NAS + Crash Plan for home Use: Some Questions

[noladad]

Been lurking on Small Net Builder for a few weeks, but am pretty overwhelmed. I am thinking I want to get a NAS to use as a place from which to share media and to create a backup.

Here are my needs:
1) Create a reliable, consistent, automated backup for digital photos and important files. We have about 12,000 pics right now. Some of the files are quite large.

2) Create a centralized 'place' to store and share pictures, files, music and maybe some movies across our home network.

Here's our situation:
We live in a 3,700 sq. ft 3 story house. We have a pc connected to the modem and router located on the first floor. Router is an old Linksys G, but have an ASUS RT-N66U on it's way from Amazon.

We have a PS3, Macbook Air, a couple of iPhones, and an older iPad all regularly connected to the network. We often have visitors who may need to jump onto the network with their devices when visiting. We currently have trouble getting consistent reception for streaming on the 2nd and 3rd floors, on the side furthest from where the current router is positioned.

I've done a lot of reading, and am thinking I could meet our needs with a 2 drive NAS. Ideally, I would use one drive for storage and another as a backup. I don't think I want to use RAID, but rather just set them up as 'normal' drives. I would then hook a USB to the NAS and do a regular manual backup. Ideally, I would also use something (Crashplan?) to do a cloud backup and/or a backup to storage at my parent's home.

Will this work? If so, I've been lookoing at Synology based on the apparent ease of use and software (I am a real novice with networking). Is a Synology DS213j, 213, or 213+ fast enough to perform the tasks above and provide good results? I ask because I wonder about the 512 of RAM with no way to upgrade.



Thanks in advance,
Mark

 

[thiggins]

Your needs are very simple. You're going to pay a lot for features with QNAP or Synology that you are not going to use. But if you can get a deal on a last-generation model, it might be worth it.

RAM in the NAS doesn't matter for your application. Backup isn't very demanding and you are dealing with large files, which takes the RAM out of the picture for caching.

All NASes will sit on the network and provide central storage. If you are backing up to it via wireless, then NAS performance doesn't really matter. The wireless connection, even with your new router, will be the bottleneck.

A RAID 1 NAS is fine if you want a little more peace of mind. But your real data security is going to come from the backups you do onto the USB drive. The key here is having the discipline to do them regularly.

I would just run RAID1, vs. backing up from one drive to another unless you plan to swap drives in and out for backup.

Make sure you put the NAS on a UPS (and your router too, while you are at it).

 

[noladad]

Tim - thanks for the reply! Would you recommend a more basic NAS instead? If so, any thoughts on a specific one? Have I 'missed' the purpose of a NAS? Would I better off connecting a USB drive to the router?

 

[thiggins]

Yes, all you need is a basic NAS. Buffalo and WD generally offer good value for the money. I use a WD My Book Live (single drive) as one of my backup drives. The other is an old Synology DS109. One backs up to the other and they are located in different parts of my home. I have nothing stored offsite at this point. But if/when I do, I would be *very* selective on what I stored there. Just takes too damned long.

The RT-N66U's storage performance isn't the best. But since you have it, why not try it and see if it works for you?