# In Need of a NAS



## magibeg (Jan 12, 2013)

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.


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## Athlon2K15 (Jan 12, 2013)

Check thecus.  N2800 for dual bay , n5550 otherwise


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## Kreij (Jan 12, 2013)

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


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## magibeg (Jan 12, 2013)

Kreij said:


> 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.


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## cdawall (Jan 12, 2013)

I still use my Seagate 2TB home NAS.


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## magibeg (Jan 12, 2013)

Ok so ones i was looking at:


Seagate STAR401 Black Armor 400
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6747446&CatId=207

Synology Disk Station DS213
http://www.computervalley.ca/ds213/synology-nas-server-ds213-2-bay-25/35inch-sata/ssd-20ghz-cpu-retail

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

Synology Disk Station DS413
http://www.computervalley.ca/ds413/synology-network-ds413-nas-server-4bay-ddr3-4x35inch/4x25inch-sataii-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.


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## BroBQ (Jan 12, 2013)

I own two of these: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2188379&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!


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## magibeg (Jan 13, 2013)

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.


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## TheLostSwede (Jan 13, 2013)

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/R2GFBQ...08U69HOG&nodeID=541966&store=pc&tag=tec06d-20


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## magibeg (Jan 13, 2013)

TheLostSwede said:


> 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/R2GFBQ...08U69HOG&nodeID=541966&store=pc&tag=tec06d-20



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.


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## Kreij (Jan 13, 2013)

magibeg said:


> 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.


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## magibeg (Jan 13, 2013)

Kreij said:


> 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.


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## kciaccio1 (Jan 13, 2013)

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


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## Flash (Jan 13, 2013)

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 :/


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## magibeg (Jan 13, 2013)

kciaccio1 said:


> 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.
> 
> ...



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!


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## Flash (Jan 13, 2013)

kciaccio1 said:


> 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.
> 
> ...



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.


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## magibeg (Jan 13, 2013)

Flash said:


> 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?
> 
> ...



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?


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## Kreij (Jan 13, 2013)

magibeg said:


> 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.


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## Hybrid_theory (Jan 13, 2013)

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.


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## Kreij (Jan 13, 2013)

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.


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## Hybrid_theory (Jan 13, 2013)

Kreij said:


> 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.
> 
> ...



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


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## magibeg (Jan 13, 2013)

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


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## Kreij (Jan 13, 2013)

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


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## magibeg (Jan 13, 2013)

Kreij said:


> 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.


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## Kreij (Jan 13, 2013)

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)


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## magibeg (Jan 14, 2013)

Kreij said:


> 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
> ...



Floppies? Psh, I much prefer VHS tapes


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## cdawall (Jan 14, 2013)

Just to put things in perspective one of my raid 0 based samsung F3 1TB's finally died. Other is kicking up smart errors left and right. Rather disappointed luckily its all backed up between my 2TB NAS and 1.5TB seagate.


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## magibeg (Jan 14, 2013)

cdawall said:


> Just to put things in perspective one of my raid 0 based samsung F3 1TB's finally died. Other is kicking up smart errors left and right. Rather disappointed luckily its all backed up between my 2TB NAS and 1.5TB seagate.



How long did they last?


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## Wrigleyvillain (Jan 14, 2013)

It does not matter how long. Why go through all this and even bother if you aren't even going to have a real backup?


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## magibeg (Jan 14, 2013)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> It does not matter how long. Why go through all this and even bother if you aren't even going to have a real backup?



I'd be running RAID5 so I have some protection from a hard drive failure, as opposed to right now where i have absolutely no protection and my files are scattered across multiple computers in disarray. 

Everything is a weight of cost/risk/reward. I'm not just doing this for backup, I'm doing it for quality of life. I don't want to deal with running 2 NAS's and dropping over $2K.


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## Hybrid_theory (Jan 14, 2013)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> It does not matter how long. Why go through all this and even bother if you aren't even going to have a real backup?



Having a backup of a lot of data is expensive, or cumbersome (multiple external drives for example). Figure for myself, a half way point is get a redundant storage setup with RAID5. Gives you room for error. A drive is more likely to fail than the NAS itself. I purchased a NAS myself for the space increase, keeping it all in one spot and having it network accessible. Can see it from my laptop, my desktop and an HTPC (when i get one in the future). Much more convenient and easy.


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## TheLostSwede (Jan 14, 2013)

This is a "nicer" DIY solution imho http://www.openmediavault.org/
It's far better than FreeNAS and it's way easier to install and configure.

A mini-ITX system wouldn't be that much bigger than a NAS and you can get some really cheap Atom boards, although you'd most likely need a third party SATA controller, since most Atom boards only support two drives.


