Hi
im planning to buy a NAS for my media files.
Anybody who know Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus, Diskless?
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Dis...U/dp/B004AM61YI (http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Diskless-Attached-RNDP600U/dp/B004AM61YI)
Or maybe some of you can give me a advice for what is a good solution for storing like 3 gigabyte?
Happy for all answers!
$950? Guacamole!
I assume you mean 3 Terrabytes?
I don't know what you need, so let's get some information first.
1 - How fast is your network?
2 - How many clients?
3 - What sort of access speed do you need?
4 - How much money are you comfortable spending?
5 - What is your uptime requirement? Are you tolerant of a day of downtime when a drive fails?
6 - Do you have an existing backup plan? (RAID is not a backup plan)
7 - Do you need the DLNA features?
8 - What ARE your intended clients?
9 - Have you considered just buying a $200 Atom-based box and installing FreeNAS? $950 is still blowing my mind.
$950? Guacamole!
I assume you mean 3 Terrabytes?
I don't know what you need, so let's get some information first.
1 - How fast is your network?
2 - How many clients?
3 - What sort of access speed do you need?
4 - How much money are you comfortable spending?
5 - What is your uptime requirement? Are you tolerant of a day of downtime when a drive fails?
6 - Do you have an existing backup plan? (RAID is not a backup plan)
7 - Do you need the DLNA features?
8 - What ARE your intended clients?
9 - Have you considered just buying a $200 Atom-based box and installing FreeNAS? $950 is still blowing my mind.
1) Cat 6
2) 4
3) streaming HD
4) like 1000-1500 $ preferably less...
5) no problem with downtime once in a while, but it has to be stable
6) external backup on a server in my garage
7) dont know what DLNA is...
8) mac computers and a dune mediaplayer (cinema) and a Aplle TV (jailbraked + XBMC) for FLAC streaming
9) No, i have good computer skils, but not linux I will google it now
Thanks for your good feedback
Can't go wrong with QNAP's TS-x59 Pro+ Turbo NAS series, I'm super happy with my TS-659 Pro+.
Firmware features: http://www.qnap.com/fw_v34/v3_intro.aspx?lang=eng (http://www.qnap.com/fw_v34/v3_intro.aspx?lang=eng)
Hardware specs: http://www.qnap.com/images/products/compar...arison_NAS.html (http://www.qnap.com/images/products/comparison/Comparison_NAS.html)
Even clearer on video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpVN48nnLu0...player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpVN48nnLu0&feature=player_embedded)
And it streams to Android smartphone and iPhone too: http://www.qnap.com/pro_application.asp?ap_id=430 (http://www.qnap.com/pro_application.asp?ap_id=430)
EDIT: Streaming to mobile devices.
@Soap: 7 - Do you need the DLNA features?
I have red about DLNA now, and I like the idea. The standard so far don't support FLAC, MP3, AVI, MKV and more.
So my answer today is no, but if a good NAS also support DLNA I'l be happy :-)
So anybody who can give me a NAS advice?
Lysaar
Hi
im planning to buy a NAS for my media files.
Anybody who know Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus, Diskless?
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Dis...U/dp/B004AM61YI (http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Diskless-Attached-RNDP600U/dp/B004AM61YI)
Or maybe some of you can give me a advice for what is a good solution for storing like 3 gigabyte?
One option is to expand the purpose of some desktop computer you have someplace in your house.
The second option is to buy an inexpensive NAS server like this one:
Link to inexpensive expandable NAS server (http://www.netgear.com/products/home/storage/work-and-play/RND2000.aspx)
It supports 5 drives, so unless there is a hidden restriction, those can be in the 1-2 TB range for a total of no less than 5-10 TB total capacity.'
BTW I've set up a DLNA system that used an inexpensive (sub $150) Blu Ray player as its plyaback client and a laptop as the server on a wireless home network.
Worked a treat but we only tried to share .wav and MP3 files, if memory serves. Setup was mainly downloading and installing the DLNA server software which coexisted with regular Windows file sharing.
