Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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My current storage setup isnt ideal. It doesn't allow for portability of the data, and the resilience to data loss due to hard drive failure isn't as good as it could be.
I'm going to splash some cash on a NAS server which allows for RAID 5, but i aren't sure which to get.
At present, i have just less then 2TB of films, tv episodes and music which i want stored centrally...and this collection is growing by the week.
Ideally, i'd like to have a NAS server which has 4 bays, and can support at least 3 TB drives in each bay....and most importantly....it must support RAID 5. I've looked around a few on eBuyer, and this one sticks out so far (but i aren't sure that i like some of the ratings)
http://www.ebuyer.com/290542-netgear-rnd4000-readynas-nv-v2-4-bay-no-disks-nas-enclosure-rnd4000-200eus
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Bart
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Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
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Synology or Qnap personally.
I currently have the DS1511;
+ Expansion
People will say you can build your own for a fraction of the cost, which is true in the most part, but I personally value my data too much to have a crappy pre-built system with no tech support.
I REALLY rate the synology kit.
[Edited on 23-12-2012 by Bart]
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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Ah yes, I've been looking into these. How many bays do you have loaded with a drive, and how much space do you have over all. Did you buy it from ebuyer?
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Bart
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Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
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No, bought mine from pixmania iirc, probably still one if the cheapest?
Have all 10 bays loaded with 2tb disks, split over over 2x raid 5 arrays
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Whittie
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Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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How much has that cost Bart! 
Do you have torrents downloading automatically etc? Do you have the phone app to log onto everything, and does it work alright with the PCH?
I had a Synoloy 2 bay one before it got water damaged, was good whilst it lasted. Looking to get something in the new year, made a thread not long back.
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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The Synology's are good but massive overkill.
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Whittie
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Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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They appear to be reliable though John, which is what most people want.
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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In my experience of various types, it's probably the drive that will fail, which can happen to any of them. I've also had a complete DS1511 fail, which I haven't with anything else.
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Andrew
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Registered: 5th May 04
Location: Skoda Octavia Estate, Ford Puma
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All depends on what Aaron is going to be storing on the NAS box. Personally i would want support and be able to renew support if this data was critical.
If not critical data, a cheap NAS box is perfectly fine. It's personal preference and down to your budget.
[Edited on 24-12-2012 by Andrew]
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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It's my collection of films, tv episodes, music and photographs. It all adds up to 2TB at the moment, but it's only at that level because i'm pretty much out of backed up storage space.
Needless to say that i'd be gutted if i lost even a portion of the data, let alone the full lot!
I think a RAID 5 NAS is the way to go tbh. The Synology does look great, but it also seems to cost quite a lot. It seems to have features which i dont really need too, which is why i'm being swayed towards the Netgear device which i mentioned in my initial post.
It would seem that i'd be able to load the Netgear ReadyNas with at least 4x 3TB drives, RAID them, which would then leave me with loads and loads of storage space to expand my collection for years to come. In this case, if one of the drives fails, i'd hope that i'd be able to re-build it via the RAID 5 setup. I'd of course have to be pretty unlucky to have multiple drive failures all at ones...but i've seen it happen
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noshua
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Registered: 19th Nov 08
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Get a HP Microserver. About £110 after cashback. Put WHS or unraid on it, jobs a good un.
Low power, powerful, quiet.
Edit; I'd have a quick read of a few of the 1000's of guides out there that are using the HP Microserver for data backups. Plenty of useful information out there.
Buying anything else is silly IMO!
[Edited on 24-12-2012 by noshua]
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by noshua
Get a HP Microserver....
Aaron already has one; has a thread a few posts down.
If you're happy to have no support and pee around setting it up, Freenas certainly isn't plug 'n' play, then go for it; you certainly can learn a lot. Otherwise Synology or Qnap get my vote, takes about 15/20mins to set it all up and it's straight forward from there on. Plus it'll be more power efficient than a microserver chugging away (most of the microserver full ladened setups i've used gobble 55/60w idling; perhaps using 'green' drives would lower that but still...).
