NAS vs DIY Server + Backup Solutions

demon8991

demon8991

demon8991

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Gold Coast, Australia
I currently have a couple of 3TB Red Drives in mirrored mode in my PC. I use these to store all of my Movies, Photos, Music etc., I have about 800GB left so I know I will have to upgrade at some point in the future and want to make it one that will last me for years.

I have 2TB Green drive in my HTPC which provides some level of backup to my main PC.

I have done a bit of research and I think I will be going down the Wireless 802.11ac route when the prices come down which should provide decent transfer speeds around the house so I can use my media comfortably on all devices.

Basically I want to know what my best option would be to house everything in with the ability to upgrade as I go.

Option 1

Synology DS1513+ with 3-5 WD Red 4TB drives.

If I started off with 3 drives what would be the best RAID configuration to go for? I was thinking 5 but have heard mixed reviews.

Also could I add and 4th and 5th drive into the unit at any time? Would this delete any of my data? Or would it just rebuild itself and spread the existing data across the extra drive(s)?

I understand the concept of RAID and that it doesn’t provide a backup but does account for redundancy from a failed drive.

What I don’t understand is quite how I can back up 8TB to 16TB of data without spending a fortune by building the NAS twice!

Would Cloud storage be the answer here?

Option 2:

I have also been considering building my own NAS unit.

Is it possible to have a NAS style setup running inside a PC and being able to use the PC as a media centre/steam box at the same time?

My idea would be to have

3-5 x WD Red 4TB
1 x WD Black 3TB-4TB
1 x SSD 128GB-256GB

The 3-5 red drives would be the NAS side of the computer whilst the rest would be used to run windows and my steam games so it can all be plugged into the TV in the lounge.

Same question as before am I able to add drives to the RAID without losing data?

Also I wanted some advice on case choice and have been looking at Lian Li and Silverstone but obviously need room for 6 x 3.5" drives and an SSD.

The unit needs to fit to the below dimensions so it can be put in my TV unit.

W = 480mm
H = 175mm
D = 400mm

How easy is NAS to setup? I have read reviews on FreeNAS and that seems to be being pretty good.

Again I run into the issue of backups and would like to know what some of you guys do with large amount of data?

Cheers,
 
Phantom Shadow said:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18216324

not sure if they are still running the cashback offer but the HP server in that thread seems to be quite ideal.

set up esxi on it with freenas for the storage/raid, and then you can just set up other vm's to serve media centre/stream box duties.
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Yeah I looked at this and thought it was pretty neat, although it only supports 2TB drives and only has space for 4 drives and I need 6.

It also won’t be able to run Steam which is one of the things I said I would have liked.

It also won’t fit in the space I need it to go in.

For these reasons I decided it wasn’t really a viable option.
 
Dunno about handling 8-16tb but my backup is a 4bay QNAP NAS with a RAID array internally and realtime replication to an external USB3 NTFS drive (rear port) for the folders containing the more important data (very marginally slows the NAS transfer rates but nothing too bad) and then take regular snapshots via USB copy on the front USB port.
 
Rroff said:
Dunno about handling 8-16tb but my backup is a 4bay QNAP NAS with a RAID array internally and realtime replication to an external USB3 NTFS drive (rear port) for the folders containing the more important data (very marginally slows the NAS transfer rates but nothing too bad) and then take regular snapshots via USB copy on the front USB port.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, this is what can be done with the Synology DS1513+ and it supports 5 drives.

Have you had any experience with building your own?
 
I messed about with various cheaper NAS and freeNAS using an old PC and never personally got a setup I was truly happy with, then bought and setup a QNAP for a friend's business and on the strength of that bought one for myself and not looked back. Synology are a little better probably than the QNAP but I'd happily reccomend either.

In terms of RAID its been pretty straight forward the software is fairly intuitive and you can add/remove drives at any time without having to rebuild from scratch tho any new disc is wiped the first time its put into the NAS which can make migration tricky if you have a pre existing setup.
 
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Rroff said:
I messed about with various cheaper NAS and freeNAS using an old PC and never personally got a setup I was truly happy with, then bought and setup a QNAP for a friend's business and on the strength of that bought one for myself and not looked back.
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Ok cool thanks, although I am quite comfortable with most computer related issues but I am a novice when it comes to this kind of thing.

Are the QNAP and Synology units beginner friendly?

Also can you add extra drives at any point without losing data?
 
Updated my previous post but yeah I've found them to be intuitive to work with and you can (supposedly) add drives at any time though I've not actually tested the functionality.

You won't lose data from an array already existing on the NAS but the newly introduced disc itself will be wiped on first connecting it whether its part of the RAID or added as a seperate volume.
 
Rroff said:
Updated my previous post but yeah I've found them to be intuitive to work with and you can (supposedly) add drives at any time though I've not actually tested the functionality.

You won't lose data from an array already existing on the NAS but the newly introduced disc itself will be wiped on first connecting it whether its part of the RAID or added as a seperate volume.
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Excellent thanks for this I really appreciate your responses.

In terms of backup for the NAS would you recommend Cloud storage or hanging a couple of large external drives off the unit its self taking into consideration eventually the NAS could be 16TB?
 
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Depends a bit on what kind of stuff your backing up - probably a bit of both. Mine has built in features for syncing with cloud storage but never used them to see how well it works.
 