Cat 6 is cable. What actual speed are you running at? I can run 10Mbps across a cat6 cable.
Personally I run a desktop as a fileserver which also runs web servers, SqueezeCenter etc, it may eat more power but is more expandable and customisable. You could easily build one for a couple of hundred quid (not sure what that'd be in dollars ).
Cat 6 is cable. What actual speed are you running at? I can run 10Mbps across a cat6 cable.
Personally I run a desktop as a fileserver which also runs web servers, SqueezeCenter etc, it may eat more power but is more expandable and customisable. You could easily build one for a couple of hundred quid (not sure what that'd be in dollars ).
Cat 6 is cable, and i did assume quality of cable told that I aim for Gigabit Ethernet.
But i only need to stream HD movies over cat6 cable, no cable longer than 10 m
I'm not sure how much bandwidt HD movies demands.
Any help choosing NAS is appreciated.
Lysaar
Your network performance not withstanding you should be able to build the cheapest of computers and stream HD.
I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on a 1st generation Atom processor (CF card boot drive) with (currently) four storage drives attached via USB and get 30 MB/sec reads and writes across my network. That is WAY more than fast enough for HD streaming, but lower than what you would want for running, say, a Lightroom library over a network share.
Despite the fact the outer branches of my home wiring are CAT-5 and my drives are all slow-spindle "green" ones, I believe my USB drive attachment is my current bottleneck, but my Atom board has neither E-SATA nor expansion slots.
For way less than the price of your linked NAS-in-a-box one could build a quite efficient Core i3 box with enough power and capability to be pretty darn future-proof as a storage server, AND populate it with a number of (internal or external) drives. You could most likely meet current demands with an ARM board and Debian, perhaps even a current-gen Atom board, but I'm not sure what the E-SATA availability is on current offerings. I would not recommend relying on USB today for external storage attachment.
This, of course, assumes your time is cheap.
I have no idea how much power my solution pulls, but the Atom board, my four drives, my cable modem, my Linksys WAP, my Gigabit switch, and Vonage box all last over 1/2 an hour on an old APC ES-350 UPS.
EDIT:
Arnold's solution is nice looking, inexpensive, solves most all client issues out-of-the-box, but appears to be limited to two drives, period.
I'm thinking of setting a NAS server myself using FreeNAS.
This is the hardware I'll probably get:
Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Black Steel Pedestal Server Case 2 External 5.25" Drive Bays (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058)
GIGABYTE GA-880GA-UD3H AM3 AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128444)
AMD Athlon II X2 260 Regor 3.2GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ADX260OCGMBOX (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103873)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL8D-4GBRM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231275)
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006)
6 x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245)
Everything amounts to $1147. If you use just 2 hard drives, it goes down to $787.
You'll still need another small hard drive for booting the OS though.
For your needs, you could probably get a cheaper/simpler case.
Why twice the motherboard, 10x the processor, and 2-4x the memory that you need for a NAS box? I know you can't go much slower on processor, but that's a ton of system for what the embedded boys do with low hundreds of Mhz ARMs.
Arnold's solution is nice looking, inexpensive, solves most all client issues out-of-the-box, but appears to be limited to two drives, period.
As I read the specs, there are two SATA ports and 3 USB ports.
Why twice the motherboard, 10x the processor, and 2-4x the memory that you need for a NAS box? I know you can't go much slower on processor, but that's a ton of system for what the embedded boys do with low hundreds of Mhz ARMs.
I have a AMD Sempron 3000 here. When transferring in Gb speeds (avg. of 40MB/s), it uses 100% of the CPU. So I didn't want the CPU to be a bottleneck for fast transfers.
But another major problem is the motherboard. I wanted one that had 6 SATA ports (for the 6 hard drives), but it needed at least one other port (SATA or PATA) for the OS hard drive.
After I picked that Gigabyte one, there weren't many processors that I could use. So I discarded all Sempron (as explained above) and got one that had a low power consumption.
You could probably get the 250, but for only $9 extra dollars you get the 260.
