2-bay NAS with RAID 1 or 1-bay NAS and an external HDD?

[MR_AWESOME55]

I recently decided that I wanted to buy an NAS for file backup and video streaming. It has been a very long process, but I hadn't really made any progress. The original plan was to buy a 2-bay NAS (had narrowed it down to the QNAP TS-219 P II), backup everything to that, put it in RAID 1, and then just get a media player at some point to play my media. But now I'm not sure this is the way to go...

I originally also wanted to be able to have a place to backup my files as well as be able to take that device around and use it wherever I please. This issue is that the only way I could do that with an NAS is to bring it around everywhere, which is obviously not a viable option.

Instead, I thought it would be a better to purchase a single bay NAS (such as the Synology DS112 or QNAP TS-119 PII ) and then connect an external HDD to the NAS and back the NAS up to that. This seemed like a more attractive idea mainly because even with RAID, if the NAS fails then you still lose all of your data, but if you have an NAS and an external HDD, this is much less likely to happen. I also wanted to get a portable external HDD with USB 3.0 to make the data transfer faster, and it's also portable enough that I can bring it anywhere.

For now, I'm leaning towards the QNAP mainly because it's only slightly more expensive, but the hot-swapping is a nice option, the processing power is greater, and I've heard that Synology NASes have some issues with external backups. I'd have a better idea of what to get, but neither devices seem to have any reviews anywhere...

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, but in your opinion, what is the better option?

Thank you for any help!

 

[stevech]

I too don't want to rely on RAID for backup.
So I have a small two-drive NAS but each drive is a separate volume. One gets a time-machine backup of the other. And the disks are readable on a PC though it'll take a little work. But the disks aren't proprietary format.

The NAS is my primary storage.

I use USB3 for the external backup. And really important files get backed up to a 32GB SD card plugged into the NAS.
Another popular method is eSATA.

 

[MR_AWESOME55]

I think this is the way to go, although I found a really great deal on a QNAP TS-412, so I might get that plus an external HDD instead

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Likewise I am thinking about 2 bay external expansion unit to hook up to Synology DS213.
Any suggestions/recommendations for good external unit? I just fired up DS213 couple weeks ago for home use and want to start the external back up going ASAP.
TIA,