Recommend me a NAS/Media drive 3TB

anthony566

anthony566

anthony566

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Im looking to replace my network storage so I'm looking for 3TB Raid 1 ( mirrored )

Looking to conect to router via RJ45 network connection.

My price £350 including 2 drives.
 
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Yes I'm looking for the whole thing enclosure plus 2 drives ...

May be able to go to £400 but that's my max I think.

Anyone useing the Synology systems ????
 
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I have only ever used the Netgear stuff before, couldn't complain and their ReadyNAS has a GUI for RAID setup.

After a quick google the 2 bay is around £100 and supports RAID 0 and 1
 
anthony566 said:
Yes I'm looking for the whole thing enclosure plus 2 drives ...

May be able to go to £400 but that's my max I think.

Anyone useing the Synology systems ????
Click to expand...

Got my first Synology setup (DS213+ and 2x Caviar Red 3TB). Pretty impressed. Relatively simple to use, especially the installation process. I haven't delved deeply into the software options, but I can just access the data via network neighbourhood in Win 7, copy my files across and what not (very slow since I use a 10MB B.T. home router network atm).

Dunno about Qnap systems, although think they are better value. A Synology setup is relatively expensive. You could probably build a server for about the same amount of money, with more flexibility and power. But if you want ease of use, I'd recommend a Synology.
 
Why are you opting for RAID1... do you really want a redundancy solution or a backup solution?
 
I swear by Synology and Qnap, kind of prefer Qnap for some reason even tho the Synologys tend to be a bit more feature rich - they are the only off the shelf NAS type solutions I've found that manage to be reliable, good range of features including all the ones I want in one package and actually work.

Been through a ton of other brands and too often the software is buggy or the hardware unreliable, or they are reliable and have good software but lacking some of the features I want etc.
 
Thanks for all the feedback guys ...

Raid 1 .... I want backup and file security Lots of photos I don't want to loose
I'm looking to use this as a media hub and backup so stream movies and music and photos

It would want access it from laptops, TV, PVR etc via my home network.
 
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If your as paranoid as me about data loss then the USB copy and/or USB replication features on a good NAS is worth making use of - I have a NTFS USB2 drive externally doing realtime replication of the array inside the NAS (very slight reduction in write speeds to the NAS but nothing major) and also setup so I can plug another USB drive into the front and with one button press take a snapshot of the array at any time via USB copy.
 
Would definitely recommend Synology. I have the DS212J with 2 3TB WD greens in mirror and its been great (use it mainly for media streaming, TVHeadend (PVR) and windows backups).

A DS212J + 2 3TB drives would come out at about £350 so would be my recommendation
 
anthony566 said:
Thanks for all the feedback guys ...

Raid 1 .... I want backup and file security Lots of photos I don't want to loose
I'm looking to use this as a media hub and backup so stream movies and music and photos

It would want access it from laptops, TV, PVR etc via my home network.
Click to expand...

RAID1 is not a backup solution... if your photos are accidentally deleted on one disk, they are also deleted from the other. This has been discussed many times before (search the forum and other forums), but I wanted to highlight it. Have you considered a JBOD setup, with one disk as the primary and the second a backup. When I built my microserver I started with the belief that I needed RAID1 (or RAID5), but now I think otherwise.
 
Totally unders stand about backup maybe just a poor choice of words on my part .... I want to prevent the lost of data from a dead drive so I'm going for a mirror setup ...
 
lukext said:
Would definitely recommend Synology. I have the DS212J with 2 3TB WD greens in mirror and its been great (use it mainly for media streaming, TVHeadend (PVR) and windows backups).

A DS212J + 2 3TB drives would come out at about £350 so would be my recommendation
Click to expand...

This in fairness would seem ideal for your budget. I moved fomr a pair of greens to 2x 3tb reds which are brilliant.
 
anthony566 said:
Can I ask should I be useing the same drive manufacture for each drive or mixed ?
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Shouldn't really matter too much, say for example if you already have some discontinued drives. If they differ usually any good controller will only use the size of the smallest drive across all disks and reduce speeds on any faster disk. If you're not sure at least aim for same speed and size.

If you're buying new then that's a moot point.

You could buy each disk from a different retailer to lower the chance of faulty batches but that's a bit anal as you'll have a separate backup outside of the raid anyway, right?
 
anthony566 said:
Can I ask should I be useing the same drive manufacture for each drive or mixed ?
Click to expand...

You should use two drive that are the same make and model, however, it is best to get them from different batches, then they are less likely to both fail around the same time. Buy one a few weeks after the other, and/or use two suppliers.
 
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