NAS Setup

B1ng

B1ng

B1ng

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4 Jan 2010
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Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire
Hi,

I am in the current predicament of running out of storage on my 1Tb HDD, something I thought could never happen! I am currently looking around at possibly purchasing a new, bigger HDD, but remembered that family members like to access files such as music from my PC. Would there be merit to a Network Storage Device?

If a NAS setup would be suitable, I would be looking for RAID 1 compatibility, along with a pair of 2Tb + drives.

Anyone with experience in this area, could you please give me some recommendations or advice?

Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
B1ng said:
Hi,

I am in the current predicament of running out of storage on my 1Tb HDD, something I thought could never happen! I am currently looking around at possibly purchasing a new bigger HDD, but remembered that family members like to access files such as music from my PC. Would there be merit to a Network Storage Device?

Anyone with experience in this area, could you please give me some recommendations or advice?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Im in the same predicament. Im going to keep an eye on this post too. The question for me is whether to buy a ready built NAS setup or build one for myself from scratch. some of the NAS i seen a little too pricey for my liking. Im also budgeting for a new sandy bridge build and HTPC.
Looking forward to the opinions and recommendations of others.
 
Look at anything in the Synology range. I have the DS211 which is an excellent piece of kit. The UI is just awesome - so easy to use.

I have 2 x 2TB Samsung F4s.
 
ringo747 said:
Look at anything in the Synology range.
Click to expand...

+1

I have the DS211j with 2x 2tb western digital greens.
Had it since new year and its been faultless. One of the best features to me is having permissions and users. So I can hide stuff ( :rolleyes: ) from other users and restrict them to their own folders.

Love it!
 
I recently set myself up with a Netgear Stora dual slot NAS (around £60) and then bought two WD Caviar 2TB drives (£65 ea) and now have a rather tidy 2TB raided NAS for a grand total of £190.

If I may though you need to be careful with the WD Greens as they use a technology called LLC for powersaving that park the drive head every 8 seconds. The drives are specced for a lifetime LLC of 300k and as the Linux software sits there and writes a little every few minutes you can see that 300K evaporating pretty rapidly.

The solution is to run a Western Digital app called wdidle3.exe to reconfigure the drive to disable LLC. So far a couple of weeks in and I've not had a problem.
 
Embed said:
+1

I have the DS211j with 2x 2tb western digital greens.
Had it since new year and its been faultless. One of the best features to me is having permissions and users. So I can hide stuff ( :rolleyes: ) from other users and restrict them to their own folders.

Love it!
Click to expand...

Two mentions for Synology already :) ...heading off to their website right now lol
 
Another vote for the Synology units...i picked up a DS 211j a few mths ago and have to say its a doddle to set up...in fact ive ordered a few more for my office as they are that simple and easy to use.

Cant wrong at the price point as well....i have a paid of WD 1.5tb HDs and its superb.
 
I have a readynas duo which cost about £125, EASY setup, DLNA and just works perfectly.
Only problem is it only has 2 slots, if in the future your collection expands you would need to purchase again.

I did a lot of research into it and decided a better solution for next time is probably an itx build, with nas case and a usb install of FREENAS, as it has much better expandability.
 
Had a netgear stora which was ok for the money but after finding how useful it was having all my data in one place accessable to all and having ago on the synology system I promptly upgraded to a synology ds411j after a months use of the stora.
 
sHo0sH said:
I have a readynas duo which cost about £125, EASY setup, DLNA and just works perfectly.
Only problem is it only has 2 slots, if in the future your collection expands you would need to purchase again.

I did a lot of research into it and decided a better solution for next time is probably an itx build, with nas case and a usb install of FREENAS, as it has much better expandability.
Click to expand...

I have been looking at Synology, i can see why some posters on this thread have them, they look sturdy, and upto to the job so to speak. But as in the quote above i think an itx FREENAS build is probably looking more suitable for me, the expandability is swaying me that way. Cant knoch the Synology though, who knows, might even end up buying one yet.
 
Building a FREENAS system is fine and can probably get a little more for the build cpu wise but you can't fault a prebuilt NAS be it synology or another make for the ability to literally just plug it into the network, setup your raid and go thats pretty much it without any fiddling about.
 
What is the best Raid for storing all your home videos, photos, games, movies etc on a NAS Server? Looking at various post all over the interweb Raid 5 seem to be the chosen one for this.
Anyone using any other Raid or does 5 seem to be the defacto for a home NAS.
 
If you have the budget I'd say Drobo.

I have a DroboPro with 8 HDDS at 12TB redundant storage. All my media is on it, and will handle simultaneous dual drive failure if required :)
 
EVH said:
If you have the budget I'd say Drobo.

I have a DroboPro with 8 HDDS at 12TB redundant storage. All my media is on it, and will handle simultaneous dual drive failure if required :)
Click to expand...


Serious question, but what's your plan if the controller dies in the Drobo? When I was researching data storage solutions, this was the main fault I found with the Drobo, and ultimately the reason I didn't go for it.
 
Abz Hussain said:
What is the best Raid for storing all your home videos, photos, games, movies etc on a NAS Server? Looking at various post all over the interweb Raid 5 seem to be the chosen one for this.
Anyone using any other Raid or does 5 seem to be the defacto for a home NAS.
Click to expand...

Depends what size NAS you have and how many drives you can only realisticly run raid5 with a 3bay or more.

2bay NAS (2x2tb) either set up as
Raid 0 where it adds both giving about 3.8Tb total storage or,
Raid 1 where you have about 1.8tb of total storage but both drives are mirrored so if one fails you can replace it and no data will be lost as it will rebuild a copy from the remaining drive.

4bay NAS (4x2tb)
Raid 0 (about 7.6tb) all drives used no data protection if a drive fails chances are you will loose the lot
Raid 1 (about 3.6tb) basically sets up the drives pairs ars Raid 0 with one pairs backing up the others again if a drive fails should be able to replace that drive and it will rebuild no data loss
Raid 5 - 3 of the drives are built as raid 0 giving about 5.6tb of storage with the 4th drive holding redundent data to rebuild the raid if one of the other drives fail.
 
sypher365 said:
Depends what size NAS you have and how many drives you can only realisticly run raid5 with a 3bay or more.

2bay NAS (2x2tb) either set up as
Raid 0 where it adds both giving about 3.8Tb total storage or,
Raid 1 where you have about 1.8tb of total storage but both drives are mirrored so if one fails you can replace it and no data will be lost as it will rebuild a copy from the remaining drive.

4bay NAS (4x2tb)
Raid 0 (about 7.6tb) all drives used no data protection if a drive fails chances are you will loose the lot
Raid 1 (about 3.6tb) basically sets up the drives pairs ars Raid 0 with one pairs backing up the others again if a drive fails should be able to replace that drive and it will rebuild no data loss
Raid 5 - 3 of the drives are built as raid 0 giving about 5.6tb of storage with the 4th drive holding redundent data to rebuild the raid if one of the other drives fail.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that Sypher365. Very informative. I think im comfortable with Raid 5 :)
 
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