Dipping a Toe into NAS

Mik

Mik

Mik

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29 Aug 2007
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Currently I'm running a simple networked external hard drive connected to a couple of PCs. This arrangement has been working fine but backing up from the drive takes an absolute age! I was wondering whether a better solution would be getting a NAS enclosure such as the D-Link DNS-323?
I haven't used NAS enclosures before, so are they a good practical, cost effective solution for a small business/small network?

My current idea is to add two hard drives in RAID 1 so that the data is mirrored - effectively one drive acting as the back up as the data is created. I haven't used RAID 1 before either, so am I being hopelessly naive about relying on it as a means for backing up?

Cheers for any suggestions!
 
I'm in the same situation, and tempted to get the same device. What bothers me is that you are effectively doubling the cost of your storage b/c of the mirroring. Also when it comes to upgrading in the future going to cost twice as much !

However believe it is a pretty good way to get backups ( if one drive physically breaks ) obviously if you delete it not much can be done.
 
I have to admit that I skimmed over this post yesterday and did not reply. Mainly because you are asking questions that are relevant to your business and the OP did not supply enough information to make a judgement.

so are they practical?
Yes, I suspect the majority are easy to setup and use, with a clear web faced interface. Certainly more practical than alternative storage.

My NAS is very easy to setup, it takes a few clicks to give individual users access to different folders including their own backup folder with a set size.

Cost effective solution for a small business/small network?
Look at the alternatives. Back up to Tape. Back up to DVD, Back up to webspace, back up server. It all depends on your useage, or how critical those files are to your business. Tape is a good system, the media is cheap. DVD's are cheap but cannot hold much volume in gb, so you will need plenty. Webspace, variable in size, but certainly not cheap depending on how often you access it and change it and also how big the files are!

Is a NAS cheaper than those alternatives? Its certainly more flexible, likely to be loads quicker and I reckon cheaper and more reliable than rewriteable media which will deteriorate and will have a larger storage footprint.
 
Thanks for the replies - it's all good stuff! The data we're storing and wanting to back up more efficiently is obviously important for the business, however the network is really simple; two desktops and a laptop. As I've mentioned, what we're using at the moment is fine for networked access, backing up however is a real devourer of time!

Good to hear that generally NASs are easy to setup. I am tempted by the RAID 1 set up because of the time saved in getting at least a cursory backup of everything - the time saved here would probably make up for the added expense of the RAID 1!
 
In your shoes I would make a decision for either a 4 drive or 2 drive NAS. Depending on how much capacity you need...

Once you have a list of candidates then research online the network throughput of those NAS devices. Choose the quickest one with the largest amount of functions. Ensure they come bundled with backup software which can schedule backups at a time your not in the office! Look out for the option to sync the laptop everytime its connected. Regular sync's should not take much time.

Worth noting that RAID1 is no quicker than a single drive. Its just your mirroring data onto both drives. The bonus is that if one drive fails your information is still intact on the other. My particular NAS (synology 207.128) had one drive in initially (500gb) and on installation of the second gave me the choice to RAID1 (mirror) the data. It took overnight to copy the data across.

The D-Link DNS-323 you mentioned has a review which says
General performance for a RAID-0 stripe was on a par with D-Link’s quoted figures of 23MB/sec read and 15MB/sec write speeds. We tested real world performance by copying a 691MB video file from a Supermicro 3.2GHz Pentium D PC to the appliance which took 45 seconds, for average write speed of 15MB/sec. Copying the file back to the PC returned an average read speed of 21MB/sec. Usefully, you can power the drives down after so many minutes of idle time, allowing you to do your bit for saving the world as well as saving your data.
Click to expand...

This is quicker than the Synology NAS drives.
 
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Some misinformation here.

RAID is NOT backup. RAID provides redundancy, not backup. There is a difference - think about it.

Also, RAID 1 will provide performance gains, as well as redundancy. When you write data it will be the same as non RAID1, however upon read you'll see a roughly linear improvement equivelnt to 2x the speed of half of the array.
 
i just bought the dlink as i got a good deal on one second hand

will post my findings when it arrives.
 
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