Advice for a basic home NAS

[abailey]

Hey guys. I am an IT professional but am much more versed in network (switch/route) than with storage, so any help would be appreciated.
Ok I am looking for a NAS for my home where my family and I can store and share our files. We have 4 laptops and a desktop running windows, then we also have 2 iPads, some ipods and iphones. Anyway we don't have to have the speediest device but it does need to be reliable.
Originally I was looking at the ZyXEL NSA320 as it looked right for my needs and it had a great price. Then I started reading reviews and many people complained about its reliability. So after researching more I found the QNAP TS-220. It cost about $70 more but it seems more reliable.
I was thinking of getting a 2 bay NAS set up in Raid 1. I have also read where some people don't like that setup. Would I be better off with a 1 bay NAS and an external drive for backup? One drive (like 3TB) would be plenty of space for us, so my only reason for getting a 2 bay was for the RAID 1. Also I currently use Mozy home to back up our stuff, and it has been working well for the past couple of years, so I do currently have a backup method.
So I am looking for reliability, low price, and like 3TB storage.
I am open to any and all suggestions. Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

It's good that you are recognizing RAID is not backup and incorporating backup for the NAS from the get-go. Also be sure to put it on a UPS.

Using an attached drive for backup assumes you have the discipline to store it in a safe place away from the NAS between backups. This could be onsite in a fireproof box, or offsite. Rotating between two or more drives would let you keep the drive attached without risk of losing all your data.

Given you use Mozy as offsite backup, you could skip local backup altogether and rely on RAID1 to protect against drive failure. The downside in relying solely on cloud backup is restore time can be very long, depending on how much is backed up.

My method is two single-drive NASes, with primary backing up to secondary once a day and the secondary in a physically different location than the primary. WD My Book Live (now My Cloud) is the primary. An old Synology one bay is the secondary. Been running for a couple of years now with no problems whatsoever.