NAS usage tips and RAID level

[sram]

This is related to this:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1794164&highlight=

I ended up buying the Synology DS1512+ from a nice member here(peanuthead). I'm about to open the box and install it very soon. The user guide is quite long, and I can see that I can use several levels of RAID as expected.

My main goal of acquiring this NAS was to centralize my storage and tolerate drive faults, and protect data against loss(Automated backups).

I currently have three 3TB identical seagate drives. What I plan to do is to put all three drives into the NAS and use them in RAID 5 configuration, and probably call it a day. But, here is a little question:

I completely understand RAID levels, 0 , 1, and 1+0 or 10, but I'm not really sure about RAID 5. RAID 5 will basically give me 2/3 of the capacity and 1 disk fault tolerance.....is that it? So, I won't lose half the capacity like in RAID1, but I can still tolerate 1 fault disk like in RAID1.....right? It has to do with the parity disk or whatever......


Am I almost in the right track here?

And any other tips with this nice device from synology(from owners possibly), or any other general NAS usage tips? And how would you back up your entire NAS ?

Thanks and sorry for being a noob.

 

[sram]

Oh.....Sounds like i'm not lucky with this post........no tips?

If somebody can spare some time, I'd like to know if there is a way to back very important files to an online cloud automatically. I think this synology model allows it.

Thanks.

 

[SirMaster]

Yes you get 2/3 of the space with 3 disks. To be more accurate with RAID 5 you get usable space equal to the number of disks you have minus 1. But it's not technically a "parity disk". In RAID 5, the parity data is spread across all disks. In RAID 4 (which nobody uses) all the parity data would be on one disk like you were imagining.

To back up all the data on the NAS you would typically need another NAS or other server which equal or greater space. Or less space if you are just backing up some things.

You could also do cloud backups. A really affordable one that works well on the 1512+ is CrashPlan.

See here for instructions on how to install:
http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2012/01/30/crashplan-syno-package/

You can get a free 30-day trial too and then if you like it and it's working well then you can continue it's use for as low as $4 a month for unlimited space with automatic file versioning and archiving and everything.

 

[sram]

Yes you get 2/3 of the space with 3 disks. To be more accurate with RAID 5 you get usable space equal to the number of disks you have minus 1. But it's not technically a "parity disk". In RAID 5, the parity data is spread across all disks. In RAID 4 (which nobody uses) all the parity data would be on one disk like you were imagining.

To back up all the data on the NAS you would typically need another NAS or other server which equal or greater space. Or less space if you are just backing up some things.

You could also do cloud backups. A really affordable one that works well on the 1512+ is CrashPlan.

See here for instructions on how to install:
http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2012/01/30/crashplan-syno-package/

You can get a free 30-day trial too and then if you like it and it's working well then you can continue it's use for as low as $4 a month for unlimited space with automatic file versioning and archiving and everything.

Is there a free alternative? specially that the files I want to back up to the cloud won't exceed 50 GB ? The very important files...

 

[SirMaster]

Don't really know a free storage that offers 50GB that also integrates with Synology.

Your best bet is probably to use Amazon Glacier which Synology does have a package for. That's $0.01 per GB per month, so 50c per month for 50GB.