This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822155003&cm_re=dlink_nas%2d%5f%2d22-155-003%2d%5f%2dProduct) will save you some money and trouble. It won't do everything a server will out of the box but it runs Linux and so you can add services. It connects to the network at 1 Gbit but it's using one of those low hundreds of Mhz ARMs Soap mentions so only does about 150 Mbit actual throughput. Still, that's more than enough for a media server.
Arnold's solution is nice looking, inexpensive, solves most all client issues out-of-the-box, but appears to be limited to two drives, period.
As I read the specs, there are two SATA ports and 3 USB ports.
Yea, I don't know how I missed that in the specs, it was exactly what I went looking for.
As Notat mentions these inexpensive embedded solutions probably can't saturate your drives, but should be PLENTY fast for multiple HD clients.
@Soap: 7 - Do you need the DLNA features?
I have red about DLNA now, and I like the idea. The standard so far don't support FLAC, MP3, AVI, MKV and more.
So my answer today is no, but if a good NAS also support DLNA I'l be happy :-)
Some new TVs support DLNA. So you could just plug a TV straight into your network, and have all your video, audio, and photos right there. Depending on the codec!
The biggest problem IME is the lousy interface most TVs provide to your library. And the fact they won't play the files . That's not specifically a DLNA problem though - it's a "we'll only support the mandatory codecs and provide a basic interface because no one really knows how useful DLNA should be yet" problem!
Cheers,
David.
The bottleneck would not be the CPU, it would be the fact that the NIC offloads its processing to the CPU. Spend a little on a NIC with a decent processor of its own and you won't need crap for the rest of the system, and will be cheaper. How is RAID not backup? Maybe for a business where customers need to retrieve their data (web host) it isn't a power backup, but for a home user, RAID5 is plenty enough of a contingency plan for data integrity. I'd personally spend that $1k on a budget motherboard, CPU, RAM, and an insane RAID controller and NIC. A good RAID card will let you keep adding drives when you need to expand and rebuild your volumes for you. A good NIC card will keep the data between the RAID card and the NIC card (in the bus), and utilize no very little or no CPU.
I plan to get a budget motherboard, CPU, and RAM, but spend a crapload on a RAID card and an Intel NIC. I will get a dual port NIC and bond the channels, so I can have 250 MB/s theoretical speeds, from a good RAID5 array of like 4 or 5 drives.
How is RAID not backup?
It is if you've also archived the data on separate physical media, otherwise let's hope you don't accidentally delete a file.
ramicio: RAID is not a backup because if you accidentally delete a file, get a virus, your OS screws up etc, your RAID will not save you.
For example, using two drives as a main + backup is much safer than say a RAID1 as mistakes are not automatically replicated to the second drive. Of course 3 drives in a RAID1 + backup is better, but more expensive.
You don't need a high end RAID card for a NAS. The softraid in Linux or FreeBSD (FreeNAS) will easily keep up with an expensive card. A motherboard with Intel Matrix RAID is also cheap and fast if you want to use Windows. Your network will more than be the bottleneck before a good softraid. Just avoid non-Intel cheap RAID cards/MBs or softraid 5 in Windows.
You won't get more than 1 Gbit with a bonded NIC unless you have multiple clients.
And buying a hardware RAID controller
may mean higher performance, but hardware-locks your RAID set. Software RAID is much much safer.
Why twice the motherboard, 10x the processor, and 2-4x the memory that you need for a NAS box? I know you can't go much slower on processor, but that's a ton of system for what the embedded boys do with low hundreds of Mhz ARMs.
I have a AMD Sempron 3000 here. When transferring in Gb speeds (avg. of 40MB/s), it uses 100% of the CPU. So I didn't want the CPU to be a bottleneck for fast transfers.
As said previously, get a better network card. I don't see 40% CPU consumption on my Atom box, ever.
Really, what kind of virus is there that wipes out ALL your data? I really want to know. Especially one that ruins data in any way outside of the root drive... The target of viruses is information retrieval for monetary gain, not killing a simpleton's data.
Any good RAID controller will let you migrate between array types, add drives, etc. Software RAID is pointless, because RAID is also meant to boost performance, where software RAID requires a lot of resources.
