NAS recommendations

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sram

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm in the process of centralization my storage place at home. My network is growing, so I feel a central location for all storage needs is a necessity, so that any user can access info whichever PC or machine he uses, and so that all users know where to always save files and data.

I need to have some redundancy, so my NAS will need to have a RAID capability.

It is ironic because I just lost a 3TB data drive because of a blackout that occurred during a stormy rainy week. This drive or the storm couldn't wait till I finish my NAS solution. What saved me is that I always keep my super important data folder synced with another folder in another data drive using the very nice program allwaysync. But, I still lost data that has been gathered and made since 2012. The data can be reconstructed though because most of it is video files(Anime and movies). I'm sending the drive to a data recovery company and will see if they can recover me any data(The drive spins but it doesn't appear in windows or disk management).

I calculated and summed up all data I have in all machines, and I can say that it is not going to be much more than 3.5TB. Putting possible growth into consideration, a 6TB will be reasonable for me.

Also, here is a question: is having a dedicated NAS and hooking it to the main router a necessity really? Because one could make a RAID array in one of his machines and share it among all machines and treat it as the only storage users can save to....right???
You know what? I just thought of this question as i'm writing this and now I think It is just not necessary. Just buy two 4TB drives and put them in RAID1 in your main machine and call it a day :rolleyes:


Anyways, what NAS would you guys recommend me? Are there ones which you can add drives to later to increase storage?
 
sram said:
Also, here is a question: is having a dedicated NAS and hooking it to the main router a necessity really? Because one could make a RAID array in one of his machines and share it among all machines and treat it as the only storage users can save to....right???
You know what? I just thought of this question as i'm writing this and now I think It is just not necessary. Just buy two 4TB drives and put them in RAID1 in your main machine and call it a day :rolleyes:
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Yes it is necessary since you could be doing things on your main rig that may impact the storage and sharing performance as well as availability and safety of the shared folders/drives/data. Especially if you're the type to overclock. In adddition, for the data that's only coming from your main rig, that kind of setup doesn't count as a backup since the data are all located on the same PC. Backup means a separate device or source for the data storage (i.e NAS, file server, external hard drive, cloud backup, etc)
sram said:
Anyways, what NAS would you guys recommend me? Are there ones which you can add drives to later to increase storage?
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Well, do you want a prebuilt NAS or a DIY NAS? What's your max budget for this NAS including the hard drives?
 
Synology. Well worth the cost over building your own. I could've easily built my own, but I decided to give it a try. Glad I did. Rock solid, auto backups to Crashplan every night and to local USB, Download station is nice to keep all torrents and usent on there so you don't need your PC on 24/7, the remote apps for Android and IOS are great.

I've never had an issue or any data loss issues in the 2 years of having it. I currently have an uptime of 6 months and it'd be longer but that was due to an upgrade.

Can't say enough good things about them.
 
/usr/home said:
Synology. Well worth the cost over building your own. I could've easily built my own, but I decided to give it a try. Glad I did. Rock solid, auto backups to Crashplan every night and to local USB, Download station is nice to keep all torrents and usent on there so you don't need your PC on 24/7, the remote apps for Android and IOS are great.

I've never had an issue or any data loss issues in the 2 years of having it. I currently have an uptime of 6 months and it'd be longer but that was due to an upgrade.

Can't say enough good things about them.
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I figured one would say synology, since they are mentioned in storagereview leaderboard:
http://www.storagereview.com/best_drives

But which model do you have? Or is it like all their models have the specs you talked about?

Thanks to everybody who contributed here.
 
The DS1513+ mentioned is storagereview.com is very nice, but I didn't think it is as expensive as 850 USD. If a decent NAS can be had for say 300 $ with all the nice features, then that will be very nice. If not, then I guess it is fine. Data can be worth much more than 850 dollars.

Sorry I didn't talk about my budget before.
 
