In Need of a NAS

[magibeg]

Basically I've started to accumulate fairly large amounts of data, pair that up with multiple PC's and things have kind of become a mess. I'm pretty new to the whole NAS thing but I do want to say that I really want this to be a very minimalist approach so simply building a mATX or ITX computer is not really what I had in mind.

It'll be mostly for holding movies, lossless music and various other media files. Speed isn't a huge deal but still nice to have of course because i'd like to do some streaming off it (I imagine something like 20MB/s should be fast enough). I'm still not sure if I should go with a 4 drive solution or just a 2 drive. I'd like to think I could get away with 3TB with redundancy but that might not be the case in 5 years lol.

For cost I guess anywhere from $200 to $400 plus the cost of hard drives of course.

I was looking at a couple from QNAP and Synology and they seem somewhat pricey.

So any information or advice would be wonderful.

[AthlonX2]

Check thecus. N2800 for dual bay , n5550 otherwise

[Kreij]

Given any thought to backing up the NAS? It's part of the equation.

[magibeg]

Originally Posted by Kreij

Given any thought to backing up the NAS? It's part of the equation.

Well i figured with a dual drive solution i'd run raid 1, and with a 4 drive i'd do raid 5. But I haven't thought about backing up the entire NAS somewhere else.

[cdawall]

I still use my Seagate 2TB home NAS.

[magibeg]

Ok so ones i was looking at:


Seagate STAR401 Black Armor 400
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...7446&CatId=207

Synology Disk Station DS213
http://www.computervalley.ca/ds213/s...ghz-cpu-retail

Thecus N5550 5BAY
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=74067

Synology Disk Station DS413
http://www.computervalley.ca/ds413/s...aii-usb-retail


Some of them are looking a little bit pricey in the $500+ dollar range before drives. But I guess that's the cost to play the game.

[Morrison5891]

I own two of these: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...8379&CatId=136

I store all my blu ray's on these drives and stream to multiple tv's around the house. Great speed and stable drives!

[magibeg]

Any other advice or pointers?

Right now i'm leaning towards the Synology Disk Station DS413 with Western Digital Red 3TB HD's. Going to cost a little over 1K total for the 4 drives with the NAS.

[TheLostSwede]

Just keep in mind that most NASes won't transcode video for you, so make sure that's not needed if you're going to be streaming your content to say iOS devices for example.
If you need transcoding, and it won't even be real time, an Atom powered NAS would be the minimum you'd need.
Apparently, at least according to some reviews, the DS-413 only uses one of its two CPU cores, which suggests you're getting less than what you're paying for http://www.amazon.com/review/R2GFBQ5...41966&store=pc

[magibeg]

Originally Posted by TheLostSwede

Just keep in mind that most NASes won't transcode video for you, so make sure that's not needed if you're going to be streaming your content to say iOS devices for example.
If you need transcoding, and it won't even be real time, an Atom powered NAS would be the minimum you'd need.
Apparently, at least according to some reviews, the DS-413 only uses one of its two CPU cores, which suggests you're getting less than what you're paying for http://www.amazon.com/review/R2GFBQ5...41966&store=pc

Well, I don't have any iOS computers or devices at the moment and I shouldn't have to transcode any video, which is good because that would really really spike up the price.

That is weird about the only using 1CPU though, however when i look at actual benchmarks for it, it MUST be using more than the single core otherwise it wouldn't be getting the transfer speeds it gets. Also feel free to make more NAS suggestions. Nothing is set in stone yet.

[Kreij]

Originally Posted by magibeg

Well i figured with a dual drive solution i'd run raid 1, and with a 4 drive i'd do raid 5. But I haven't thought about backing up the entire NAS somewhere else.

As you know, RAID is a redundancy solution to mitigate problems from hardware failure and is not a backup solution. In RAID1, if one drive gets corrupted so does the other. RAID 5 is not without its own problems either. If the data is important to you, you WILL want a backup solution of some sort.

[magibeg]

Originally Posted by Kreij

As you know, RAID is a redundancy solution to mitigate problems from hardware failure and is not a backup solution. In RAID1, if one drive gets corrupted so does the other. RAID 5 is not without its own problems either. If the data is important to you, you WILL want a backup solution of some sort.