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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If i was to go down the FreeNas route (which i've considered), i'd need to get another server anyway due to the fact that i want to keep my current Microserver set up as a ESXi host.
Hmm, decisions decisions tbh.
My next issue is that my home plugs dont seem to be providing enough of a good connection speed from my media centre to my server/router/the other home plug upstairs. This has only just come about due to the fact we've been playing content locally on the media centre until only a few days ago. It's endless  I think i'll just get a network socket installed tbh...i know a guy who's handy at that
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Bart
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Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
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quote:
Originally posted by John
The Synology's are good but massive overkill.
Im split 50/50 with this opinion.
I think a 2 bay version as whittie mentions would serve quite well to most people who want a good amount of storage space and/or reliable backups.
For me, my home network is the backbone to house and I need the data storage / reliability to go with it.
I refuse to attach my storage to anything related to Microsoft and not comfortable with Linux.
Here's the cabinet in my daughters room cupboard;
From top to bottom;
Sky connections along the top,
Ethernet (cat6) patch panel
24x 1gb fanless switch
Synology DS1511 + DX510 expansion
Netgear dual band wifi router (wifi switched off)
2TB USB 3 external hard disk
Deffo overkill
[Edited on 24-12-2012 by Bart]
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Andrew
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Registered: 5th May 04
Location: Skoda Octavia Estate, Ford Puma
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Bart, that is awesome
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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I think i'm going for the Netgear ReadyNas. People who have them claim that 3TB drives work in them out of the box, so i'm going to buy 4 and then stripe the data with parity.
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noshua
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Registered: 19th Nov 08
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If you have a Microserver how come you're not using it for this?
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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My Microserver is dedicated to being an ESXi host for virtual servers at the moment, and that's the way i'd prefer to keep it. I have 3 servers running on it at present, and i'd say that the processing power and memory of the host is just about at it's capacity.
I could probably create another guest to the host and make it a FreeNas, however, i then have the problem that ESXi doesn't recognise any physical drives over the size of 2TB
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noshua
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Registered: 19th Nov 08
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Oh okay fair enough. Seeing as you know how small they are, the noise, power, etc of a Microserver, you not tempted to buy another for serving/managing (aka downloading) your media? Pretty sure you can claim up to 5 times for cashback.
Also you wouldn't run into any problems with >2TB disks. £100-110 will be much cheaper than any of the other solutions out there, plus you'll not be restricted into running certain software. I.e. you could run utorrent/sabnzbd, sickbeard, couch potato server and headphones.
Edit; I meant FreeNAS not UnRAID in the original post. Pretty sure it does RAID5.
[Edited on 26-12-2012 by noshua]
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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Hmm, you might have a point there. A couple of my colleagues have the N40 Microsrver and I've heard them bang on about sick beard etc.
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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Actually, i've just thought....i don't really trust software RAID (which FreeNas seems to have built in), so i'd need to buy a raid card/controller.
I wonder if the RAID in the netgear ReadyNAS is classed as software RAID?
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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Yeah, the ReadyNAS seems to be software RAID also....i'm surprised i've only just thought to check that.
this changes things
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Bart
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Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
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quote:
Originally posted by Aaron
Yeah, the ReadyNAS seems to be software RAID also....i'm surprised i've only just thought to check that.
this changes things
I think 99% of all NAS units will be software raid.
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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indeed that looks to be the case. Perhaps I've put the bar a bit too high on this one, and i'm going to have to accept that software raid is the answer, unless i expand my budget a little.
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Aaron
Hmm, you might have a point there. A couple of my colleagues have the N40 Microsrver and I've heard them bang on about sick beard etc.
Not sure about the ReadyNAS boxes (i suspect folk have) but certainly with the Synology boxes you can install Coach Potato and SickBeard without too much arse-ache. Similarly users are playing around with getting newznab running.
Edit - As said, majority of Home/SMB NAS boxes are software raid; tbf, off the top of my head i can't think of any NAS devices that offer hardware controllers.
[Edited on 26-12-2012 by Dom]
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