(link) Review: 24 TB add-on to your router for $99.78 (+disks)

[ml70]

Please see the main article here http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20379, couldn't quite decide whether i should post it here with routers, or into NAS forum because it turns your router into a cheap NAS.

Don't mean to spam, don't taser me bro, i think this is of interest to anyone who owns a router with a usb port.

 

[sfx2000]

Please see the main article here http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20379, couldn't quite decide whether i should post it here with routers, or into NAS forum because it turns your router into a cheap NAS.

Don't mean to spam, don't taser me bro, i think this is of interest to anyone who owns a router with a usb port.

Not the best solution... throughput limited and limited CPU...

At the end of the day - Routers are not a NAS...

sfx

 

[ml70]

Not the best solution... throughput limited and limited CPU...

Not absolute best but price/utility best. A comparable NAS still costs around $100 per drive bay, $400 total. And these entry level NASes are not exactly performance monsters either. Throughput is limited by USB 3 and ESATA, rest is up to whatever you connect it to. Even USB 2 is good enough for streaming and backups.

Spent $100 + disks, now i have actual net 11 TB RAID 5 error corrected storage for streaming media, backup space for all devices in our family, plus anything else there is an Optware package for.

If money is no object sure an 8 bay Synology or Qnap surely is nicer...but you're looking at spending $1200 v $200, without disks.

 

[azazel1024]

Still not. You'd likely get better performance by spending $100-150 on a single disk NAS with a USB3 port on it and then connecting the enclosure to it.

Granted a very small number of the higher end routers actually have pretty decent performance with USB3, but they still generally fall short of a decent single disk NAS performance. Especially with multiple users/transfers going on. Also generally very limited in "server" applications compared to a NAS (IE things like running an iTunes server, download server, etc.)

Utility depends on what it utilitarian. If it doesn't do what you want or doesn't do it well, that isn't utilitarian. Me thinks if you are going to be spending ~$600-700 on disks for a quad pack of 4TB drives, plus the money on the enclosure itself, plus the money on a very high end router to get decent USB3 storage performance, you might as well cut out the enclosure and the high end router and go with a nice 4 bay NAS. It'll probably cost you an extra $100-200 still (assuming you get a "lower end" AC1750 router also still, or better if you already have a sufficient router for your wireless/routing needs), but the performance and utility would be MASSIVELY higher.

If the goal is to attach the best $ per GB to your network, sure your option is very valid. The cost delta between best $ per GB and probably the best performance you can get at a resonable price...well, it is frankly pretty small.

 

[ml70]

If the goal is to attach the best $ per GB to your network, sure your option is very valid. The cost delta between best $ per GB and probably the best performance you can get at a resonable price...well, it is frankly pretty small.

Exactly, there are many people who don't really need a full fledged NAS, just lots of storage and backup space in their home network. I had the router already, so spending additional $100 is closer to nothing, the money for the disks i'd spend anyway in one form or another.

Amazon has a really nice offer for a 5 bay Thecus NAS case $420, that isn't much extra to pay to get a proper NAS. But if one has a router with a usb connector (or even e-sata, like some new Netgear models) already, it's possible to add storage for much less than that.

And NAS is not a backup, so what do you back it up to... it's rather expensive to back up a NAS to another NAS.

 

[htismaqe]

And NAS is not a backup, so what do you back it up to... it's rather expensive to back up a NAS to another NAS.

Good point.

 

[azazel1024]

To an external hard drive cage hung off the same NAS would be a better way to go about it.

If you are using RAID5 for backup, don't. It isn't backup.

 

[stevech]

To an external hard drive cage hung off the same NAS would be a better way to go about it.

If you are using RAID5 for backup, don't. It isn't backup.

USB3 or eSATA. Big drive(s). Automate your NAS to backup differential daily, of irreplaceable folders/files.

 

[htismaqe]

USB3 or eSATA. Big drive(s). Automate your NAS to backup differential daily, of irreplaceable folders/files.

Yep. Or even more often, if you have the bandwidth/processing power. I run my differential every 6 hours.

 

[azazel1024]

I am too paranoid for that. I'd have to go 4 levels of backup. I know it would take a lot, but leaving it connected has 2 points of failure.