Well, unless i'm looking at it wrong, with RAID 5 I should have redundancy as long as only 1 drive fails. If 2 drives fail at the same time then I lose all my data.

Given I'm also getting more reliable drives in it (the Western Digital Reds) I'm hoping that should be enough. It wouldn't be a disaster if I lost my data but it would certainly be pretty terrible.

If I wanted more redundancy it would definitely bump me up a few price points and I'm not sure if i'd be willing to spend into the $1300+ range for it.

[kciaccio1]

Do you have an old computer? I almost went the route you are thinking of going.

That was two years ago, but fortunately I ran into a different solution.

http://lime-technology.com/download

Now 10 drives and 17tb later I am glad I did. If you plan on storing movies the solutions you are looking at will run out very quickly.

My unraid server can handle a total of 23 drives before having to expand to another tower.

The power requirements are very low so an old computer works just fine. There is a free version of 3 drives, 1 parity and 2 data drives if you would like to try it out.

103.06 - Feature Introduction - unRAID - YouTube

It is a headless server you log in from your regular computer and the screen looks this.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Flash]

Bought the DS413j. It's price range is between 400 and 350. 4 bays, and it has enough specs for single user.

I looked into Thecus, but it looksl ike they have reliability problems, firmware corrupting or dropping the array, etc. They said they fixed it, but my gut feeling is to trust synology more. My friend has a synology too and its going strong for 5 years.

As for complete backup, I think what most people here say, is you would need a 2nd NAS, and backup regularly your first NAS to the second. And that 2nd NAS should be in another location (so the backup would happen over the internet). Which could be a slight problem if you don't have unlimited internet :/

[magibeg]

Originally Posted by kciaccio1

Do you have an old computer? I almost went the route you are thinking of going.

That was two years ago, but fortunately I ran into a different solution.

http://lime-technology.com/download

Now 10 drives and 17tb later I am glad I did. If you plan on storing movies the solutions you are looking at will run out very quickly.

My unraid server can handle a total of 23 drives before having to expand to another tower.

The power requirements are very low so an old computer works just fine. There is a free version of 3 drives, 1 parity and 2 data drives if you would like to try it out.

103.06 - Feature Introduction - unRAID - YouTube

It is a headless server you log in from your regular computer and the screen looks this.

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/9590/25063745.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I don't think the miss' would like having another tower around the house lol.

I thought about just doing the old computer route or putting together my own little atom build but i really want something that is very small with power usage below 40 watts at full load.

To be honest I could probably get by with a 2 bay solution but I really wanted a somewhat safe backup of my data and that extra space because I know i'll end up using it.


All that is really quite impressive though!

[Flash]

Originally Posted by kciaccio1

Do you have an old computer? I almost went the route you are thinking of going.

That was two years ago, but fortunately I ran into a different solution.

http://lime-technology.com/download

Now 10 drives and 17tb later I am glad I did. If you plan on storing movies the solutions you are looking at will run out very quickly.

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but this is actually interesting...

So you loggin via the browser like a NAS right? And then just transfer files via the windows network and windows explorer?

I've seen they have 12bay and 15bay towers, tho their registration key can handle up to 21. Would you need to buy your own tower?

Also, what kind of redundancy does unRAID support? In the video they talked about only 1 redundancy drive, and that is totally un-appropriate for 12 or 15 drives. It should have at least 2 or 3 redundancy drives.

[magibeg]

Originally Posted by Flash

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but this is actually interesting...

So you loggin via the browser like a NAS right? And then just transfer files via the windows network and windows explorer?

I've seen they have 12bay and 15bay towers, tho their registration key can handle up to 21. Would you need to buy your own tower?

Also, what kind of redundancy does unRAID support? In the video they talked about only 1 redundancy drive, and that is totally un-appropriate for 12 or 15 drives. It should have at least 2 or 3 redundancy drives.

No need to apologize, I'm treating this whole thing as a learning experience.



So if i wanted to build my own NAS (and keep it low power) would I have to build an atom system then on (I think it's ITX) standard?