If you delete a file, that's YOUR fault. It can be retrieved easily enough without a backup. Human error is not a reason to say RAID is not a form of backup. By all means, if your data is your money, then yes, have a separate copy. RAID redundancy is ENOUGH for a personal user who just wants to store media files.
Why would I not get more speed from a bonded NIC? The point of link aggregation is to boost speed OR for redundancy. Get 2 identical 2-port 1 Gbps NICs (Intel) and directly connect them with 2 cables, you will get 2 Gbps.
If you delete a file, that's YOUR fault.
No one said it wasn't.
It can be retrieved easily enough without a backup.
On a NAS? Please elaborate.
Human error is not a reason to say RAID is not a form of backup.
Sure it is.
The file still exists on the disk after being deleted. It can be undeleted.
As said previously, get a better network card. I don't see 40% CPU consumption on my Atom box, ever.
Well, the cheapest AM3 processor on Newegg costs $38 and the cheapest Intel PCI Express NIC costs $40.
My current processor option costs $70. In the end it costs more to buy the NIC than to get a better processor.
Just out of curiosity, what NIC do you have and how fast are your transfers?
I'm currently using this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106121) NIC.
Any good RAID controller will let you migrate between array types, add drives, etc. Software RAID is pointless, because RAID is also meant to boost performance, where software RAID requires a lot of resources.
You obviously have never looked at any benchmarks of a good softraid implementation or Intel RAID. They match or beat high end cards for only a tiny bit of CPU, well under 5% in most cases. Linux and Intel also allow array migration. Dedicated RAID cards made sense when CPUs were slow or when you need every last bit of CPU for something else. In a NAS this is not the case.
The CPU on 99% of those "insane RAID controller" cards? Easily beaten by a P3. To a modern PC RAID calculations are nothing, an afterthought. Almost all of those NASes with slow ARMs are using softraid, usually Linux MD or some variant.
Why would I not get more speed from a bonded NIC? The point of link aggregation is to boost speed OR for redundancy. Get 2 identical 2-port 1 Gbps NICs (Intel) and directly connect them with 2 cables, you will get 2 Gbps.
No, you will not get 2 Gbps between two hosts. You will get 2G Gbps total, but divided into two 1 Gbps chunks. It will load balance a bit, but any single client cannot get more than 1 Gbps. It's simply the way Ethernet works, it is still communicating with two MACs and a single client MAC cannot talk to both.
You also need a switch that supports this, not many consumer level switches do.
The file still exists on the disk after being deleted. It can be undeleted.
Do you have a specific easily available and hopefully free (as in beer) tool to recommend or are you just theorizing?
The file still exists on the disk after being deleted. It can be undeleted.
Only if you notice right away, the file hasn't been overwritten, the file was not too fragmented, etc. On SSDs the file data might get TRIMed or GC erased. Undeletion is not in any way a suitable way to avoid accidents.
Hi, thanks all for info
i have been reading about home built raid servers for a year. My conclusion is that home built servers + some hefty NIC and raid adapters (more than 6 hdd) is very time demanding. I ask for NAS because i have not red som much about NAS but i'm qite shure it gives less hassle. And, i dont know linux, and i have desided not to learn it.(I am quite goodwith PC/Win, has worked with this at a professional level in 5 year, and it is my hobby)
So to "bump" Is there anybody of you who know to give me an advice regarding buying a home NAS at minimum 3 gig (6 drives) + gig ethernet for streaming music from flac, jpg's, avi, mkv, etc...?
Happy for all answers as usual
PS I got my apple tv2 today, I will jailbreak it and instal xbmc. This apple tv i will use in my kitchen and only for music. I connect it with spdif to active speakers from avi hifi http://avihifi.com/neutron.html (http://avihifi.com/neutron.html)
Kitchen not finished built yet, but all cables in installed :-)
Lysaar
On an SSD the file is more likely to be able to be recovered. Just this week THG had an article about how hard it actually is to totally erase an SSD.