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## TheLostSwede (Jan 14, 2013)

I guess QNAP might be worth a look, but presumably these will be outside of your budget - http://www.techpowerup.com/178732/QNAP-Debuts-TS-x69L-Turbo-NAS-Series.html


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## Aquinus (Jan 14, 2013)

TheLostSwede said:


> This is a "nicer" DIY solution imho http://www.openmediavault.org/
> It's far better than FreeNAS and it's way easier to install and configure.
> 
> A mini-ITX system wouldn't be that much bigger than a NAS and you can get some really cheap Atom boards, although you'd most likely need a third party SATA controller, since most Atom boards only support two drives.





TheLostSwede said:


> I guess QNAP might be worth a look, but presumably these will be outside of your budget - http://www.techpowerup.com/178732/QNAP-Debuts-TS-x69L-Turbo-NAS-Series.html



Please use the edit button next time, thanks! 

I recommend sticking with the Synology box. My boss (the CIO where I work,) has a Synology box and he loves it. Keep in mind how you're going to back it up though. If you have 9Tb to work with, just keep in mind that you need to back that up somewhere which is the concern I'm running into if I expand my raid beyond 2TB. (3x1TB drives.)


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## yogurt_21 (Jan 14, 2013)

I backup what kreij says, my nas at home is 2x 1tb drives in raid 1 I have that scheduled to do a backup to an external 2tb drive. The 80$ I spent on the external is easily justified if the nas ever kicks the bucket (remember a raid controller failure has a chance to take the drives with it) also I have it scan the nas first to ensure its virus/malware free before its backed up to the external. 

There are a couple of things you can't help though. 

1. data corruption, without a utility to scan for this or without you manually checking everything for it your scheduler will backup a corrupted copy. (this includes something that was corrupted from malware/viruses that have since been cleaned) A workaround for this is to have a backup solution that's larger than your NAS. This allows you to save multiple copies and run a file comparison program to ensure that corrupted data doesn't overwrite your master copy without interrupting an automatic schedule or making the backup take so long it times out or fails to finish before new data is overwritten by normal activity.

2. total destruction as in fire, earthquake, flooding, lightning, etc. If your solution is entirely held at one location, you're screwed in the event of a disaster. Many will cite an online backup solution as a way to avoid this, but upload speeds are prohibitive if you have a lot of data to backup, also online backup solutions don't allow you to use your own utilities to scan for data corruption of the backed up copy. Instead this makes it necessary to pick and choose what is most important and either keep that backed up to a thumb drive that's always with you or a separate backup that you do manually and then dump into a fire proof/flood proof safe (you should have one for your most important paper documents anyways). An online solution can be used for this important data, but you will need something to manually scan and compare the data for corruption before it overwrites it.

just food for thought. In the end I have no idea how important the data you're looking to back up is. Most of the time when you're running out of space its movies, music, or games and not the most important thing in the world. A 128GB thumb drive could be used for a "important data" backup and then you could leave the NAS as is without the need to back up the whole thing, just the things that matter to you (pictures, self taken videos, important professional and personal documents, etc. Most will fit easily on 128GB.)


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## Wrigleyvillain (Jan 14, 2013)

Hybrid_theory said:


> Having a backup of a lot of data is expensive, or cumbersome (multiple external drives for example). Figure for myself, a half way point is get a redundant storage setup with RAID5. Gives you room for error. A drive is more likely to fail than the NAS itself. I purchased a NAS myself for the space increase, keeping it all in one spot and having it network accessible. Can see it from my laptop, my desktop and an HTPC (when i get one in the future). Much more convenient and easy.



You don't need some enterprise-level tape drive set up. A 2 or 3TB drive that you drag all your media to once a week (and that ideally is stored somewhere else most of the time) would suffice much better than nothing.  I just think it's silly to bother with this project if it could all be rendered a waste of time (and possibly also money) when a drive dies. And, with RAID 5, Murphys Law states that another drive will die during the heavy workload rebuild and then you are hosed. 

Rendundant RAID is better than having JBOD or especially a stripe with no actual backup but still...


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## Easy Rhino (Jan 14, 2013)

as far as backing up the NAS, identify what data you absolutely cannot lose, hook a USB flash drive to the NAS, use the provided NAS software to backup those files nightly. 

this has worked great for me. the only files i cannot lose are photos and digital personal documents. A 32 GB USB 3 flash drive is large enough and fast enough to do the job. also, i have them backed up to the cloud offsite.


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## thebluebumblebee (Jan 14, 2013)

The WD 1TB RED is Newegg's shell shocker today!  $75


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## Wrigleyvillain (Jan 14, 2013)

Tempting...


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## magibeg (Jan 14, 2013)

thebluebumblebee said:


> The WD 1TB RED is Newegg's shell shocker today!  $75



Not big enough, I want like triple that


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## Aquinus (Jan 15, 2013)

magibeg said:


> Not big enough, I want like triple that



Higher capacity drives have higher failure rates. Also, how do you plan on backing up all of this data? RAID doesn't replace a backup, it just minimizes down time while maximizing performance (sans RAID-0).


