Pre-built NAS vs. DIY

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TroyTalksNoMore

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This (disk-less) 4 HD WD NAS looks EASY & cheap ($330) but it's seems to be RAID or JBOD only.

Can I put 4 NON-RAID / NON-JBOD x 6TB drives in there & just duplicate 'em to my 4 bay ICY DOCK's as back-up?



I just want to replace my 4 separate ~ 4 HD ICY DOCK's that use existing, small HD's & stick them in a single unit w/ big HD's.

I would like to access my 4 x 6TB data from anywhere, but I really don't know where to start?

Should I buy this pre-built NAS or DIY?

EDIT: well - at the end of the next video, he refers to Synology & I am reading about that now...

I'm not a newb & I've built my own game boxes for 20 years & I run linux on my old PC's, etc.



Any advice in helping me avoid hours & hours of research is appreciated!!!

:)
 
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The links look like iON.tv

It's actually: LON.tv

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCZHp4d1HnIub-ps-LXKkKKZ4V-ODRqZp

upload_2016-11-26_13-49-11.png
 
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The opposite of RAID is JBOD... it's one or the other. non-raid / non-jbod makes no sense. JBOD = Just a Bunch Of Disks

I'll let someone else speak on what to chose. I'm a little crazy and run a serious server w/ ZFS for what most people would consider no reason at all.
 
i built my own using Free-nas. took a bit but got it all working with vmware and local desktops. 10gb nics are amazing and cheap on ebay.
 
It is a question of time vs money. If you have the time and want to save money (in theory), you'll be reading, researching and then building your own. The off the shelf boxes are generally expensive for the hardware specs you get, but you get the OS, support and you'lre not putting it together.

"Any advice in helping me avoid hours & hours of research is appreciated!!!"

Buy Synology or a Qnap unit. Problem solved. Just toss your current drives into the new NAS, make sure its in JBOD and you're done. Otherwise, get to reading, especially if you're gonna roll your own server with something like FreeNAS, NAS4Free, Openmedia vault etc. or Linux.
 
Thanks guys, I thought JBOD always meant many disks that appear as one disk (spanned volume) but I see that it also refers to a collection of individual disks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-RAID_drive_architectures#JBOD

JBOD (abbreviated from "just a bunch of disks/drives") is an architecture using multiple hard drives exposed as individual devices. Hard drives may be treated independently or may be combined into a one or more logical volumes using a volume manager like LVM or mdadm; such volumes are usually called "spanned" or "linear | SPAN | BIG". A spanned volume provides no redundancy, so failure of a single hard drive amounts to failure of the whole logical volume.
 
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I am SW developer and can build NAS myself but decided to buy Synology a couple of years ago. It was a great decision. It requires no maintenance, it updates itself automatically, it is quiet and I can use my time somewhere else then maintaining and tweaking DIY solution. After all how much can you save on DIY NAS? Even if you can save 200 dollars on box time that you will spend configuring it will be more expensive.
 
Thanks to Ranulfo, I watched some more videos on Synology & Qnap products.

I also read some DIY sites & build logs & while it looks FUN, I don't want to "do the time".

I'll buy a pre-built NAS w/ 4 bays to start & learn more about my usage & needs.

When time & money permit, I'll probably go for a DIY NAS w/ 8 bays.
 
what's the best 8-bay enclosure on the market?

thinking bout u-nas 800 but they are hard to find in UK
 
This is a good blog for DIY specs/budget info: http://blog.brianmoses.net/

I don't know much about the UNAS systems other than I've been tempted to buy one of their bare bones cases for my hardware. I think all of the major NAS type manufacturers have 8 bay units and expansion units.
 
talk2troy said:
This (disk-less) 4 HD WD NAS looks EASY & cheap ($330) but it's seems to be RAID or JBOD only.

Can I put 4 NON-RAID / NON-JBOD x 6TB drives in there & just duplicate 'em to my 4 bay ICY DOCK's as back-up?



I just want to replace my 4 separate ~ 4 HD ICY DOCK's that use existing, small HD's & stick them in a single unit w/ big HD's.