1) a power surge sufficient to destroy the drives in the NAS is just as likely to destroy the drives in the external enclosure (So don't leave it connected except when doing a backup)

2) Any kind of virus or hacking that could/would corrupt, delete or encrypt your NAS is almost deffinitely going to do the same to the backup. Another pro to not leaving it attached all the time. More likely to find out the damage prior to attaching the USB/eSATA storage to exposing it to any risk.

Just my thoughts on the matter. It of course means any back-ups will be a lot more periodic, but honestly I'd worry about the two points above more than I would about the primary store and the backup being accidently deleted or corrupted taking out a very recent file/change that wasn't backed up to the external storage.

Of course if you REALLY wanted to be paranoid, you'd have a primary on the machine itself, a secondary on a NAS/server and a tertiary hanging off the secondary, or even a second server/NAS acting as fully redundant backup. Then you'd have external storage hanging off one of the NAS/servers, external storage that is only periodically connected and backed up to. AND offsite storage that is versioned every day after data integrity is checked (and everything would be running BTRFS).

 

[htismaqe]

All of our data is stored locally, on whatever machine it was created on (or uploaded to) as the case may be.

All of that data is backed up to the NAS. The NAS is backed up to an external enclosure.

All devices, with the exception of my PS3, are on completely different circuits, with different breakers, and the NAS is protected by an APCC UPS as well.

The chances of a system-wide power surge are so remote, IMHO it isn't even worth worrying about. The chances of having a fire are greater, which is why my external enclosure and NAS are in different rooms.

I'm also not concerned with viruses at all. Solid endpoint protection on host machines plus a Linux-based NAS with it's own anti-virus - I haven't had a virus infection spread beyond one machine in the house in probably 5 or 6 years.

Furthermore, the backup drive isn't a "share" in the normal sense. It isn't accessible by any host except for the NAS, and then it's only accessible by the backup process superuser. It would be exceedingly difficult to corrupt or infect by any conventional means.

For me, having a 6-hour recovery point is perfect. If somebody deletes something they didn't mean to, they have 6 hours to realize it and react. If something catastrophic happens, I have 6 hours to remedy before the issue gets propagated to the backup disk.

The inconvenience of having to plug it in/unplug it all the time wouldn't be worth it at all, not for me.

 

[azazel1024]

All of that provides very little surge protection actually. Granted, the odds of a catastrophic surge are low, but if there is one, seperate circuits is likely to provide minimal protection. Surge protectors themselves also add little to the equation.

Lightning arrestors combined with surge protectors can provide some moderate levels of protection, but still likely to cause damage, just might not be whole equipment loss. Surge protectors are only likely to provide minor protection from slight over voltage situations that are possibly going to cause accumulated power supply wear. They aren't likely to provide any significant protection from the voltages induced in something like a lightning strike or even mitigate. With a lightning arrestor, depending on the strike, the voltage levels might be mitigated enough to provide some actual meaningful protection.

At any rate, its each to their own. In general my data isn't so time sensitive that I need protection that immediate on the data, but I need more durable levels of protection (well, I at least believe I do). For really important things, it isn't that much hassle to plug in the USB drive to back-up the data to it at the same time before it gets removed from a primary source (like a memory card).

 

[htismaqe]

All of that provides very little surge protection actually. Granted, the odds of a catastrophic surge are low, but if there is one, seperate circuits is likely to provide minimal protection. Surge protectors themselves also add little to the equation.

Lightning arrestors combined with surge protectors can provide some moderate levels of protection, but still likely to cause damage, just might not be whole equipment loss. Surge protectors are only likely to provide minor protection from slight over voltage situations that are possibly going to cause accumulated power supply wear. They aren't likely to provide any significant protection from the voltages induced in something like a lightning strike or even mitigate. With a lightning arrestor, depending on the strike, the voltage levels might be mitigated enough to provide some actual meaningful protection.

At any rate, its each to their own. In general my data isn't so time sensitive that I need protection that immediate on the data, but I need more durable levels of protection (well, I at least believe I do). For really important things, it isn't that much hassle to plug in the USB drive to back-up the data to it at the same time before it gets removed from a primary source (like a memory card).

