pops up a lot when reading, but for £130 i can get a 4bay unit. Dlink 340 £110 ish?

4tb seems to be quite a bit dearer than a 3TB, seems 3TB is the sweetspot currently.

Seagate NAS HDD 3TB approx £80 where the 4TB is over double that.

Buffalo 6TB 2 station £180. But no safety net to protect the data.

In a 4 bay unit can you have one pair as raid 0 and one as raid 1?

kev2009

Hi, I have a synology 5 bay unit DS1512+, bit older now, there is a newer one out. I have 4 x 2TB WD Red drives in a raid 5 setup for redundancy so if 1 drive fails, i can replace it with another 2Tb drive.

Only issue i've had with it was a faulty power supply in it but it was covered by synology warranty and the shipped me a new one, fitted and been fine ever since. I am now running out of space on this but as you have seen, the 4TB drives are still around 120-130 quid so bit price as I would need to buy 4 OR copy all the data off and then put 3 4TB drives in setup and copy the data back so i'm holing off at the moment and using it sparingly until such time as i can upgrade them, i was hoping 4TB be down to 70 quid by now considering 5tb and 6Tb drives are out but nope.. so will wait a while longer.

Unit it a bit price as they come without disks, then you buy the disks you want for it, has hand option you can buy the expansion unit and plug in 2 of these via the 2 external sata ports so future proof in terms of upscaling if you wanted to. I personally prefer the drive in the main unit but that's mainly due to space issue.

Doshwaster

forgotmyname wrote: »

Synology pops up a lot when reading, but for £130 i can get a 4bay unit. Dlink 340 £110 ish?

Nobody will claim that Synology is the budget choice but it beats just about any other home NAS in terms of functionality, reliability and ease of use. The Dlink unit may do the job depending on your current requirements but Synology will future-proof yourself.

I would have thought that for home use a 2 bay NAS would be sufficient. It's only for business usage that I'd go up to 4 bay for higher RAID protection.

forgotmyname

I have a lot of data stored around the house on various computers, OS images for VM machines and backups to restore peoples computers, Media centre PC has approx 4TB od data on it, although that doesnt really need a secure backup. It can be replaced if a drive fails.

pair of 3TB drives Raid 1 and later on another pair of 3TB drives in raid zero or not raid?