Choosing a new QNAP NAS

[trueimage]

Hi,

Right now I have a QNAP TS-439 Pro II NAS with 4x 4TB SATA II drives in it. All I'm using it for is as a mapped network drive (SMB) on my windows machine to save/edit photos as well as store my media collection. I use an XBMC machine to stream to my TV using NFS.

I'm out of space and can't upgrade, and I'm worried about RAID 5 failing and losing all my data. I'd like to move to a 6 or 8 bay device and use RAID 6 (I think that is the new best choice?) with 2x parity drives and the ability to use larger, faster drives (i.e. 6TB SATA III WD Red).

I also would like to be able to run SABNZBd+ and things like couch potato / sickbeard and max out my 100 Mbps conenction - the 439 Pro II and its Intel D410 Atom @ 1.66 GHz CPU is not fast enough, so I'm running SABNZBd+ on my PC for now.

I've been trying to decide between something like the 669 Pro (used one for sale locally at 850 OBO) and 669L or the 670 Pro or the 651? I guess they all do almost the same things except the CPUs are different. How can I know if the dual core Atom in the 669 Pro/L is enough? Or the Celeron in the 651?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

First, I hope you are not relying on RAID to keep your data intact. RAID is not backup.

Look at the Charts for the TS-569 Pro or TS-869 Pro and the TS-451. They will give you an idea of how the two processor platforms compare.

My eye says the Celeron in the X51's might give you a bit more performance, but not huge.

 

[stevech]

I'll echo. RAID is not a backup.

IMO, most data loss risks in a NAS are human error, malware, etc. Drive failure in a small-ish NAS is, per me, less likely. Power supply/mainboard failure is another issue.

Backup to a big USB3 drive(s). Automated.
Or as I do, run two volumes in the NAS. One is a time-machine-like backup of VIP files.

 

[JoeJoe]

The TS-651 would work, this would allow you to move all your drives over.

A good backup would be to get a 5 or 6 bay NAS with new drives and use your existing NAS for backing up the new NAS.

I do something like this with mine.

 

[stevech]

Small NAS... I feel its safer to backup a RAID NAS to a non-RAID storage system, like one or two big USB3 drives used for no other purpose and kept out of sight.

Or for a 2 bay, don't use RAID1 at all. Use two volumes, with one as backup. Independent file systems, with versioning in the backup to protect from my most likely data loss cause: Human error.

 

[JoeJoe]

I use a 2 drive Qnap NAS with two drives, not in RAID mode, like you described.

I have a weekly scheduled copy from the first drive to the second drive.