A lightning strike is not a "power surge" IMO. No amount of surge protection is going to protect against a "surge" that could be 10,000 amps or more. That's why every building should have a ground - I have a buried central ground (not sure how deep, was installed before I moved here) with a secondary 6' rod grounding the TV antenna/mast. We live on top of a hill and in the past 4 years have been struck by lightning 3 times. I haven't lost a piece of equipment (of any kind) yet.

I certainly don't begrudge you your own method. If it works for you and you like it, that's all the matters. I tend to look at things in terms of propensity for failure. I don't try to protect against things that aren't likely to happen as that just seems to add complexity and cost to the solution.

 

[ml70]

I'm also not concerned with viruses at all. Solid endpoint protection on host machines plus a Linux-based NAS with it's own anti-virus - I haven't had a virus infection spread beyond one machine in the house in probably 5 or 6 years.

If your host machines have write rights on the NAS there is possibility of ransomware (Synolock etc), which will encrypt your files and demands payment to decrypt them. A large amount of people have lost their entire NAS to this, in worst case losing all their personal memories with photos and videos gone.

Yep they didn't have a backup, but it can also happen if your backup is automated -- the ransom locker won't say a thing until it's encrypted everything it finds.

I guess zfs snapshots could help here.

 

[htismaqe]

If your host machines have write rights on the NAS there is possibility of ransomware (Synolock etc), which will encrypt your files and demands payment to decrypt them. A large amount of people have lost their entire NAS to this, in worst case losing all their personal memories with photos and videos gone.

Yep they didn't have a backup, but it can also happen if your backup is automated -- the ransom locker won't say a thing until it's encrypted everything it finds.

I guess zfs snapshots could help here.

None of the hosts have the permissions to write to the backup drive, though. The hosts only have permissions to write to individual share folders. The root of the NAS is completely inaccessible except via SSH. I admit, I know next to nothing about the malware you mentioned but it's not going to automatically replicate to the backup drive without accessing the backup administrative user permissions.

Since I've been in IT for about 20 years and have never seen "ransomware", I'm guessing it's another case of 80/20. I still don't see a reason to unplug my external backup storage and only plug it in when I need to run backups. Loss of data from overwrites is far more common and frequent, automated backups prevent that.

 

[5mall5nail5]

Exactly, there are many people who don't really need a full fledged NAS, just lots of storage and backup space in their home network. I had the router already, so spending additional $100 is closer to nothing, the money for the disks i'd spend anyway in one form or another.

Amazon has a really nice offer for a 5 bay Thecus NAS case $420, that isn't much extra to pay to get a proper NAS. But if one has a router with a usb connector (or even e-sata, like some new Netgear models) already, it's possible to add storage for much less than that.

And NAS is not a backup, so what do you back it up to... it's rather expensive to back up a NAS to another NAS.

I have a Patriot 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive that does like 160 MB/s transfer in my PC... my Asus AC68U can only do like 15 - 20 MB/s. Pretty terrible. Again, I guess this is "cool" but its not very useful and I wouldn't rely on it for anything at all.

 

[ml70]

I have a Patriot 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive that does like 160 MB/s transfer in my PC... my Asus AC68U can only do like 15 - 20 MB/s. Pretty terrible. Again, I guess this is "cool" but its not very useful and I wouldn't rely on it for anything at all.

It's as useful as the use you put it - if one wants a streaming/backup server and it handles those 100%, was it useful or not useful at all? Why pay $1000 for something you won't use when $100 will suffice to give you 100% of what was needed.

The closest proper comparison is the Raspberry Pi NAS, not anything with performance, it should be self-evident there's no free lunch for computing power.

And it's a really nice backup dock for your proper NAS with all drives as one single large drive. A 24 TB nominal capacity NAS will result in around 16.5 TB of formatted RAID5 capacity. You can back this up to a dock like this with 4 x 4 TB drives configured as a singe large drive, without raid (or 4 x 6 TB with RAID5). Automated, running reliably in the background. Preferrably directly connected to the NAS though, as it will be at least 3x slower even with a usb3 port router.

 

[messerchmidt]

build a proper freenas box with ecc ram