NAS Advice - 1st time

[JGBR]

Hello

Thinking about finally embracing the idea of my own cloud in the home,

Have a mixed environment of Windows 7 machines, multiple Apple Macs, Ipads, iphones, Android and linux devices.Mac support being the more critical.

The problem being that I have a master machine where much of my photos, vids, academic research is located and I keep having to fire up the 1200W of Mac Pro just to access the data or load it on keyfob. This is of course causing problems as I can not remember which file is the latest and what is located where.

I think a NAS would resolve this issue?

My concerns are if I build my own NAS will I be able to see it just as a Hard drive on my desktop (either windows or Mac) as that is all i really want? For example the Synology software confused me alittle.

What about power saving? - Also any inherent issue with switching the power on and off to it? What about data security?


Do people think RAID is best to have for this?


Also keen to hear about anyone's particular experience with starting out with first NAS.

I will be connecting to a Airport Extreme (Latest edition) router and a Switch.

Thanks

 

[Doco]

I've only had my first nas for a few weeks now, did a bit of research into what was available etc but ended up just building now own (half due to the cost of nas without drives and half because I just wanted a reason for a new build lol), one of my main priorities was power usage so I tried my best to select some low power components (I'm sure I could have done it better as I also wanted to have some sort of power but I think I over did it with my cpu, I've not seen it used in any meaningful way lol). As for the O/S I went for freenas - because it was free and one of the first I came across, their is most likely a better O/S to run but I don't mind freenas atm, it can be a bit tricky to get set-up (but their are plenty of guides about so it's handy enough in this respect).
After the hard drive has been configured to share files to access it (on my windows 7 desktop, but I'm certain it'l be the same on a mac) I open up my network and enter the freenas pc that appears, I can now see/have access to all folders/files on the nas.

 

[!bluetonic!]

I had a Lacie Raid USB device with 2 hard drives, 1 TB space in total.

This was originally connected to a Linksys NSLU2 device. This was power efficient, but slow to access things on the drive via my network.

This unit then was connected to a Shuttle PC running Debian Linux on a command line. Files were shared to Windows PCs via Samba. I added a gigabit PCI network card to speed things up. The uptime has been fantastic. The speed was good.

Samba was used to give certain people (me) access rights to certain areas .

The Lacie took care of RAID and when I had a HDD fail on me, all my data was safe.

I then purchased 2 x 1.5 TB drives. The Lacie duly copied from the 500 GB to the 1.5 TB drive, and then mirrored it when I put the other 1.5 TB drive in.

I have now purchased a router with a USB port that does Samba, however I recently moved and the Lacie unit failed. There was a screw loose in the caddy and I think I shorted the motherboard.

So now I'm looking for a new RAID USB DAS unit to replace it.

 

[ChrisD.]

I rate the Synology NAS's, great interface and features. Just make sure you don't skimp on CPU/RAM especially if you want to start using the NAS for sabnzbd etc.

 

[demon8991]

I rate the Synology NAS's, great interface and features. Just make sure you don't skimp on CPU/RAM especially if you want to start using the NAS for sabnzbd etc.

+1

My suggestion would be go for a Synology device, they are the best NAS on the market and have excellent software and features.


This would be my two bay recommendation which will give you 4TB with redundancy:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Synology Diskstation DS214 2 Bay Gigabit Ethernet Network Attached Storage Enclosure £239.99
2 x Western Digital Caviar Red 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD40EFRX - OEM HDD £161.99 (£323.98)
Total : £573.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).



This would be my four bay recommendation which will give you 4TB with redundancy but with the opportunity to put a couple more 4TB drives in to provide you with 12TB with redundancy:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Synology Diskstation DS414 4 Bay Gigabit Ethernet Network Attached Storage Enclosure £371.99
2 x Western Digital Caviar Red 4TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD40EFRX - OEM HDD £161.99 (£323.98)
Total : £705.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 

[Deleted member 76686]

Personally I'm on my third Synology, I started with a DS207 then moved to a DS410 and now a DS1512+ with 5x3TB drives in RAID 6.

It stores all our photos, films, music, documents, etc. and I've set it up to be accessed by computers, TVs, media streamers, phones, etc in different ways. As an example on my computer I just use network places but on my mums she saves directly to the NAS when anything is saved in her Documents folder so she doesn't have to worry about anything going wrong on her Laptop. I use quickconnect function that Synology use to be able to access it easily while out and about if and when required.

I've got it setup so it turns off at night and starts up again in the morning, in essence it is off when people are asleep. The hard drives also sleep after 20 minutes of not being accessed although this naturally means a slight delay when starting from sleep.

As for how Apple computers are with Synology products I can't help you with since I don't have any.