I would like to access my 4 x 6TB data from anywhere, but I really don't know where to start?

Should I buy this pre-built NAS or DIY?

EDIT: well - at the end of the next video, he refers to Synology & I am reading about that now...

I'm not a newb & I've built my own game boxes for 20 years & I run linux on my old PC's, etc.



Any advice in helping me avoid hours & hours of research is appreciated!!!

:)
Click to expand...


So that's what Jeff Probst does in the off season.
 
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i went from a Server 2012r2 box to a simple 2 drive WD NAS and put the two Red drives I had in it.

Works great for me and I got no reason to look back.
 
all prebuilt nas I've had always had issues keeping up with 1gbit network.

I built my own little file/media server instead. 115MB/s average transfer speed
 
SvenBent said:
all prebuilt nas I've had always had issues keeping up with 1gbit network.

I built my own little file/media server instead. 115MB/s average transfer speed
Click to expand...

Could yo elaborate what issues you had? I have gigabit network with Synology and while I do not get 115MB/s - is it even possible on gigabit? :) I get 50mb in average with spikes to 100mb.
 
almalino said:
Could yo elaborate what issues you had? I have gigabit network with Synology and while I do not get 115MB/s - is it even possible on gigabit? :) I get 50mb in average with spikes to 100mb.
Click to expand...

That is my problem exactly with prebuiltNAS. The best i ever saw was around 50MB/s and some even down at doing 20MB/s

My own i've seen spike shortly to around 118MB/s (but it might be small measurement inaccuracies)) but 115MB/s is my typical average for a file transfer

1gbits = 119MB/s - overhead so yes 115MB/S should be possible. I Would have settled for around 100MB/S in average but just haven't found any NAS that delivers that

my system is just a
Q9500 Antec Greean
Samsung enterprise SSD from a Cisco server
4x 1TB samsung F1 HDD in raid 5 (about to be replaced with 2x3TB WD Greeb to lower power consumption)
Earth 350W v2
Some Intel OEM motherboard taken from a Supermicro Network unit ( can remember what it was)
Onboard GPU
Onboard NIC

I have a 4x 1gbit PCIe NIC but he motherboard only has its 16x PCIe and does not like to Post with the NIC inserted :(
 
Ranulfo said:
This is a good blog for DIY specs/budget info: http://blog.brianmoses.net/

I don't know much about the UNAS systems other than I've been tempted to buy one of their bare bones cases for my hardware. I think all of the major NAS type manufacturers have 8 bay units and expansion units.
Click to expand...

Yep, I found that blog earlier & it's primarily why I decided to buy my first appliance & go DIY after learning more about how I will use it.
 
SvenBent said:
That is my problem exactly with prebuiltNAS. The best i ever saw was around 50MB/s and some even down at doing 20MB/s
My own i've seen spike shortly to around 118MB/s (but it might be small measurement inaccuracies)) but 115MB/s is my typical average for a file transfer
Click to expand...

Hm, intereseting. I have Synology DS214Play NAS that has some good CPU for video decoding so CPU does not limit it performance and I never saw CPU buzy more then 30% on big files tranfers. Still the average speed is about 50MB/sec. You state that DIY NAS can do twice better so it could be worth considering. Though I am not sure what kind of data you need to transfer back and forth fir gigabit speed.
 
Personally where its important for me is when I'm doing data analysing or brute force compression.
I also use my NAS to store CD/DVD images of my old games that i sometimes play, and then the usual small stuff like file backup and media server.
I don't use any specific NAS software just Windows 7

of cause if you don't need the full speed from the NAS a prebuilt would be easier. I just really like that my big file transfer goes fast..


The downside is power usage though.
My mothreboard did not give me an option to adjust CPU voltage down and i might look into doing 775 pin mods
but my server take round 50w in usage when disk are transfering data which is 15W up from the 35 my last Prebuilt NAS did.
 
