Need a new NAS & backup

[Ashful]

For the last several years, I've been running an iOmega NAS with two 500 GB drives in RAID 1 (redundant). I am dangerously close to 100% capacity, so it is time to shop replacements. It's not an extremely expensive unit, and at least 7 years old, so it has served it's purpose. I will be shopping replacements, not looking to upgrade the storage within.

Reading a little on NAS's today, my head is spinning. Most talk about media servers, uploading my photos and thumbnail creation (why?), and slick web interfaces. I'm used to treating an NAS as a dumb hard drive, and in fact un-installed all of the crappy interface and backup software that came pre-installed on my iOmega NAS several years ago. I'm not saying I wouldn't maybe expand to use other features, just that I never have previously.

My primary use is PC-accessible file storage, those files being photos, videos, music, and backups of each of our PC's.

Advice? Seems Synology is leading the NAS market right now, but can these work as just dumb storage space, or are they the iTunes (bloated and un-necessarily complicated mess) of the storage world?

 

[Midway43]

I have an older d link something or other. It isn't the fastest but you can put your own drives in it. I have to upgrade from tb to 2tb soon. I have heard good things about the synologies though. They should do what you need.

 

[BrotherBart]

I just bought a terabyte WD Livebook a year ago and did the same as you. Blew off the software with it and put it in a fireproof box in the garage and light off the weekly backups over the wireless net and go to bed because over the wireless connection they take forever. I got over RAID and a wall full of backup drives when I shut down all of those servers in the basement and retired.

KISS applies to backup more than anything else with computers. Cute backup solutions are fun. Restoring using them ain't.

 

[DougA]

I've gone through lots of RAIDs, NAS and now work with multiple drives on multiple computers. The problem with NAS or a RAID is that when your controller craps out - and it will eventually, I've lost many - you are left with zilch. If you have vital files that are huge, mirrored RAID is the way to go. I've had two RAID controllers go in the past few years and fortunately, they were powering mirrored drives, so you lose nothing. Most of that is for files you use everyday, not BU files that are archived.

A month ago, I just bought a 4TB MyBook with software for $150 range. That will be my main BU for this year to archive everything on for 2015. It's USB3 so very fast for a BU. I'm with BB, KISS is always better. I just transfer over the files that need to be archived and if I need to access something, it's right there in plain sight. I will not ever use a NAS, RAID array or anything else that requires a controller to pull files back into the system when something crashes.

The other neat thing for BU is a drive docking station. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...066&cm_re=HD_enclosure-_-17-153-066-_-Product
I've got 2 of them and they do work great - though not as fast as hooking it up internally. You buy a couple of cheap 2 TB drives and simply push them into the slots and when you want to have your files more secure, you pull the drive out and take it somewhere safe. Mine works with 3.5 and 2.5" drives. Super cheap.

I've got a stack - over a dozen - HDs that have crapped out over the years, so it's always wise to have 3 copies of everything you consider vital.

 

[jebatty]

Backups, make my head spin. I finally opted for incremental backup of the entire hard drive on a USB 3 portable drive, and I run three sets of backup, basically M, W and F. Then every other month or so I run a fresh replacement backup and scrap the old backup for that day. More than once a HD has gone down and it is an enormous pain to have to reload software, with all the updates, etc. Thus, the full backup on the portable which can restore the entire HD to a new HD.

I also run on a data backup on another USB 3 portable drive which is more or less continuous of my data files. This is just to make sure that my data files are backed up if for any reason the entire HD incremental backup should fail for any reason.

Having said all of this, I hope I haven't awakened the HD demons to launch WMD assault on my HD.

 

[Jags]

I take two different approaches depending on my intent. For a pure BU solution it is hard to beat what BB laid out. For an operational situation I use mirrored drives.

On my big boy I use a raid5 solution and 8 hot swappable drives.

 

[heat seeker]

I use Carbonite for my files, and a ghosted external hard drive. Hoping that's enough!

 

[Ashful]

I got over RAID and a wall full of backup drives when I shut down all of those servers in the basement and retired.