The Intel RAID only allows you to do so much. You can't migrate from any level to any level. It's very restricted. It's also very CPU-intensive. If you lose a drive in a RAID5 array and rebuild with a new drive, CPU usage is going to be off the charts. The RAID cards do what they do more efficiently. Their software/firmware (whatever) is more specifically written for that CPU. Ever wonder why we still can't smoothly emulate something as simple as an N64 game yet, and that console's hardware specs are puny compared to a modern PC, or even a PC of that era? Machine code.
I WILL get 2 Gbps. I do NOT need to run a switch. I will be connecting the file server to my PC, with 2 identical NICs, of the Intel variety, directly. They support what I want to do.
Just search for a file undeleter, there are plenty. I don't know about one of these non-PC NAS, but a computer built as a NAS will be able to undelete a file. If you don't know you deleted a file to where you don't notice it quickly enough to not overwrite those blocks, then chances are you aren't going to notice a backup giving you the file back. And if you have no idea that you deleted the file and back up that image, the file will still be gone from the backup!
If you're looking for server class hardware....
I got an RioWorks 2U rack server with Arima HDAMA motherboard, 2 x AMD Opteron 250; 2GB ECC DDR & PSU for about £50 last year on eBay. This motherboard has 2 x gigabit LAN sockets and 2 x PCI-X + 3 x PCI-64 slots.
It's been running in my server perfectly since then, although I changed out the processors for a pair of Opteron 280s and upped the RAM to 8GB.
Never had a problem with the 3Ware 9550SX-12 RAID card either.
This is all tied together using the ServerElements NASLite-M2 x64 home server operating system.
1. I won't be buying everything at once. Component by component.
2. I object to AMD hardware.
3. I favor PCIe, PCI-X is outdated.
Just out of curiosity, what NIC do you have and how fast are your transfers?
I'm currently using this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106121) NIC.
I'm using whatever is in my all-in-one mini Atom board. I got ~40 MB/s from internal drives and around 30 from USB ones (all I have now). No idea if I can go any faster on this old wiring. I never tested with a segment of CAT-6 when I had drives mounted via SATA. Only real point I had was I show no (significant) CPU usage on network traffic with a quite weak CPU.
I WILL get 2 Gbps. I do NOT need to run a switch. I will be connecting the file server to my PC, with 2 identical NICs, of the Intel variety, directly. They support what I want to do.
That's not a network. Anyone can get 3 or 6 Gbps with a direct fricking connection.
i have been reading about home built raid servers for a year. My conclusion is that home built servers + some hefty NIC and raid adapters
As MOST of us agree, no RAID controller is needed, and as YOU already said, no fancy NIC is needed.
And, i dont know linux, and i have desided not to learn it.(I am quite goodwith PC/Win, has worked with this at a professional level in 5 year, and it is my hobby)
Freenas, install and forget.
So to "bump" Is there anybody of you who know to give me an advice regarding buying a home NAS at minimum 3 gig (6 drives) + gig ethernet for streaming music from flac, jpg's, avi, mkv, etc...?
Multiple solutions for boxed solutions have been presented already.
Just because it's connected right to my computer with the fast connection doesn't mean I can't also connect it to a switch for regular network access for other people at the same time. Only one computer isn't a network. 2 or more is a network.
I have a DiskStation NAS, and after configuring it, have never had a lick of trouble with it.
Small, quiet, and feeds everything in the house without hiccup.
They have many different configurations, but after all my shopping, reviewing, etc, this is what I bought.
http://www.synology.com/us/index.php (http://www.synology.com/us/index.php)
Hi
im planning to buy a NAS for my media files.
Anybody who know Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus, Diskless?
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Dis...U/dp/B004AM61YI (http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Diskless-Attached-RNDP600U/dp/B004AM61YI)
Or maybe some of you can give me a advice for what is a good solution for storing like 3 gigabyte?
Happy for all answers!
I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Pioneer Pro and, after some firmware glitches they finally fixed, it's been bulletproof. I run RAID 6 so up to 2 drives can fail with no data loss (read up on Google's report on hard drive reliability in their server farms if you want to know why losing 2 drives within the same week in a RAID array is *far* more likely than most would ever guess).