[Kreij]

Originally Posted by magibeg

Well, unless i'm looking at it wrong, with RAID 5 I should have redundancy as long as only 1 drive fails. If 2 drives fail at the same time then I lose all my data.

This is true. It's also true with RAID1.
RAID5 gives you more space because you have more drives.
Neither of these are any protection against data corruption though.

Given I'm also getting more reliable drives in it (the Western Digital Reds) I'm hoping that should be enough. It wouldn't be a disaster if I lost my data but it would certainly be pretty terrible.

If I felt that losing my data would be "pretty terrible", I'd make sure to have a backup solution.

If I wanted more redundancy it would definitely bump me up a few price points and I'm not sure if i'd be willing to spend into the $1300+ range for it.

Not necessarily. If you have 2x3TB drives in a NAS in RAID1 (total usable space of 3TB), you could simply buy an external 3TB drive (USB or whatever) and back up the NAS to it.
You could leave it off and only fire it up when you wanted to back-up the NAS, so it would be using very little power over a given time period.

It's of course up to you Magibeg, but it's better to spend a bit more and have some piece of mind than to be ripping your hair out in the event the NAS fails.

Just my 2 cents.

[Hybrid_theory]

Is data corruption really that common? especially for still files. could see it happening in a database, but media, steam backups, etc? I've yet to see it when keeping my stuff on an external drive/NAS.

In the event the NAS itself fails, basically you'd have to buy an identical one to replace it. granted with a mirror, you can mount the drive anywhere and it will have the data for you.

[Kreij]

No, corruption is not that common although it does happen.
I have 2x320GB drives in RAID0 on my main rig and back it up to a NAS that is 2x320GB in RAID0.
I only back up what I care about and since it resides on both system either could fail and I would still have my data.

If the NAS fails there is the possibility of it corrupting the drives, which would suck if you have no back up.

Remember gents, I'm an IT Manager so backups are high on my list of things to absolutely have.

[Hybrid_theory]

Originally Posted by Kreij

No, corruption is not that common although it does happen.
I have 2x320GB drives in RAID0 on my main rig and back it up to a NAS that is 2x320GB in RAID0.
I only back up what I care about and since it resides on both system either could fail and I would still have my data.

If the NAS fails there is the possibility of it corrupting the drives, which would suck if you have no back up.

Remember gents, I'm an IT Manager so backups are high on my list of things to absolutely have.

I manage backups at work myself. But for myself, its hard to justify the cost. I have a mix of media, personal data and steam games that adds to a little over 3tb on my NAS. I spent $960 on the NAS with 4 drives just a couple months back. I could get an external 3 or 4tb drive for a reasonable price and copy that stuff. but if my data gets bigger than that, would effecitively need another nas or USB storage unit to hold it. just a fair bit of money to spend on these small what-if scenarios.

its not like enterprise usage scenarios where theyre being constantly hammered by I/O requests. so chance of corruption/failure is less. but its always what-if

[magibeg]

Alright so at this point in time given the information I have I'm going to go with the following:

Western Digital Red hard drives x4

The synology DS413


Any other last minute information would be fantastic

[Kreij]

So 4 drives in RAID5 or are you going to use something like RAID10 (RAID1+0) or RAID6?

[magibeg]

Originally Posted by Kreij

So 4 drives in RAID5 or are you going to use something like RAID10 (RAID1+0) or RAID6?

I was planning on doing RAID5. In the hopes I don't have 2 drives fail at the same time.

[Kreij]

RAID6 will rebuild with two failed drives, but you also lose more available storage capacity (50%) due to it doing double parity information.It's similar to RAID1+0 with 4 drives, but is better if you have more.
I think you should be good with a RAID5 setup as it will give you 9TB if you use 4x3TB drives.

There is so much data on the likelihood of RAID failures that it makes your head spin. Just go with what you are comfortable with
(and can afford) and you can always modify your setup in the near future if you feel the need.

With 9+TBs of data backing the data up to somewhere else will definitely add expense. I suggest going with the lowest common denominator and using floppies. (just kidding)