NAS advice for my situation. My old/new NAS vs router attached.

[joeyjoey]

Hi all.

So I did go through the article from a couple years ago.

I'm looking for some advice about what type of network storage would be best for my current situation. Since the last time I set up a NAS I've had two kids, and, frankly, I have not been keeping up with the tech and am wondering what the best options out there are now, specific to needs. I really don't know how much has changed in 5-6 years or so.

My old NAS is a QNAP TS-109. The other day I heard some terrible noises, and short story even shorter I opened up the drive to see a massive head crash that just carved giant grooves into the platter. Fortunately, there was an external backup attached.

My first thought was to go buy a new HDD for my QNAP... but then I realized how old it is and wondered what I've missed. Btw, a primary motivator for the TS-109 originally was that it was fanless, but that's less of an issue where it is kept these days, though less noise is always a good thing.

So here's the question/s:
-Ok, first some info about the devices in our home: A couple windows laptops, though not usually more than one in use at a time. A couple ipads and a couple iphones. A Sonos system. Some other typical peripherals. Oh, and I guess some networked TVs and blu-ray players, XBox, Lorex security system, etc.
-Router is a Linksys WRT1900AC, with the matching 8-port gigabit switch. There's a WD MyBook connected to the 1900AC as network-attached storage (my extra photo backup location to supplement QNAP, and I've always transferred new photo folders manually to each device over the network).

1) Are NASs becoming obsolete, especially for casual users? Are they even the best solution these days for home data/photos backup, and as the storage location for the music used by the Sonos system? Are network/router-attached HDDs a better or more common route now? Is there another option I am not considering or might not be aware of? What are most knowledgeable people doing?

2) What are the benefits of a new NAS compared to just putting a new disk in my old one? Obviously speed, but that wasn't a problem with the old one, with mostly just photos, important docs backup, and music use. Should I just stick with what works? Or what might I miss out on using my old NAS? I never streamed video from the NAS much, and once upon a time I set up a domain and shares for pics, etc., but I haven't done that in probably 4 years now with the advent of certain websites.

3) Specific device recommendations? Bump up to RAID5 system for any reason? Bump down to just more router attached storage?

4) I'm aware of services like Carbonite. The idea of paying a monthly fee for storage never appealed to me much if you start adding up the cost over many years. Despite an ioSafe, a home disaster like a fire is a bit scary.

... I don't know. I guess the photo collection and all the other data combined has just become so unwieldy I feel like I must not be doing the best thing or have the best setup for organizing and managing it all. So I'm wondering what everyone who's doing it well is doing these days.

I'll cut this off now cause it's way too long. Kept wanting to give more details. Point has probably been made already. Thanks everyone.

 

[System Error Message]

NASes are not becoming obsolete, infact they are being used even more such as a media server from your tv box to cloud storage.

Before you decide its important to know what you plan to use it for. File storage? Media server? What do you plan to run? SFTP and plex are CPU bound.

The best sort of NAS and backup is to have 2 drives that are seperate as one copies to the other and a cloud storage for extra storage. This is the best setup.

So for your NAS first you need to see for yourself what you will use it for than choose based on these criterias:
1) CPU, do you need CPU power? If you do avoid all those prebuilt NAS.
2) RAM is only useful for custom built NAS if you use it for cache and memory hungry features
3) Avoid getting a NAS with the drives, get the drives yourself. Avoid drives like WD green and black as they are terrible for them due to inability to modify firmware and vibration, they really are a bad choice. Minimum WD blues/seagate cheetahs are acceptable. Go for drives made for such 24/7 use such as WD red.
4) Having multiple NICs or 10Gb/s is always useful for any file server. That extra bandwidth comes in handy. If you are building your own, avoid using realtek if you can (linux driver and performance issue).
5) OS choice. Prebuilt NAS all use their own OS so you are limited to their apps and functions. Making your own from scratch is only a bit more difficult and needs more effort but will run what you want.

For example my file server has sftp and plex. It is CPU bound so i am trying to fix a better platform to run it on but it has SFP+ for NIC, WD reds in raid 5 for storage and WD black for the OS. It runs opensuse and i build it from scratch out of whichever parts i can scavange and get cheap except for the drives. Never buy used/refurbished drives. The 16GB ram it has is plenty so even 8GB is more than enough but i have the extra ram so it will run other things i need it to in the future (like for benchmarking routers). I am still trying to set up SMB on it and it is a pain. I also have it in a 2U rack case rather than desktop case.

 

[KenZ71]

My thoughts- add another drive now to provide redundancy. Make sure new is at least 50% larger than your current need to allow for growth.

This is assuming you have less than 4TB of data.

Then, start looking into replacing the overall setup if it's not working. Most likely you can reuse the drives.

 

[Samir]

NASs are still alive and well, and the market is growing for sure.

My initial thoughts? If you don't know what you've been missing and could just replace the drive and never worry about what you're missing, then do that and get on with living life. However, definitely add more more backup to your round of backups as eventually that NAS will fail--they all do at some point. I definitely wouldn't change to raid5 unless you were on raid0. raid 1 is great for security of the data, and that seems to be your primary need.

 

[JoBo]

Just throwing this out there about what I use.

Usually shunned on here I have three Buffalo LS421 units with WD RED (built for nas use) drives. I bought them "driveless" for around $150 each and and I put two three TB drives configured as "JBOD" (just a bunch of disks) in each. The first unit has all my files, photos, music and so forth. The second unit is only used for backing up the first unit automatically several nights a week using the included backup program. The third unit is where I do any experimenting that may be harmful to my live and backup data.
I don't use Raid for reliability reasons. My first NAS units were WD units but I had sudden failures with them and went to Buffalo brand as they met my price point and recently updated to a more recent model. Buffalo's newer units seem to be putting 4 drives in a unit. I prefer separate units for redundancy, one power supply can take out a whole unit.
Buffalo units come with several Apple applications but other then family member's Iphones there are no apple devices here so I can't judge them. Buffalo applications seem to be wanting but they are "hackable" for those so inclined.

Joe

 

[Samir]

Some really great thoughts on redundancy JoBo--power supplies, raid controllers and the like are important points of failure in any raid.

I actually take a similar approach, completely forgoing raid and just literally have a bunch of disks. I keep copies of data in triplicate and compare them regularly to find files that have become corrupted due to what I've termed as 'bit rot'. Bit rot is where a bit will spontaneously change for no real reason, thereby corrupting the file. If you only have one backup, you'll never know which is the corrupt and uncorrupted file. But with three copies, the bad one will the one 'not like the other' and hence the bad one. While the chance of two files corrupting in identically the same way has infinitely small possibility, it is still a possibility and hence you still could (not matter how improbable) think the two corrupt files (in a set of three) via this method would be the uncorrupted version and delete the real uncorrupted version. Clear as mud?