Prebuild NAS are way too overpriced for a under powered CPU and minuscule RAM. 2x4TB in your existing rig is just fine. Use these drives for static data and create a backup of your important data on an external drive. RAID1 won't prevent data lost, but it will reduce the chance of you suffering from a single disk failure. As your data needs grow, you can add more disk to your rig to increase storage (or get larger disk). When you outgrow your rig, you can look at a dedicated NAS device. Start planning early as your needs (and to a lesser extent budget) will determine if it is better for you to build or buy.
 
ezno_matrix said:
Prebuild NAS are way too overpriced for a under powered CPU and minuscule RAM. 2x4TB in your existing rig is just fine. Use these drives for static data and create a backup of your important data on an external drive. RAID1 won't prevent data lost, but it will reduce the chance of you suffering from a single disk failure. As your data needs grow, you can add more disk to your rig to increase storage (or get larger disk). When you outgrow your rig, you can look at a dedicated NAS device. Start planning early as your needs (and to a lesser extent budget) will determine if it is better for you to build or buy.
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I agree with this.
 
/usr/home said:
Synology. Well worth the cost over building your own. I could've easily built my own, but I decided to give it a try. Glad I did. Rock solid, auto backups to Crashplan every night and to local USB, Download station is nice to keep all torrents and usent on there so you don't need your PC on 24/7, the remote apps for Android and IOS are great.

I've never had an issue or any data loss issues in the 2 years of having it. I currently have an uptime of 6 months and it'd be longer but that was due to an upgrade.

Can't say enough good things about them.
Click to expand...

What he said..
 
ezno_matrix said:
Prebuild NAS are way too overpriced for a under powered CPU and minuscule RAM. 2x4TB in your existing rig is just fine. Use these drives for static data and create a backup of your important data on an external drive. RAID1 won't prevent data lost, but it will reduce the chance of you suffering from a single disk failure. As your data needs grow, you can add more disk to your rig to increase storage (or get larger disk). When you outgrow your rig, you can look at a dedicated NAS device. Start planning early as your needs (and to a lesser extent budget) will determine if it is better for you to build or buy.
Click to expand...

/usr/home said:
Synology. Well worth the cost over building your own. I could've easily built my own, but I decided to give it a try. Glad I did. Rock solid, auto backups to Crashplan every night and to local USB, Download station is nice to keep all torrents and usent on there so you don't need your PC on 24/7, the remote apps for Android and IOS are great.

I've never had an issue or any data loss issues in the 2 years of having it. I currently have an uptime of 6 months and it'd be longer but that was due to an upgrade.

Can't say enough good things about them.
Click to expand...

Moogoos said:
What he said..
Click to expand...

I'm getting some kind of different/conflicting opinion here. I'm kinda of leaning toward the synology solution. Maybe just for the heck of it, or maybe just to try a new thing.


That aside, how do you guys do backups?
In one of my setups at work, what I do is have allwaysync copy the contents of the main storage to another disk/storage space regularly(every 1, 2, ........etc hours) and also at the end of each week, the entire contents of the main storage is copied to a large external data drive that is kept somewhere else. That worked, and no single file was lost. But i'm sure they are better ways. What do you do for your precious data at home?
 
A decent backup keeps unchanging copies of the data in different location so the work solution is fine. I personally keep all data on my NAS with the important stuff copied on multiple external storage. I also do periodic OS dumps (tar.gz files) from all devices to the NAS. Roaming devices automatically syncs to the NAS as soon as they hit my network.
 
sram said:
I'm getting some kind of different/conflicting opinion here. I'm kinda of leaning toward the synology solution. Maybe just for the heck of it, or maybe just to try a new thing.
Click to expand...
You wonb't find a major consensus here on file storage besides "Always do a backup!" I recommend that you try to weigh the pros and cons of each route to see which one you might want to take. However, I actually recommend either the DIY or Synology depending on whether you're putting the priority on cost-to-performance or ease of use.
sram said:
That aside, how do you guys do backups?
In one of my setups at work, what I do is have allwaysync copy the contents of the main storage to another disk/storage space regularly(every 1, 2, ........etc hours) and also at the end of each week, the entire contents of the main storage is copied to a large external data drive that is kept somewhere else. That worked, and no single file was lost. But i'm sure they are better ways. What do you do for your precious data at home?
Click to expand...