You can get 2TD WD portable drives now. The best bet IMO would be to backup to a couple of 2TB drives, leaving the second in 'til it's full. By the time you get to 16GB I'm sure there will be 4TB portable drives around so it's expandable. You can leave all the drives at another location for full redundancy (parents/work).

Cloud storage is great and all but only really any good for small amounts of data or if you're willing to spend thousands. Just imaggine what uploading TB of data is going to do to your internet account... ;)

I've actually been thinking about this as well and I think I've decided to go for a 4bay QNAP or synology NAS and then backup most important files to portable hdds. Mine will be used as a file server and to backup machines via time machine and windows 8 backup. Why the need for a 5 bay NAS?

Symbology also have their own RAID/WHS like system that joins the disks up as a single volume with redundancy so if one disk goes caput you replace it and build the data back up. The benefit is (AFAIK) is you can have RAID like redundancy with hard drives of multiple sizes.
 
Having been a die-hard QNAP fanboy for the past 5 years or so guys (had about 3-4 different models) I whole heartedly recommend...... Synology! lol

Got my first ever synology last year (DS712+) - and love it to bits - not changing this baby for a while! - main differences I've noticed compared to similar qnaps are:

A)- Quicker updates - they also update the open sourcey type of stuff aswell, whereas qnap for some reason or the other don't (check their forums for the people crying out for firmware updates to include the latest openvpn software for example).

B)- Performance is slightly better on the Synology's stuff (both read and write speeds on exactly the same hardware is quicker on synology).

hth ;)
 
Yeah I quite regularly reccomend Synology having had a play now with both but tend to prefer QNAP for my personal use as the software side of it suits me better from a layout/where I expect to find features aspect.
 
Rroff said:
Depends a bit on what kind of stuff your backing up - probably a bit of both. Mine has built in features for syncing with cloud storage but never used them to see how well it works.
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Hmmm I think i will backup documents and stuff on the cloud then.

Amp34 said:
You can get 2TD WD portable drives now. The best bet IMO would be to backup to a couple of 2TB drives, leaving the second in 'til it's full. By the time you get to 16GB I'm sure there will be 4TB portable drives around so it's expandable. You can leave all the drives at another location for full redundancy (parents/work).

Cloud storage is great and all but only really any good for small amounts of data or if you're willing to spend thousands. Just imaggine what uploading TB of data is going to do to your internet account... ;)

I've actually been thinking about this as well and I think I've decided to go for a 4bay QNAP or synology NAS and then backup most important files to portable hdds. Mine will be used as a file server and to backup machines via time machine and windows 8 backup. Why the need for a 5 bay NAS?

Symbology also have their own RAID/WHS like system that joins the disks up as a single volume with redundancy so if one disk goes caput you replace it and build the data back up. The benefit is (AFAIK) is you can have RAID like redundancy with hard drives of multiple sizes.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your detailed reply.

I think i will do as you say and backup with 2TB portables, just wish internet was faster, especially here in Australia as its such a major drawback!

The reason for choosing the 5 bay over the 4 is that it is probably better suited for a RAID 5 setup as its only $200 more and gives me 16TB with redundancy rather than 12TB with redundancy which is quite a jump and just future proofs me a bit.

On that note would you suggest RAID 5 is the best solution in this case?

Rroff said:
IIRC reviews and initial user experience were positive but people are a bit wary as they don't yet have a proven track record being a relatively new product.
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Yeah if i am honest ill only be buying a product from Synology and QNAP and i am leaning towards Synology.
 
That is the major drawback about cloud storage at the moment IMO and something a lot of people seem to forget. I like cloud storage for documents and a few GB of photos but when you're getting in to thousands of DSLR RAW files or films then it's a bit pointless!

I don't really know yet. I'm a bit at a loss with RAID. I was planning on building a WHS system and use the inbuilt redundant volume but if I go Synology I'll probably go for Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR). It looks pretty easy to set up and very customisable (will start my server with 1TB and 2TB drives and then expand from there which looks like it could stunt my system if I chose RAID 5.

I'm probably going to go for the DS413 4 bay system, a bit overkill for me at the moment but I can see a two bay being filled up fairly quickly and hopefully this will give a few years of service. The only question is whether the transfer speeds will annoy me, around 70MB/s, although I guess that's fast enough to stream HD video and not much slower than the 100MB/s a normal HDD writes at anyway.
 
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Amp34 said:
That is the major drawback about cloud storage at the moment IMO and something a lot of people seem to forget. I like cloud storage for documents and a few GB of photos but when you're getting in to thousands of DSLR RAW files or films then it's a bit pointless!

I don't really know yet. I'm a bit at a loss with RAID. I was planning on building a WHS system and use the inbuilt redundant volume but if I go Synology I'll probably go for Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR). It looks pretty easy to set up and very customisable (will start my server with 1TB and 2TB drives and then expand from there which looks like it could stunt my system if I chose RAID 5.

I'm probably going to go for the DS413 4 bay system, a bit overkill for me at the moment but I can see a two bay being filled up fairly quickly and hopefully this will give a few years of service. The only question is whether the transfer speeds will annoy me, around 70MB/s, although I guess that's fast enough to stream HD video and not much slower than the 100MB/s a normal HDD writes at anyway.
Click to expand...

Thats an interesting article thanks for that.

I also found this link very useful for caculating your storage solution.

http://www.synology.com/support/RAID_calculator.php?lang=enu

From what i have read i can see SHR being nothing but a win-win solution, Is there anyting i am missing or any drawbacks from it?
 
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