advice on 4 bay NAS

[Gralgrathor]

Hi!

My girlfriend is unhappy about the power bill, and so I've decided to replace my linux fileserver with a dedicated NAS solution. I'm not interested in mailservers, webservers, streaming media or anything else; those things are already handled by a HTPC tasked as home server. All I really need is some serious storage capacity.

Requirements:

* need 3tb initially, but storage needs may double inside two years
* based on this, I gather I'll need a 4-bay solution at least
* I want to reuse the 1tb and 1.5tb disks in my old fileserver as much as possible, so the NAS would have to be able to make the most use of a mix of different sized disks (disregarding compatibility for now)
* I'd LIKE the disks to be hotswappable, but it's not really a dealbreaker
* I'm new at RAID or anything that makes disk-spanning volumes, so if I manage to click the wrong button and erase all my data, I'm going to be very unhappy: the user interface must be clear and intuitive, the management soft/firmware stable and dependable.
* Price. I'd like the thing (diskless) to cost me €300 rather than €800, since the whole idea is to save money.

So far, I've looked at Synology (DS4xx), QNAP (TS-4xx) and Netgear (NV/X...). Synology's DS411j seemed to match my requirements the closest, but I would like to see if there are affordable equivalents with better capabilities, more bays, hotswap, etc.

Your suggestions, advice, experiences and other remarks would be most welcome...

Gr,

Gr.

 

[thiggins]

If you want to reuse drives, then stay away from RAID. Unless drives are on the vendor's approved drive list, they may tend to fall out of RAID volumes, forcing rebuilds or complete loss of volume. Also, with RAID, you can mix drive sizes, but the smallest drive will determine volume size.

So look for NASes that support treating each drive as a volume. Synology and QNAP will do this, not sure if NETGEAR does. Look for previous-generation models to save money.

 

[Gralgrathor]

If you want to reuse drives, then stay away from RAID. Unless drives are on the vendor's approved drive list.

Thanks for your response!

As it happens, the drives in my old fileserver are quite new WD's, and are on the approved list of all Netgears, Qnaps and Synologys I reviewed.

As for disksize and RAID: Netgear has X-RAID2, Synology has SHR and Drobo has beyondRAID, software RAID management that automatically determines whether the unused drive space is sufficient to create another volume-part with redundancy over the available drives. Unfortunately QNAP has no such dynamic RAID system. Drobo's cheapest solution unfortunately is not a NAS, and the first NAS they offer is already more expensive per bay than some of the other solutions I've checked. So I'm down to Netgear and Synology. Synology has a low-powered solution that (but only just) will accommodate 3TB drives, has the disadvantage of not being hotswappable but the advantage of being dirt-cheap and equipped with some very nifty management firmware - if the reviews are to be trusted.

I've decided that I'm not ready to spend hundreds of euros extra just to get top-rate performance, and I'm not really bothered by the hot-swap thing. So for now, I think I'm going with the Synology DS411J. But I've still got a week or so before my woman will allow me to spend any more of *my* money - yeah, I know, but she's a great cook! - so I'm keeping an eye open for better alternatives.

Gr,

Gr.

 

[stevech]

what's a Dynamic software RAID? Where to read about it?

 

[thiggins]

what's a Dynamic software RAID? Where to read about it?

http://www.readynas.com/?cat=54
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/features/Volume_Management.php

 

[stevech]

reading. Thx.

 

[Gralgrathor]

reading. Thx.

Some nice pictures and animations to go with that:

http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID?
http://www.readynas.com/?p=656

Very handy for small home users like me who don't feel like purchasing entire arrays of same sized disks all in one go...

 

[circuitnine]

http://www.readynas.com/?cat=54
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/features/Volume_Management.php

Links are broken for me, anybody else?

Edit: Seems like I just had a little bit of bad timing, as the links are now working properly, so if somebody did come along and fix them, thanks for that. I have been so stressed out with my network and its interactions with my new email marketing software, and the information i was able to access has been very helpful. Thanks so much.

 

[thiggins]

Links are broken for me, anybody else?

Both work for me.