Any decent prebuilt NAS will have no problem saturating gigabit Ethernet or for that matter, multiple 1GbE links. Older ARM based ones (like the Synology DS214play that was mentioned) are naturally going to be slow. Pretty much any modern one from Synology, QNAP, etc will fit the bill in terms of speed.
 
Ranulfo said:
Buy Synology or a Qnap unit. Problem solved. Just toss your current drives into the new NAS, make sure its in JBOD and you're done. Otherwise, get to reading, especially if you're gonna roll your own server with something like FreeNAS, NAS4Free, Openmedia vault etc. or Linux.
Click to expand...



Just wondering why in JBOD over RAID? Im in need of a simple solution for pure backup and nothing else. I was looking at the Synology DS216j to run in RAID 1, is this a bad idea? If so why?
 
The OP's drives were originally in JBOD and he just wanted to swap them over if I remember correctly. Nothing wrong with RAID 1 if thats what you want from the start. Redundancy over space.
 
I've bought domestic QNAP boxes that give around 60MBps. I've bough the small business Intel based QNAP NAS that have dual gigabit and I've easily got 99MBps constant on just one gigabit port.

People will say "ohh go FreeNas!" but they probably don't work for themselves and have to manage the time to cost ratio on a job. With a pre-built NAS I can pull it off the shelf, put it together and configure it on site in half an hour and I'm gone. Also chances are I wont have to go back to maintain/fix it for some time.

FreeNas is great for hobbyists or people with lots of time to spend. Otherwise buy pre-built.
 
I have the older USB 2 Icy Cubes + a few USB 3 docks (this & this) and my transfer speeds vary wildly based on file types. When I offload or backup a folder full of images, PDF's, mp3's & word docs, they transfer super fast while a folder full of video files is MUCH slower. It really seems dependent on the file size & type.

I'd expect similar behavior on a NAS, but I have no experience w/ NAS systems vs internal HD transfers & USB HD transfers.

Is this what you guys see with your NAS setup (file size / type variance) or is it network cable type, network cards, mobo network chips, etc?

Do you use a transfer speed / benchmark utility or are you just eyeballing it?
 
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Anyone have experience with Asustor ( an Asus company ) products? I'm looking at the AS6210T, which is a 10-bay unit. They look better, on paper, than Synology units but are cheaper.
 
SvenBent said:
That is my problem exactly with prebuiltNAS. The best i ever saw was around 50MB/s and some even down at doing 20MB/s

My own i've seen spike shortly to around 118MB/s (but it might be small measurement inaccuracies)) but 115MB/s is my typical average for a file transfer

1gbits = 119MB/s - overhead so yes 115MB/S should be possible. I Would have settled for around 100MB/S in average but just haven't found any NAS that delivers that
Click to expand...


Is this actually a problem? I've never seen a Synology not get over 100MBps. I have a DS415+ I got from work that I use for backup, testing, and general file storage, and can pull 110MBps from it all day long.


DS415TransferSpeed.jpg



edit: to clarify i get the same speeds pushing files to it as well.


double edit: I found a 4 year old 213j in a RAID1 that I brought up real quick and was able to pull over 100MBps from it and push files to it at around 80MBps.
 
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AMD T-type said:
Is this actually a problem? I've never seen a Synology not get over 100MBps. I have a DS415+ I got from work that I use for backup, testing, and general file storage, and can pull 110MBps from it all day long.


DS415TransferSpeed.jpg



edit: to clarify i get the same speeds pushing files to it as well.


double edit: I found a 4 year old 213j in a RAID1 that I brought up real quick and was able to pull over 100MBps from it and push files to it at around 80MBps.
Click to expand...

off cause its depending on which its not like EVERY units cant deliver it. but it is a issues sometimes.

also i was testing in raid5
 
talk2troy said:
How are you measuring that?
Click to expand...

For simple raw transfer speeds, I just select a 4.5GB DVD rip and copy it back and forth and look at the speed Windows tells me.

Not something I spend a lot of effort in.

For point of reference I mainly use dual bay NAS boxes in RAID1 configuration. Sometimes if they are to be used for holding financial/customer data then 256bit AES encryption is added which slows things a little.
 
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