Used to have the same thing, a dedicated home server PC. Ditched that in 2008, when I bought my first NAS, but see no reason to ditch RAID! My old NAS is RAID 1, and now it's common to see even budget units with RAID 5. The down side to my old RAID 1 rig is, when a drive goes you have to replace it with an identical drive, making upgrades to a larger drive set impractical (firmware resides on the drives). I've had each of the drives go in this NAS over the last 7 years, but never any data loss, thanks to the mirrored configuration.

KISS applies to backup more than anything else with computers. Cute backup solutions are fun. Restoring using them ain't.

I was going to address this separately, but since you brought it up...

1. Each PC is backed up to NAS using windows backup (NT Backup on the XP box, Win7 backup agent on the Win7 box). I configured NT Backup to create a full backup on each run, and I have two backup files each which run every second week, alternating. In other words, I always have two full weeks backup on the NAS of the XP machine. The Win7 machine is configured for default/incremental backup... never had to learn how to restore from it, but the help files made it sound like it would be pretty automatic / easy.
2. NAS is backed up to two WD Passport drives, via USB. Painfully slow at 500 GB, but it gets it done. NAS sits on the floor by my desk, and the Passport drives are kept in the safe. I do one each month, so I always have two months backup in the safe. Backup is run via xcopy / batch file, without compression, with verification.

I did want to find a better backup routine for the NAS, but figured that would be a follow-up discussion to whatever NAS I choose.

I've gone through lots of RAIDs, NAS and now work with multiple drives on multiple computers. The problem with NAS or a RAID is that when your controller craps out - and it will eventually, I've lost many - you are left with zilch.

I really don't see this happening. Worst case, I pickup a new / used NAS of the same model, and slide my drives into it. Again, I'm running fully redundant / mirrored RAID 1. Also, I have two months backup sitting in the safe. I did the multiple drives on multiple computers thing, backing one PC up to the other, but found it a nightmare to manage. Today, I'm happy to have just simple laptops, with the NAS for big storage.

A month ago, I just bought a 4TB MyBook with software for $150 range.

My current NAS is really nothing more than your MyBook with an ethernet jack, and configurable RAID. I think I paid about $200.

The other neat thing for BU is a drive docking station. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...066&cm_re=HD_enclosure-_-17-153-066-_-Product
I've got 2 of them and they do work great - though not as fast as hooking it up internally. You buy a couple of cheap 2 TB drives and simply push them into the slots and when you want to have your files more secure, you pull the drive out and take it somewhere safe. Mine works with 3.5 and 2.5" drives. Super cheap.

I like this! Might be a good choice for backing up my NAS.

I take two different approaches depending on my intent. For a pure BU solution it is hard to beat what BB laid out. For an operational situation I use mirrored drives.

On my big boy I use a raid5 solution and 8 hot swappable drives.

Details, please! Make / model?

 

[Jags]

Intel Matrix storage server for the mirror and the raid5 is a pure IBM solution on my mainframe (not something that you are gonna adapt for home use).

 

[Midway43]

I am going to assume you mean you are using Raid 1 not Raid 0

 

[Ashful]

I am going to assume you mean you are using Raid 1 not Raid 0

Correct. That's what I wrote. ;-)

Actually, I did have a typo in my last post (not the OP). Fixed it now. Thanks!

 

[maple1]

I just use a HD dock, and Acronis. I clone my C: drive periodically, to one of 4 HDs that I rotate through the order. In between, I have a D: drive that I just drag & drop data folders to once in a while.

 

[firefighterjake]

fasklfh ewfi jfoj fjefjeropfopj pj taf f ekjfeoj fjeopjopejk k. . . dkjew lvmss -- jnzjef fe'a oejf eoprirkvma's.

This is what I took out of the above thread. Just wanted to help add to the conversation. HehHeh.

 

[DougA]

Just wanted to help add to the conversation. HehHeh.

It's all Geek to me.

