2TB NAS, mirrored, educate me

D

davidlem

Gawd
Joined
Jul 26, 2005
Messages
669
My better half is filling up 32GB SD cards with pictures almost weekly. We each have plenty of internal drive space (after we junk the bad pics!), and I want a second storage location for redundancy. I had a Lacie Big Disk 2TB (4x500) Ethernet but it failed (logically) nearly every 6 months, completely unrecoverable due to proprietary config, and I got sick of it. I have a small space in a closet, near my switch and patch panel, of about 16"x24"x20" to physically put a device. I've got plenty of PC parts to make a machine, but I'd prefer for the smaller footprint, lower power draw, and lower heat output of a dedicated NAS device. And I want to use a filesystem that isn't proprietary and can be recovered/rebuilt in the event that the NAS device smokes. I don't need rocket fast speed; I'm fine with slow but steady (I'll probably use WD Green drives). I have a 10/100 switch there now but may upgrade to Gig just cause. I'm looking to spend about $200 on a diskless device that accepts at least two 2TB drives for RAID1 mirror. Extra points if it has a quiet fan or can do dishes.

Does not need to: handle Torrents, serve media to a wireless device, support H.264 streaming, hack the Gibson, generate SEO traffic, presuppose my mental condition, etc.

Thank you!
 
My friend has a couple of the Synology DiskStation NAS's and loves them. He has a 2-bay one and a 4-bay one.

Plus it uses the ext3 filesystem which is of course completely open source, open spec, open everything.
 
Seems like a Synology DS212J would be about perfect for you. Uses EXT4 filesystem as well which should give you recovery options in the event of a failure.
 
For reliability and future expansion, my suggestion would be to save a little bit more and get an HP Microserver. I got the N40L when NewEgg ran them on a sale for $229 shipped. All I had to do was throw in disks, a DVD burner I had laying around, and load up OpenIndiana. With 2tb drives, that machine can have up to 8TB of space, 6TB redundant if you use the equivalent of RAID5 (using OpenIndiana's implementation of ZFS that'd be referred to as RAIDZ1).
 
This is great info, thanks guys. It seems the Synology is getting popular. Reading some reviews on Amazon and Newegg, people are impressed with the interface. But have they been around long enough to determine if the products can endure 24/7/365.
 
Any beat-up old PC with a SATA port would work. ZFS and you're done. You can share it out via SMB, set up a cron script to rsync it every night, access it remotely, etc. If the motherboard goes belly up, you can pull the drives, do a "zpool import" on a new system, and you're done. It's not as user-friendly as some of the NAS's out there, but it meets your requirements, and depending on the parts you've got, it may be free.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Any beat-up old PC with a SATA port would work. ZFS and you're done. You can share it out via SMB, set up a cron script to rsync it every night, access it remotely, etc. If the motherboard goes belly up, you can pull the drives, do a "zpool import" on a new system, and you're done. It's not as user-friendly as some of the NAS's out there, but it meets your requirements, and depending on the parts you've got, it may be free.
Click to expand...

I hear you. The only single part I don't have is an ATX case smaller than a 4-bay mini tower. My concern with an old PC is heat management. In the area I need it, it is the top corner of a closet with a closed door. Not enough air circulation to expect reasonable uptime from an AMD Athlon 64 (which is what i have the parts for), video card, and 2 or 3 drives running 24/7.

I already have a Dell PowerEdge SC420 P4 Ubuntu/W2K dual boot server with two SATA drives in it and it pukes heat out in the open. I don't imagine it would last long where the heat collects up in a corner.
 
Sorry, but have you consider the heat if it's put into a closet ? Any cooling ?
 
I should mention that in the summer here, the inside of the house can reach 83F/29C in open living areas for 8-10 hours. I presume the closet's upper corner is worse. I have a digital IR thermometer that tells me the wall/ceiling outside of the closet it 26C right now, and the corner where I would put the device (near my switch, modem and pp) is 27.4C.

Heat management is going to be my nemesis.
 
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