Which NAS storage?

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone has any info or knowledge on NAS storage? Recently my laptop died, but thankfully I had everything backed up, but now I'm really trying to get a good backup. So I'm going to get some kind of NAS drive to use, I plan on having the NAS drive at my house, my laptop and then my DropBox that has just the latest version on it, that way even if my house burns down or something it won't be an issue, I will also have my portable HDD at my mums house with some versions on it. That way even if something happens to one of those locations I'll have all my stuff backed up.

But that's not why I'm posting, I've been looking at NAS drives and have decided to go with a dual bay one with support for RAID 1, so that theirs some security with my NAS box as that will store backup files. The boxes I've been looking at are as follows:

D-Link DNS-320L Sharecenter, this one is really cheap. People on the internet say its slow, but then it has good reviews? It says it can only operate up to 40 degrees Celsius, and it can get hotter than that here so maybe its no good.

Lenovo Iomega IX2, a little more expensive, it looks nicer. Lenovo usually makes high quality products and hopefully this is no different. The rest I don't know, seems to have a nice processor but 256mb of ram might be low(Or is compared to some i've seen)

Netgear ReadyNAS 102, again more expensive, but this one has more ram and seems to have good features. People are giving it good reviews but they also say that it crashes all the time.

Synology DS214se, this is the cheapest Synology offering it seems. They have a good reputation. the specs are not as good as the others though. The max temp of over 35 degrees would mean its likely that it will go over this in summer, not sure if its a issue though.

Synology DS213J, this seems to be the Synology with comparable specs to the Lenovo, D-Link and Netgear ones, but its much more expensive, though if they are way better or more reliable I'm willing to put that investment in. The max temp is again only 35 degrees and its likely that in summer it will get over that for at least a week or so.

All those boxes seem to have negatives and positives, I don't know enough about NAS to make a decision. I thought since lots of people here do backups someone could share some info. I wont run them off of this I'll just make backups so write performance doesn't need to be immaculate. I'd consider using the storage for media as well, but I'd probably rather connect my USB portable HDD to the NAS and use that, just to keep the NAS with only vital information to avoid any likelihood of corruption or something.

As for HDD I'm looking at using dual WD Red 2TB HDD in RAID 1, though I might use like WD Red 1TB or WD Red 4TB depending on the total cost. Thats a SATA 3 drive, and I think the Synology ones are the only ones that support SATA 3, but its backwards compatible(?)

 

Seems out of your price range but I like my Drobo:
*Battery backup - lose power and it will finish writing data and shutdown
*Mix and Match Harddrives Sizes
*SSD cache - Uses an internal SSD to speed up read/writes which it later transfers out to the slower drives.
*Add/Remove Harddrives on the fly

Maybe overkill for your needs, but check out the video if interested:
http://www.drobo.com/how-it-works/

 

What happens if a normal NAS gets its power cut? It wouldn't ruin the HDD or anything yeah? And yeah, I couldn't justify that price.

 

I've been looking into actually putting my stuff on the NAS box, and it seems people have put the Unity asset server on to a NAS, has anyone done this? Or anyone know how to and is willing to help me

 

Honestly... none of them. Pick a MITX board with a nice cpu, and make your own NAS with any linux you want. Those MITX boards with cpu on them consume around 10W in full load also.

 

I would think I'd struggle to build a MITX for a comparable price. Potentially a HP ProLiant Microserver could do that. But I think buying a device 100% already made for NAS is the safest option.

 

The most expensive part of a NAS is almost always the drives, which when you factor in that most NAS boxes don't include any drives, rolling your own can actually look pretty cheap. Another caveat of looking for cheap boxes is are you looking to actually put it on the network via ethernet? Cheap ones tend to just be usb, which really just makes them expensive hard drive enclosures and not NAS boxes.

Personally I would build my own. Aside from the case and hard drives, I could get away with the parts total being less than $150 (ignoring the spare parts I have just floating around). After that, you can throw as much money as you want at it until you either run into power or heat issues.

 

The HDD I'm looking at cost like $130 each. In total I'm looking to spend around $500 for at least 2TB in RAID 1, the system must be designed for 24/7 operation. I'm not sold that getting some intel atom board thats cheaply made is a better alternative then one by a place that makes NAS for their business.

 

You could build your own custom NAS using ZFS and Nexenta.

 

I've had a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v1 for a number of years and it's been stable and reliable, sending me warning emails when a drive is in the beginning stages of failing (all of my original drives have failed and been replaced).

Re: your question about power loss. The ReadyNAS devices use a journaling feature (I'm sure other devices have this also, but I can only comment on the ReadyNAS) that seems to mitigate the damage from power loss. I've lost power to my NAS a few times and when I boot it up again it automatically does some sort of integrity check and comes back. I've never lost any data on my ReadyNAS (from power loss or other issue).

About a year ago my condo started a reno project on the building where the power was going to be cut intermittently at random times for several weeks so I got smart and bought a UPS for my ReadyNAS. I bought a cheap APC UPS for about $60. It hooks up via USB to my ReadyNAS. The software on the ReadyNAS is able to detect it and you can configure it to shutdown safely when the main power is out.

Recently I've been running out of space on my NV+; it's an older model and it only supports drives up to 2TB. I've been doing research on a newer NAS and what I found is that QNAP seems to be the current market favourite due to it's collection of mobile apps (for management and content streaming) and the expansive list of third party applications you can install on it. Depending on your intended use, you may or may not want these features.

A couple of weeks ago one of the drives on my ReadyNAS started to fail and when I was in the store to buy a replacement, I saw that the QNAP 469L (kind of a low end to mid range model) was on sale. I ended up buying it with three 4TB drives. I bought a separate UPS for it as well.

Overall, I'm very happy with it. It's fast. The GUI management system is a little overkill. On the drive management side there's more than one way to do certain things. When I added a 4th drive a week later I ended up expanding the array in a way that was non-optimal and, after doing some research, I wiped it and recreated the array.

The HTPC features are pretty cool. You can play media files on a TV via the HDMI port and the embedded version of XBMC. I connected a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard to the front USB port and it works well in concert with the HTPC features. However, there is a known issue with the Intel supplied GPU driver that causes noticeable tearing in the video image. The higher the resolution or bit rate of the video, the worse the tearing will be. QNAP cannot fix this unless Intel supplies an updated driver. Their higher end NAS boxes have a higher end Intel chip and don't seem to have this issue. It's not worth the price of the higher end NAS if all you want is better HTPC features. You can buy a media player appliance for under $100 that works better anyway.

Network speed on my QNAP is amazing and video playback works perfectly via my WDTV Live or a real PC/HTPC.

TL;DR: I like ReadyNAS as a platform. It's never given me a problem. QNAP is also a great platform. It is a very popular NAS these days because of all the additional features.

 

We use a Synology NAS. The OS (DSM) is brilliant so keep that in mind when making your choice.
It is totally web based and easy to use and manage. http://www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm/

 

Two more comments:

1) If you want to roll your own I've heard good things about FreeNAS.
2) Make sure you check the drive compatibility chart for whichever NAS you buy. A lot of well regarded desktop drives do poorly in a NAS environment. These days I use only WD Red drives. So far, no problems.

 

We have a Drobo at my office that my business partner bought for saving drive image backups.

It's boring. Everything works and there's nothing to configure.

 

Not the kind of form factor I would be looking at. I would just be checking out a normal mirco atx mobo/case, possibly drop an amd cpu in it. Shouldn't cost more than $100, including ram if you don't get too carried away.

Finding a case you like is probably the bigger issue since that will determine more about what you can do than anything else.