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## Wrigleyvillain (Jan 15, 2013)

^ heh


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## magibeg (Jan 15, 2013)

Aquinus said:


> Higher capacity drives have higher failure rates. Also, how do you plan on backing up all of this data? RAID doesn't replace a backup, it just minimizes down time while maximizing performance (sans RAID-0).



It's going to be a NAS essentially filled with media. I figured having a raid 5 gives me some redundancy and protection in addition to using more reliable drives in the first place.

There's no way i'm going to nearly double my budget to backup 4 or 5 TB of data. If there's mission critical information I can always pass it on to one of (or all) of my computers or stick a USB drive in and save any important documents I may have.

Unless someone wants to donate another $400 or whatever to me I figure having important information on a couple computers, copies on a NAS, and possibly more copies on USB drives to be enough backup.

I don't know what the obsession with backup is here.


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## Kreij (Jan 15, 2013)

magibeg said:


> I don't know what the obsession with backup is here.



It comes from experience.
People are just trying to help you avert the potential nightmare of data loss. No more, no less.


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## magibeg (Jan 15, 2013)

Kreij said:


> It comes from experience.
> People are just trying to help you avert the potential nightmare of data loss. No more, no less.



Well then I'm always open to options and such, but I just seem to be getting people telling me i'm not backing up enough without giving me any more information in terms of what I can do within my thousand dollar budget. I know I'm probably going to need around 5TB of space, I'm size AND appearance restricted and want something relatively low power. I haven't officially hit the 'buy' button yet (just have everything in cart).

If what i'm doing is wrong, give me options.


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## Kreij (Jan 15, 2013)

You're doing fine. Concentrate on getting the NAS you want and get it set up properly.
Then we can talk about backup options. 

As I stated in my first post in this thread, "It's part of the equation."
Just something to keep in mind once everything else is in place.

Probably best if we just help you with the NAS and you can start another thread if/when you want backup info.


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## magibeg (Jan 15, 2013)

Kreij said:


> You're doing fine. Concentrate on getting the NAS you want and get it set up properly.
> Then we can talk about backup options.



Sorry I was just getting a little annoyed there. The whole purpose of this wasn't even for backup, it was just for quality of life. Maybe down the road I'll get into backing up more stuff, but I just don't care to spend a crapton more money to just backup media.

Also a new challenger,

Thecus N4200PRO

Anyone know anything about that drive? It's about in my price range (there's a 5 bay version slightly more expensive that i think was already posted on page one).

Would there be any benefit to me going RAID5 with 5 drives instead of 4? Or does anything significant change at all?


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## Aquinus (Jan 15, 2013)

magibeg said:


> I don't know what the obsession with backup is here.



Losing data sucks, believe me. Not just because there is stuff you will never get back but the stuff you can get back will take days. It's a huge waste of time if you don't back-up your data, at least the important stuff, so you don't go taking a walk down that road. The biggest bit of data I lost it took me over a year to get back to where I was and I'm still missing documents from it which I doubt that I will ever get back.

If your budget has room for it, get an extra drive for your RAID so in case a drive does fail, you can swap it out quickly. The less time RAID-5 spends in degraded mode, the less chance you'll lose more than 1 drive at once.



magibeg said:


> it was just for quality of life.



Now, would your quality of life be better or worse if you lost terabytes worth of media? I know mine wouldn't get better, that is for sure.


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## magibeg (Jan 16, 2013)

Aquinus said:


> Losing data sucks, believe me. Not just because there is stuff you will never get back but the stuff you can get back will take days. It's a huge waste of time if you don't back-up your data, at least the important stuff, so you don't go taking a walk down that road. The biggest bit of data I lost it took me over a year to get back to where I was and I'm still missing documents from it which I doubt that I will ever get back.
> 
> If your budget has room for it, get an extra drive for your RAID so in case a drive does fail, you can swap it out quickly. The less time RAID-5 spends in degraded mode, the less chance you'll lose more than 1 drive at once.
> 
> ...



Well alternatively right now I still have a pile of data, and a much higher risk of losing it because I have no NAS OR backup. So i'm going to lose a pile of information if any one of my drives fails anywhere.

Any important data is already spread across multiple computers. So in the case my laptop dies, my main desktop dies, my backup PC dies, and 2 drives in the NAS i don't have yet dies all at the same time i should be ok for important data.

Next level of data is my music, which is copied on my laptop, desktop and would be on the NAS.

Next level would be the movies, which to lose those would apparently take 2 drives dying at once.

Now I know it's not perfect, but I'm comfortable with those risks. Getting another NAS to backup my NAS just doesn't seem worth it in my particular case.


