nas drive recommendation?

sirg · 08-07-2012, 12:20 PM

Need to get 1 or two of these things going, was just wondering if any brand/features are better than others and what you guys use? Is 1 large better that 2x smaller ones? Want at least 4TB to start with. Would a used one be worth looking at?

ColinPowell · 08-07-2012, 04:13 PM

I, too, am looking at this and would appreciate any advice.

sparkles · 08-07-2012, 10:39 PM

It all comes down to what you want to use it for...

Generally speaking, two disks are more complicated to run (setting up sync jobs / RAID/...), and consume more power than a single disk solution. You do however get the advantage of redundancy, which for certain use cases is a must-have. I am personally a touch skeptical regarding multi drive NAS products, because most manufacturers don't detail how the RAID can be restored in case your system (not the disks) dies.

The questions you need to ask yourself (in no particular order):
1. How many users will be accessing the system (more concurrent users == you want more Cache/RAM/CPU)?
2. What are your future requirements as far as space is concerned (no point in buying something that is at 99% straight away).
3. What kinds of files are you going to be storing on the machine? (big files like movies for streaming clients don't require performance; editing thousands of photos over the network means that you need some serious caching (RAM) / faster disks on the NAS).
4. What "other" features will you use / need? If you just simply need SMB, then you're fine with pretty much anything. If however you're wanting to run a BT Client, Mail Server or whatever, then you will want something with slightly more advanced firmware, and most likely a more powerful CPU.

There are two main ways to go about a home NAS. Either buy something off the shelf or build something yourself. There is a rather large selection of good off the shelf products: I can at least recommend the newer QNAP's, WD Live series and newer Buffalo systems. My advice is to try and go for atom CPU's here- they are much faster than their Marvel equivalents. The Marvel based systems are fine if you're just streaming music or movies to a client, but no fun if you need performance. The Intel/AMD based systems typically provide a much better experience with larger numbers of concurrent users &/ "fancier" features like mail server etc.

The other option of course is to build your own. Here you can either take your old machine from the garage, or get a shiny new mini box with low power cpu (mine is the HP Proliant N40L Microserver). Whack in a couple of HD's for storage and a USB Stick for the OS and you're away. Here you can either go with a relatively simple system like FreeNAS, a standard Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora or splash out on a Windows Server / Home Server License.

Check out http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/ for some pretty good reviews of most current systems out there.

sirg · 09-07-2012, 10:31 AM

Thanks for that. Its main usues will be storing photos (I have aboug 1TB now and want a backup of them. Storing movies/mp3s for streamingand the main reason for wanting a nas drive is I work from home and we are moving to a new larger place that has a separate 220sqm workshop for our business. It will also have a home office inside. I'll work from the workshop during business hours but in the evenings when the wife is working etc I'll work from the home but will want to access a lot of the same files so a network drive just makes sense. I thought about a laptop but I am used to working with dual 24" screens so a laptop just wont cut it for serious work. The most users at any 1 time is 3 - 4 but usually only 1 - 2 so performance isnt a real requirement. Reliability is however.

Is there any downside to running 2 separate boxes, so getting a 4tb now and adding a 6 - 8tb once they drop a bit more in price?

SnoSalmon · 09-07-2012, 09:22 PM

Neatgear make some nice units, go for the Pro range or ReadyNAS range if the budget allows.

In the event of an outage of the enclosure in most cases the data can be accessed simply by plugging one of the working drives into any ol' PC. There's no secret-squirel file system in use with RAID. Should the enclosure fail you have dual drives with a duplicate of data. while you await replacement one drive can be used, the other archived for the few days it takes for a replacement to arrive.

I'm a fan of RAID1, however it needs to be done properly. Not software RAID or the cheap on-board RAID rubbish in a PC.

I have used Netgear NAS boxes for some time, and they are solid and easy to use.

If the budget doesn't stretch to this, look at a DLink enclosure. They work ok.

Sparkles is on the right path here - WD make a nice solution, and QNAP is also very solid.

Make sure you populate with RAID drives. It sounds like you are building something for reliability and work puposes, so don't skimp on the drives. ES drives (Seagate) as a minimum, or WD enterprise/black drives.

sparkles · 10-07-2012, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirg

Is there any downside to running 2 separate boxes, so getting a 4tb now and adding a 6 - 8tb once they drop a bit more in price?

There's really only benefits there if you want to be able to mirror data between the devices. More redundancy is always a good thing in storage

I didn't mention it in my earlier post, but RAID is not a backup. There's a saying amongst some work colleagues of mine that "any data not being backed up is data that you don't want". Ignore this advice at your own peril.

Two systems would also allow you to get a cheaper/slower system in the future and simply use the second one more as the film device, as from what you describe I can see you needing a slightly gruntier device right now.

szukalski · 11-07-2012, 01:12 AM

Definitely agree with the backup statement. There is a statement saying that anything that is not in three locations cannot be relied on to be accurate. Whilst true, it may be going a bit too far for the average user (all depends on how much you value your data).

I don't know about the recommendation against software RAID though. Unless you're buying an expensive RAID controller with write cache enabled then you are basically doing software RAID. Nothing wrong with it, just don't fool yourself.

Personally, I think one of the best solutions is to build your own. For the price of an empty NAS you can normally build a home-brew solution with a lot more flexibility albeit less attractive in the home.

My personal recommendation for speed and safety.. OpenSolaris running an implementation of ZFS and regular backups to either an external hdd (easily scriptable and no hands-on) or optical media (meh, changing discs). Or you go with Linux and run md-raid.

In short, JBOD on software raid, or buy yourself a raid controller with a write cache. With the cpu power these days you won't lose anything by running software raid and it is much easier to recover from damaged hardware.

I used to run Linux mdadm with RAID5 and RAID1 arrays, RAID5 is fine for media and didn't consume as many disks as RAID1.

jeremywrx · 17-12-2012, 08:08 PM

Pretty happy with my WD Live Duo NAS. Smartphone apps an accessible from anywhere.