Choosing a NAS, what do i need?

Doshwaster

forgotmyname wrote: »

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

Sounds like a reasonable place to start.

I have 4TB RAID1 for important data but also a couple of single 2TB drives for stuff that I wouldn't be that bothered if I lost (mostly archived media rips/ISOs where I have the original or can be downloaded again).

For very important data that you really can't afford to lose (financial records, family photos etc) then you need to go beyond RAID and look at offsite/cloud backup as protection against a disastrous total system failure such as fire, flood or theft. I have 100GB of cloud storage through Google Drive and a smaller backup on Dropbox for my most critical data.

Fightsback

I'd personally suggest Synology as well with QNAP as a second choice. What you get with these is very long support and an excellent app ecosystem with Synology being the best.

I'd recommend the 2 bay DS215j set up as RAID 1 as a good home choice:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DiskStation-DS215j-Desktop-Enclosure/dp/B00OZ0CTAU

The Synology NAS have applications that will automatically back up to the cloud for you.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/app_packages/CloudSync

NB drives extra and do note RAID is not backup but a means of coping with a drive failure so you don't lose the lot. Always have backup and never ever use RAID 0.

forgotmyname

Never use Raid 0? My current PC has a pair of 250GB drives in raid 0 and been like this since 2006 when i built it.

Just recently i added an SSD which didnt really may any difference of the RAID setup.

I know about losing pictures, i bought a brand new 1TB? drive and transferred all my pictures over from old hard drives, silly me deleted them as i went then a few days in the brand new drive failed....

OMG.. nightmare. sector by sector surface scan on every old drive, somewere in raid arrays so only half the files recoverable.

Never again. I now always keep 2 backups. I have a 3TB external samsung unit for my must never lose files. So they are on my PC, the media PC and the 3TB drive.

I think i really need at least 4 bays though, the Synolog is rather pricey for 4 bays.
I really need to be up and running with at least 3TB for the price of a Synology bare unit.

forgotmyname

I also have dropbox, but its full. 13MP camera phone soon filled that up, panaramic photo's soon eat the space up.

Ideally i want the NAS to replace that.

I think going for a 2 bay unit would be a mistake for me, those with 4 bay units
how much power does your draw?

I wonder if i can build my own from an old PC and underclock it to bring
the power consumption down?

Fightsback

forgotmyname wrote: »

Never use Raid 0? My current PC has a pair of 250GB drives in raid 0 and been like this since 2006 when i built it.

Striping only doubles your chances of losing all data due to a drive failure as two drives are acting as a single drive. Seen many a sob story by people using raid 0, you've been quite lucky so far, I hope you do regular backups.

System

forgotmyname wrote: »

Never use Raid 0? My current PC has a pair of 250GB drives in raid 0 and been like this since 2006 when i built it.

You should only be using RAID 0 where you need the effective increase in throughput speeds that it gives you.

We use workstations that have a 4 disk RAID 0 due to one of the apps generating large amounts of temp data that needs to be written/read from disk as quickly as possible

S0litaire

Bought a D-Link dns-320L a few weeks ago (£36 Amazon warehouse deal!) it's ok, not great. can be a bit slow currently got 2 x 3Tb drives in raid 0 (got backups)

It's only used to store media and I can easily replace them if one of the drives fails.

Can't get Plex media server working nice with it (keeps crashing and VERY slow media browsing causes meta-data issues!!) using "TVMOBiLi" instead. not a nice as Plex but a lot faster browsing!

Got it set up a NFS so my media (Video/Pictures & Music folders) are part of my Ubuntu Box makes it easier to save and sort things.

OH!! one thing you will need!
A fast network! copying 1.5Tb of media on a 100Mbps network can take the better part of a weekend or a long weekend in my case!

Had to copy them off one 3Tb drive first, onto a backup drive, then use the empty drive with a new 3Tb drive in the NAS (since it had to be formatted in order to be seen on the NAS!)

Then the joy of copying all 1.5Tb back over to the NAS. this was a week before I won a nice 1000Mb/s switch over christmas! >_<

forgotmyname

My network transfers are aquite quick 60Mb/sec? I know it doesnt take long to transfer 1GB from my PC to the media one. I went back from wireless to cable because wireless took far too long. So impatient.

I do a lot of file transfers and run VMs and 3D design stuff, The machine is still running well even after 9 years its not a bad spec and copes well.

The pair of 250gb drives are raid 0 and probably helped its lifespan, 250gb seem to be where they went for size of quality. Had many TB drives fail yet these 250's plod on.

Its had a couple of PSU's and the RAM was changed a while back, and recently i added a SSD which made very little difference to transfer speeds.

I think all my devices are Gigabit network capable.

forgotmyname

kevin156 wrote: »

Hi I have installed lots of NAS devices through work. I normally recommend Synology or QNAP.
Have a look at this site. We have purchased from here in the past.

eorders.... (deleted)

Thanks

Kevin

Thanks for the warning on not to use eorders, if they cannot even put a genuine address on their registration then i agree they should not be trusted.

Odd that you should warn me about your own company though? Conscientious spammer?

Debt to capital ratio 108% oops, you need to work harder rather than spam message boards.

HappySeagull

I ordered a Synology DS215j yesterday, so I'm reassured by this thread! Primarily it's for storing my music (350gb, which no longer fits on my PC) and sharing it to the various devices around the house.

I did look at re-using an old PC and installing FreeNAS, but concluded the power consumption, noise and technical hassle wasn't justified.

Never used a NAS before, and the possibilities seem endless - I'll reuse a couple of old drives just to play with it at first. When I've decided what capacity I need, I'll buy a couple of WD "Red" drives as mirrors.

For me, the unknown part is the apps - both on the server and the clients. I've been using Banshee on a Linux box to rip and play music, but I don't know if this set-up will be as capable. Guess there will be a learning curve.