NAS box recommendations?

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Impulse

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I'm a total noob on the subject and I'm just now starting to do some research on it, so forgive me if it's a common question, but I'm trying to help a friend out; figured I'd see what everyone here recommends...

The few requirements she has are that it A) work w/Mac OS and B) that it do RAID 1... It's being set up in a small office where they collaborate on projects a lot and they want to use it as their main file repository, so w/o RAID there'd be no/few backups of some of the stuff in there were a drive to fail. Price and ease-of-use (or setup) would probably be the next highest priorities.
 
Definitely concur with everyone else here: RAID is backup. Some form of external hard drive, off site NAS/External drive, DVD, or online storage are backup, not a RAID setup. RAID only guarantees uptime.

A few questions:
- How much storage do they need?
- How much money can they allocate to this NAS?
 
Dlink DNS323. Is pretty good. Its cheap its fast and its good enough for most users.
 
Blue Fox said:
Since no one else has said it yet, RAID isn't backup...
Click to expand...

I realize it's not suitable as a singular form of backup, but right now they have no backup system whatsoever in place... Other than copying all projects to an external drive once a year (and given their work cycle that's pretty worthless imo), RAID within the NAS box would at 'least save them from a disaster to one of the drives while in the middle of work, which is probably most critical. Once the NAS box is in place I would encourage them to actually backup the NAS box to an external drive once a week or once a month at 'least, or something...

They still need the NAS box regardless to serve as a file repository for the office, it's usually two to four people working on Adobe apps and sharing tasks on different files.

As for storage space... Let's say 1TB would do for now. Old stuff can always be off-loaded anyway. Was hoping to find 'em something in the $200-400 range, if that's not suitable for what they're looking for then I'm all ears as to how much would be needed. Like I said, nothing fancy's necessary, just that it play nice w/Mac OS and well, having RAID within the box would be nice as it adds at 'least one layer of insurance to their work. If it adds too much to the cost then I'll just look into simpler RAID-less NAS boxes and I'll have to ensure they back it up on a nightly basis.

sethk said:
I echo the RAID is not backup sentiment. Assuming you still want a NAS, here's a site that has in-depth reviews and covers almost all the available options:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link and suggestions so far, I'm definitely gonna dive into that one later and read a lot of the reviews.
 
a DNS 323 will run you about 300 bucks with 2 1 TB drives. You can map the drives as well. For this price you can't go wrong imho.
 
I built a FreeNAS system out of an old Dell PC (hard drive died), a $10 1GB MicroSD card & USB adapter, and storage drive(s) of choice. Since it's based on standard PC hardware, your options are pretty much limitless, and a good system can end up being a lot cheaper and/or better than a proprietary setup.

And once again, RAID is not backup. It's no-downtime while you replace a failed drive. But you're still 100% screwed if a power surge takes out both drives, or the building burns down, or the files get corrupted (due to something other than drive failure), or ...
 
I'm aware of that, I stated already that I would encourage them to do weekly backups (at the very 'least) from the NAS box to one of the systems in the office/home, and I'd probably help her schedule it or whatever. If they're gonna get a NAS box I still think it's worthwhile for it to have RAID though, since they're using it as the repository for work they're collaborating on... It's a small design business operating out of their home, she's my cousin and she has one or two assistants plus her husband, all working on the same stuff at different times.

If I lived anywhere near them I'd probably consider something like FreeNAS (which I was already aware of) but the technical know-how to set up something like that is beyond them, and they wouldn't even have the cheap parts available to cobble a box together or the time/desire to find those parts anywhere... And I'm not shipping them a ready-made-system for NAS use from Puerto Rico to Denver even if I do have the spare parts to put it together here. :p

So yeah, any other actual recommendations for a NAS box w/RAID? I noticed the D-link model mentioned above is a 2 or 3 year old model, even though the reviews were pretty favorable... I haven't had time to dive into the previously linked site and go over a few dozen of the reviews but has nothing better or easier to set up come out since? I seemed to notice a lot of complains about re-building an array or adding drives to the box not being very intuitive.