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## yogurt_21 (Jan 16, 2013)

alrighty 1. larger drives may have a higher failure rate than smaller ones, but its not enough of a difference that a 3tb drive will have a higher failure rate than 3 x 1tb drives. More drives, more chance of failure, period. Being this is low budget 3 3tb drives in RAID 5 seems more manageable than 8 1tb in RAID 50 (if his controller even supports 50). Also by sheer odds the raid 5 solution of 3 drives is less likely to incur a failure than an 8 drive solution, 6 drive solution, or even 4 drive solution. (you could always go down to 3x 2tb but you indicated the potential of 5tb of data)

2. on the Thecus N4200PRO. It's not exactly going to bring the benchmark boom, but its pretty featureful. If you can get it cheap it would work for your needs, but personally the price is about 100$ too much for what it offers. Also I'm curious as to why raid 6 is even an option on it. In a 4 drive solution it has the same capacity as raid 10, while chewing more cpu cycles and being slower overall. 

have you thought about the drives you want to use? I might have missed it.


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## TheLostSwede (Jan 16, 2013)

Thecus are apparently having a ton of firmware/software problems at the moment, I'd suggest checking out their forums.


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## Frick (Jan 16, 2013)

magibeg said:


> Now I know it's not perfect, but I'm comfortable with those risks. Getting another NAS to backup my NAS just doesn't seem worth it in my particular case.



Seems like you're covered with the most important things. Me I have a couple of hundred megabytes of important files I backup, the rest is mostly media and games and while it would be annoying to loose that data it wouldn't be that bad. So you'll be fine imo.

Now if we were talking about mission critical data for a company.. It would be a different matter entirely.


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## Urlyin (Jan 16, 2013)

Just a FYI for another spindle based backup... http://www.quantum.com/Products/RemovableDiskDrives/RDX/index.aspx


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## magibeg (Jan 16, 2013)

yogurt_21 said:


> have you thought about the drives you want to use? I might have missed it.



I was looking at the western digital Red 3TB drives. They're supposed to be more reliable and made for 24/7 operation. Based on the reviews i've read on them the hardware is actually different and doesn't just seem to be a marketing term.

As a re-cap the current top pick for me:

Synology DS413

with Western digital RED drives (x4).


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## Athlon2K15 (Jan 16, 2013)

magibeg said:


> I was looking at the western digital Red 3TB drives. They're supposed to be more reliable and made for 24/7 operation. Based on the reviews i've read on them the hardware is actually different and doesn't just seem to be a marketing term.
> 
> As a re-cap the current top pick for me:
> 
> ...



+1 for Wd Red


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## magibeg (Jan 17, 2013)

Also I just noticed:

Thecus N5550 5BAY


5 bays, has an atom processor. I know someone said earlier about firmware issues with thecus, does this one share the same problems? It's on sale for $130 off* so it's actually cheaper than the synology DS413.

Also more questions, is it possible to get 3x3TB drives, then add 2 more of the same drives at a later time and expand the RAID?

I know I shouldn't be posting on myself but:

I think I want to go with the Thecus n5550. It's more powerful than the synology DS413 and has 1 additional drive bay.

I'm going to buy 3x3TB WD Red drives and run them in raid 5. I found out that i can migrate to raid 6 down the road with 2 more 3tb drives and have protection from up to 2 drive failures.

I really want to pull the trigger on this tonight so i'd appreciate some quick input before i buy it within the next hour.


Edit - And it's done. About $1100 later:

Thecus n5550 5 bay
3 x 3 TB Western Digital Red

It will be running raid 5 until i buy 2 more drives down the road and migrate to raid 6.

Thank you everyone for all of your help. I hope this thread helps someone else in the future.


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## Aquinus (Jan 17, 2013)

The reds are nice because I'm pretty sure they're 1TB platter drives (so good speeds, ~130MB/s) and I believe that they have TLER, which I doubt really matters for a NAS, but could make sense if you ever wanted to use a computer for that RAID instead. Personally I've been picking up WD blacks for the performance and the 5 year warranty. Also considering every drive I've sent to WD has been back in about a week from the day I ship it, so I recommend WD anyways. IIRC, the reds have a 3 year warranty on them. The reds might have WD's intellispeed on it so it might not always run at 7200RPMs too.

Either way, I'm sure the reds will work fine. I just like the longer warranty just in case because WD drives, like any other drive manufacturer, has some drives that fail prematurely.


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## kciaccio1 (Jan 22, 2013)

If you are buying your raid enclosure from Newegg here is a coupon they emailed to me today that you can apply if you want. 

15% OFF ALL RAID Enclosures*

 BTEXWVW53  
*Up to a maximum discount of $75 per order. No minimum purchase required. Limit one use per customer; may not be combined with other promo codes or combo discounts. Expires at 11:59PM PST 1/27/2013 or SOONER based on fund availability. 


The BTEXWVW53 is the coupon code.


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