I get around 80 - 90 MByte/sec (720 Mbit/sec) over gigabit ethernet with jumbo packets for sustained large file transfers from a fast Windows 7 PC. I think that's about as fast as gigabit ethernet can run. My previous NAS poked along at about 15 MByte/sec.
The downside of the Pioneer is it's Celeron based and uses a bit more power than some of the newer Atom based NAS's do. But it's still vastly more energy efficient than most (non-Atom) PC-based NAS solutions. Every watt of 24/7 consumption is $1 per year. So a 150 watt PC will cost you $100/year more than a 50 watt NAS. I'm running 6 Samsung "green" (5400 RPM) 1.5 TB drives which have been great so far. I haven't installed any 3rd party apps or plug ins on it or tried to root it.
The Netgear software already makes a great media server. And it has the performance to even stream native format (not transcoded) ripped 30+ GB blu-ray movies without any problems. So I'm really happy with it. It hasn't even been re-booted in at least 6 months.
Many of you here don't like Wikipedia, but here's a pretty sensible "executive summary" from it about RAID and backups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Data_backup):
[blockquote]
A RAID system used as a main system disk is not intended as a replacement for backing up data. In parity configurations it will provide a backup-like feature to protect from catastrophic data loss caused by physical damage or errors on a single drive. Many other features of backup systems cannot be provided by RAID arrays alone. The most notable is the ability to restore an earlier version of data, which is needed to protect against software errors causing unwanted data to be written to the disk, and to recover from user error or malicious deletion. RAID can also be overwhelmed by catastrophic failure that exceeds its recovery capacity and, of course, the entire array is at risk of physical damage by fire, natural disaster, or human forces. RAID is also vulnerable to controller failure since it is not always possible to migrate a RAID to a new controller without data loss.
RAID drives can serve as excellent backup drives when employed as removable backup devices to main storage, and particularly when located offsite from the main systems. However, the use of RAID as the only storage solution does not replace backups.
[/blockquote]
Pretty clear. Versioning backup is the way to go. RAID doesn't offer that. RAID is meant to increase data availability/reliability and/or I/O performance.
It seems that there's a lot of confusion about this topic (I was misguided too for many years).. it's not helping e.g. that the leading computer magazines here in my country constantly mentions/suggests RAID as a backup system.. time to change mag. subscriptions?
I'll agree with the general concept RAID does NOT equal BACKUP. Even RAID-6 as I have is prone to certain failures up to and including the place burning down from a freak electrical fire or whatever. I suggest updating either an offsite (or high quality on-site theft proof and genuinely fire proof safe), and keeping the incremental data between those updates on a device like an IOSafe (which is essentially a fireproof, waterproof, USB/NAS drive for a surprisingly reasonable price). This is all especially suggested if you have significant amounts of important genuinely irreplaceable data.
I know a guy who built what he thought was a perfect home server from scratch. It had a RAID 5 array and then 2 more big drives as JBOD that woke up periodically to incrementally back up whatever was new on the RAID 5 array. He was really proud of it. Then the power supply blew up one day when he wasn't even home and fried ALL the drives. He lost EVERYTHING.
I'll agree with the general concept RAID does NOT equal BACKUP. Even RAID-6 as I have is prone to certain failures up to and including the place burning down from a freak electrical fire or whatever. I suggest updating either an offsite (or high quality on-site theft proof and genuinely fire proof safe), and keeping the incremental data between those updates on a device like an IOSafe (which is essentially a fireproof, waterproof, USB/NAS drive for a surprisingly reasonable price). This is all especially suggested if you have significant amounts of important genuinely irreplaceable data.
I know a guy who built what he thought was a perfect home server from scratch. It had a RAID 5 array and then 2 more big drives as JBOD that woke up periodically to incrementally back up whatever was new on the RAID 5 array. He was really proud of it. Then the power supply blew up one day when he wasn't even home and fried ALL the drives. He lost EVERYTHING.