Also, do most NAS boxes usually partition the drives with stuff like EXT (as that D-link does) or are there any that use something more conventional like NTFS or whatever? 'Cuz if they can't easily replace a drive or salvage a drive when one fails in order to keep working then it kinda defeats the whole purpose of RAID.
 
While what you guys say is true about RAID and backup, my NAS box has served me well. Yesterday, my array became degraded because one of the drives had a pending sector count that was too high. Immediately, I went out and bought a drive today, and my RAID is now rebuilding. This is the exact reason why I built a RAID setup (drive warnings / failures) and in doing so, I have probably saved 500 GB of data. So, here's a heartwarming story about how RAID made my day. :)

There are many different forms of backup, depending on the level of protection and event independence you want. RAID is not the ultimate solution, not is it a great solution, but it is more or less a half-decent solution depending on the intended user of the RAID setup and how it is used.
 
RAID is not backup. All it takes is one bad write command from your OS, and it propagates to both drives and you're whole array goes up in smoke.
 
InorganicMatter said:
RAID is not backup. All it takes is one bad write command from your OS, and it propagates to both drives and you're whole array goes up in smoke.
Click to expand...

If you had read the thread first you'd have seen he's figured that out already. ;)

I second the FreeNAS idea. Cheap and easy to set up. I have an old 500 MHz Athlon system with a gigabit ethernet card and a PCI SATA card, it handles RAID 5 fine. An Intel Atom based system would be a good cheap solution if you can't salvage an old computer from somebody.
 
Impulse said:
I'm aware of that, I stated already that I would encourage them to do weekly backups (at the very 'least) from the NAS box to one of the systems in the office/home, and I'd probably help her schedule it or whatever. If they're gonna get a NAS box I still think it's worthwhile for it to have RAID though, since they're using it as the repository for work they're collaborating on... It's a small design business operating out of their home, she's my cousin and she has one or two assistants plus her husband, all working on the same stuff at different times.

If I lived anywhere near them I'd probably consider something like FreeNAS (which I was already aware of) but the technical know-how to set up something like that is beyond them, and they wouldn't even have the cheap parts available to cobble a box together or the time/desire to find those parts anywhere... And I'm not shipping them a ready-made-system for NAS use from Puerto Rico to Denver even if I do have the spare parts to put it together here. :p

So yeah, any other actual recommendations for a NAS box w/RAID? I noticed the D-link model mentioned above is a 2 or 3 year old model, even though the reviews were pretty favorable... I haven't had time to dive into the previously linked site and go over a few dozen of the reviews but has nothing better or easier to set up come out since? I seemed to notice a lot of complains about re-building an array or adding drives to the box not being very intuitive.

Also, do most NAS boxes usually partition the drives with stuff like EXT (as that D-link does) or are there any that use something more conventional like NTFS or whatever? 'Cuz if they can't easily replace a drive or salvage a drive when one fails in order to keep working then it kinda defeats the whole purpose of RAID.
Click to expand...

Most NASes are just a web interface on top of a stripped down Linux running mdadm, and therefore use common Linux file systems like EXT3. Some support additional file systems like ZFS and XFS.
 
Yeah, that's what I've noticed as I started to read a bit more reviews...

DeathFromBelow said:
If you had read the thread first you'd have seen he's figured that out already.

I second the FreeNAS idea. Cheap and easy to set up. I have an old 500 MHz Athlon system with a gigabit ethernet card and a PCI SATA card, it handles RAID 5 fine. An Intel Atom based system would be a good cheap solution if you can't salvage an old computer from somebody.
Click to expand...

If you read my last post you'd see I also posted some reasons why a FreeNAS solution just isn't viable either... :p If it were for me that's what I'd do, definitely, but it's not... And it'll be too complicated and/or too much of a hassle for the users in this scenario.

Again though, I'd love to hear some other actual NAS box recommendations... That's what I was hoping for w/the thread, not a discussion on RAID, etc. :eek: (though the input is appreciated nonetheless)
 
Impulse said:
If you read my last post you'd see I also posted some reasons why a FreeNAS solution just isn't viable either... :p If it were for me that's what I'd do, definitely, but it's not... And it'll be too complicated and/or too much of a hassle for the users in this scenario.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I missed the part about you not living near them.
 
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