Something similar: Weekly backups to my file server. For more critical data, I make sure I have up-to-date copies on the main source, server, and external.
 
Another +1 for the synology. I have the 413 with 3 - 3TB drives in and have 8 months uptime right now with no issues, going to be adding my 4th drive here at Chritmas. Do back ups from multiple computers and stream media to multiple TV's and devices and can remote in from the phone if I'm away to download itms to/back up the phone data.

Great solution and reasonably priced. I'm sure I could have gotten more bang for the buck with my money to pre-build but the Synology OS is nice and easy to work with right away.
 
But i'm sure they are better ways. What do you do for your precious data at home?
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A lot of people here are adept from ZFS file system. A lot use OpenIndianna or OpenSolaris, even FreeNAS to backup their data with this file system. ZFS continually calculate checksum of data, search for silent data corruption, do deduplication, snapshots, etc... This is a very, very nice file system and assuredly the most secure of all file systems. But it comes at a price : it needs really good hardware such like Xeon CPU, ECC RAM, and SSDs for read/write cache. The setup can be pricey. Remember the ZFS is more enterprise-oriented too.

Synology is a consumer grade product. It runs under EXT4 file system, so it doesn't have any of the ZFS improvement, but is enough lightweight to run on a single Atom. The DSM is wonderful, and the solution is extremely fast to deploy. Some Synology NAS are virtualization capable too.
 
I use a homebuilt NAS with Unraid.

Pre-builts are ridiculously expensive. My entire setup cost me what a good Pre-built would have cost me.
 
been using Qnap and Synology for a few years, theyve never gave me any issues and very similar
 
I concur, also been is using Qnap and Synology for years, never had a problem. Lets not bash homebuilt though, its just not everyone's cup of tea. If you are not looking to spend a lot of time on building, setup etc, and just want a system you can unpack, through some drives into and turn on, prebuilt is the way to go, but I see the benefits to homebuilt too.
 
I say pre built since they are a lot easier to manage.
but I am not the best on this stuff.
 
SheHateMe said:
I use a homebuilt NAS with Unraid.

Pre-builts are ridiculously expensive. My entire setup cost me what a good Pre-built would have cost me.
Click to expand...

Uh. If you spent the same on your home setup as you would have spent on a pre-built, how can the pre-built be ridiculously expensive?

Can you give us the specifics of your build, specs and costs (at the time).

Thanks.
 
I think he was saying that the cost with drives cost him the price of only the pre-built NAS would have cost.

But his setup certainly took him longer to setup than a Synology for the same/equivalent features a Synology offers.
 
Or get crazy and use this project with old hardware:

http://xpenology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1700

Been using it as a secondary to my Synology 412+ and it works extremely well so far. Rock solid. Risk of course is it isn't supported but many have had success with it.

Screen_Shot_2013_12_08_at_12_01_11_PM.png
 
Synology is nice but if your budget is constrained I wouldn't go that route. Clearly your current situation is lacking, you need real backups, online and offline, and UPS to protect your drives. You don't have enough data to warrant any fancy build so a cheap regular PC should be enough for the actual NAS, if you feel later that it's lacking you didn't spend much on it and can change without a second thought.
 
After pricing it out, I slightly regret my Synology. I mean I absolutely love it and it has been awesome and super easy to use, but the DS413 was $500(dual core ARM w/ 1gig of ram). For about $400 I can get an AMD quadcore with 8gigs of ram that's way more powerful and versatile than my DS. Going to do just that, and then sell my DS413 for $400 and be happy.

The form factor and plug in and go and the low power usage of the synology makes it appealing, but I've been wanting to do more, so to each their own I spose.
 
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