Excellent example. Other possible similar catastrophies are fire, lightening hits, and thieves.
I tell my business customers to keep their backup media at home. I tell them that if they lose their home and their business on the same day, they will probably not be worrying about either for a long time.
Reverse this idea for files whose primary copies you keep at home. Take the backup to work.
One problem with media file collections is that they are often really large. Right now the most practical way to back them up is probably USB hard drives, but you are talking a number of spindles for many applications.
Possibly this could be made more practical by using a combination of full backups and incrementals.
If you *really* want to be secure, you need 2 off-site backups. If you store a hard drive for a year or two, there is a pretty good chance that it will be dead when you finally get aound to checking it.
Many of you here don't like Wikipedia, but here's a pretty sensible "executive summary" from it about RAID and backups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Data_backup):
[indent]A RAID system used as a main system disk is not intended as a replacement for backing up data.
I sell RAID to my business customers as a soft failure mechanism, not as an alternative to backup. If they have RAID and lose a drive their system can keep working until they can *schedule* the repair. There is also a performance advantage in many cases, but it is not night-and-day and media libraries for a small number of users is not performance-sensitive, anyhow.
I have a DiskStation NAS, and after configuring it, have never had a lick of trouble with it.
Small, quiet, and feeds everything in the house without hiccup.
They have many different configurations, but after all my shopping, reviewing, etc, this is what I bought.
http://www.synology.com/us/index.php (http://www.synology.com/us/index.php)
That's a pretty neat solution too, very similar to my QNAP, which BTW can be configured to keep a recycle bin for network files too, so your RAID1/5/6 volumes kinda get a tad closer to being a real backup , kidding aside I subscribe to greynol's point of view, in my case my NAS is also my backup cause a copy of my data is kept on my workstations (RAID1) too.
http://docs.qnap.com/nas/en/index.html?net...recycle_bin.htm (http://docs.qnap.com/nas/en/index.html?network_recycle_bin.htm)
EDIT: Link to relevant page of the QNAP Turbo NAS User Manual.
I'm voting for server.
Using a HP MicroServer (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html) with SolarisExpress installed.
Pricetag for the server is about 280€.
Benefits: ECC Memory, PCIe Slots, low Power usage, 4 drive bays, low noise
Some Tips: Seven Useful OpenSolaris ZFS Home Server Tips (http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2010/02/seven-useful-opensolaris-zfs-home-server-tips)
Hi
im planning to buy a NAS for my media files.
Anybody who know Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus, Diskless?
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Dis...U/dp/B004AM61YI (http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Diskless-Attached-RNDP600U/dp/B004AM61YI)
Or maybe some of you can give me a advice for what is a good solution for storing like 3 gigabyte?
Happy for all answers!
I have the 6x1TB drive ReadyNAS Pro Business for my home "server" and would highly recommend it. Since it only consumes 60W, I leave it on 24x7. It houses all of my CD rips (FLAC) for audio streaming through a five-zone Sonos system, all of my digital photos, all of my DVD rips for Windows Media Center and also has an iSCSI target (2TB) for recording live TV - also Windows Media Center (3 extenders) and individual file shares for everyone in the family. It's fast enough with GbE interfaces to copy a 4.3GB DVD rip in roughly 20 seconds. Using DynDNS, I can even access a public share from the Internet.
WAF is high. It's small, quiet and highly reliable. I updated the firmware last week but prior to that had been running without issue since May 2010 when I last rebooted the NAS.
I'll echo the statements of others that RAID is NOT a backup. The ReadyNAS supports local and remote backups (including snapshots) and has an integrated cloud based backup service in the ReadyNAS firmware (it's called ReadyNAS Vault) which doesn't require any PCs on the network to be on. ReadyNAS Vault is pretty slick and while it works, it's crazy expensive. Once you get over 5GB of backup, it becomes cost-prohibitive vs competing solutions.
Get some serious infos including thorough tests on NAS's at the below link, it'll become quickly obvious that in terms of features and performance as well QNAP > Synology > Thecus > others without even costing more.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas)