NAS recommendations

[silent]

hi

i need a 2 bay nas drive with 2 x 2tb drives for mirrored data saving.

any good recommendation up to £250?

 

[pcfarrar]

All the decent performance 2 bay NAS systems like the Synology DS218+ start at £250 without drives.

 

[silent]

are the western digital ones good?

 

[pcfarrar]

are the western digital ones good?

They are pretty poor in comparison to a QNAP or Synology NAS.

If your budget is really tight you could look for a QNAP TS-231P or Synology DS218j.

 

[silent]

thanks i did look at the synologys.

 

[bledd]

Also get an external 2tb drive to connect to the Synology for backups.

 

[silent]

the syn is the backup drive, can't a raid 1 setup do that?

 

[Liquidfox]

the syn is the backup drive, can't a raid 1 setup do that?

If the unit goes bang and fries the drives you've got no backup. If you accidentally delete a file, you've got no backup.

 

[bremen1874]

That'll depend if the NAS is used as a backup drive or as a storage drive.

 

[gizmoy2k]

I went from a NL54 microserver to a qnap, never looked back.

A bit of a learning curve but it does everything and more than I need

 

[bledd]

Raid 1 is two identical drives of data. If one fails, then you can insert a new one and it will copy the data back to it.

If you had a crypto virus or deleted a file, you'd just have two drives they have a virus or deleted from both.

RAID IS NOT A BACKUP.

 

[mmj_uk]

Plus if you have an unstable processor/memory, a non-ECC system or no UPS to deal with power cuts corruption can still occur during writing so like bledd says even with RAID 1 it's sensible to make regular backups.

 

[silent]

it will be for backup purposes, copies of important stuff will be on a usb drive as well for using out the house. its for a family shared backup drive. 3 laptops and tablets logged onto the network.

i did have a hp micro before but couldn't get on with it. may be i should reinvestigate that but the missus needs to use it and she isn't tech savy nor bothered to learn.

 

[hornetstinger]

If it's just docs could pick up second hand Nas my older qnap will do for most people only issue maximum drive size supported. But if you buy say dns-323 with alt f firmware then it'll support 8tb and bigger

 

[BigT]

Do you still have the micro server? What did you not get on with? Do you think it would be a better experience if you installed a dedicated NAS OS on it to make it an appliance? Seems silly to spend more money than necessary when you have a good chassis and perhaps the addition of FreeNAS, UnRaid, OMV or similar would make it better. Heck, put XPenology on it and you've saved buying yourself a Synology chassis but would have the same experience as if you had.

 

[silent]

I had it up and running but it was too loud in the lounge. not sure if it was faulty but it was really noisy. sold it a couple of years ago. its moved on a few gens since. might give it another go.

 

[Avalon]

I own more micro servers than most (4), they are all relatively quiet. Personally i’d put them somewhere other than the lounge, but they have at various times spent months in my lounge and at least two at a time.

As to ‘too complicated’ it’s a NAS, it sits quietly in the corner and serves files at a minimum, you map the share to each device and move on with your life, if that's too complicated, then is a NAS really for you?

Can I ask what exactly were you running on the microserver that would cause them to be noisy and complicated? I ask because both of the above points suggest you may have made an inappropriate OS choice or run programs that may not have been ideally suited/configured for the hardware.

Unraid, FreeNAS or Xpenology are all decent options that are dedicated NAS/home server distributions, something like WHS back in the day perhaps, but realistically a NAS doesn’t need to run windows.

 

[silent]

it had WHS on it and i ran plex - it stored movies and music. maybe it was a loud fan/wooden flooring that made it really noticeable. i have a WD my book attahced to the router at present but want something a bit faster and more secure. i could use that as the backup device for important docs and pictures.

 

[Avalon]

Then you were running it as a server and not a NAS - transcoding on Plex for example would push anything up to and including an N54L to the limit. That still doesn’t explain the complicated part though, what exactly was too complicated? Presumably you’ll have mapped a network drive and told your significant other to save stuff to it?

 

[pcfarrar]

Better off just getting a Synology DS218+. It works great with Plex, using hardware transcoding it can transcode multiple 1080p streams. It's also compact, quiet and a piece of cake to setup.