To put in plain inglese - any NAS or RAID (other than mirrored) is dependent upon the controller card or circuit that tells where the data has been stored. Without it, your drive looks exaclty like what Jake posted. Totally unusable unless you can find the same card/circuit or one with the same hardware. The crap reality is that most hardware like that has a shelf life of a few months. If your card goes zap after 2 years, you'll have to search ebay for a substitute. That's not something anyone should accept when your vital data is at stake. As I posted, I've had this happen too many times (5!) and learned my lesson. Mainframe RAIDs such as Jags has is far less prone to problems and is also far less prone to hardware revisions every few months.

I sent an email to WD support to check on whether I can pull apart a MyBook and use the HD as a stand alone drive. I suspect there is no controller but I can't confirm that from what I read on their specs. I will post when I get an answer.

 

[Ashful]

You have astoundingly uncommon bad luck, DougA. In 25 years of managing small servers, workstations with RAIDs, and NASs for both work and home, I've never had that happen to me. I've lost drives, sure... but never had a situation where I wasn't back in business within a few days. The 500 GB on my personal NAS contains personal files going back to 1993.

I have always used RAID 1, which is about as reliable as concrete. Those drives don't care what controller you switch either one to. Was thinking of going to RAID 5, but now you have me second guessing that notion.

 

[brian89gp]

I personally like unRAID. And use Crashplan to successfully back up a good amount of data.

 

[Midway43]

Only issue i had with Raid data loss is going back a few years. We had a HP nas. We were having issues with hard drives failing. it was the same 2 or 3. We kept fighting with HP to replace the backplane. They offered us to send ours first and after testing would send a replacement. Unacceptable. You can't have it down at all let alone a week. Finally the too many drives went at once. We lost everything. Never used it or another HP enterprise NAS again. I love when the HP sales people call me and tell me all about how great their stuff is.

 

[BrotherBart]

Well ya know, you could go to "The Cloud".

Oh how I so do not miss messing with this disaster recovery stuff anymore. Had to manage that stuff for two world wide data centers for years. Now I image my dinky drives once a week while I sleep and done with it. I got Raided in 2001 and lost everything. Now have everything since then.

Good luck Ashful.

 

[begreen]

The moment I retired I dropped Windows and went with a total KISS solution. My time involved maintaining computers, security and backups is a magnitude less now.

 

[DougA]

Isn't KISS made in N Korea though?

 

[BrotherBart]

Isn't KISS made in N Korea though?

Nah. A great rock band.

 

[Ashful]

Nah. A great rock band.

... and you call yourself a drummer.

So, Bart... you're not a fan of the RAID 1 NAS's?

We just picked up a new Synology 1515+ NAS at work, I don't know what for, but it looks like a nice little unit. The DS214+ might be a good option, for me.

 

[BrotherBart]

.. and you call yourself a drummer.

(broken image removed)

 

[BrotherBart]

Raid is fine for what Raid is intended for, keeping production systems online. Just don't see the need for the complexity for small systems that are going to just need file recoveries or full image restores.

 

[KB007]

I've used a few different consumer nas boxes and I'm still not sure any of them come even close to gigE throughput. They all advertise gigE or multiple gigE connections, then put some puny little processor in the unit and it kills the throughput. I finally decided to use an old server chassis with lots of drive bays (8 or 9 iirc) and put 1 disk for the OS and used a bunch of 2TB drives I had to make 3 separate R1 pairs. That way each R1 pair of drives is used for different backups. I loaded that box with a dual port gigE and link bonded them just for fun (doesn't actually make a single copy go any faster, but it was just a why not thing...).

I ended up using a Win 7 pro license for the server - even tho everything else in the house and my work machine is Ubuntu - mostly because I had a license and was too lazy to install Ubuntu server to get the R1.

I keep casually looking for cheap 10Gige switches and if I can ever find one cheap enuf, then I'd prolly end up with a 10GigE core network and 1 or 2 of my machines using 10GigE.

All my media is on this box, itunes library and years of files and pictures that havebeen copied to multiple drives. It's a little more complicated than buying a cheesy 2 or 4 bay nas box, but it gets a lot better throughput when reading / writing, especially from machines with wired gige connections.