NAS Advice

[moriarty]

Greetings WHF Community,

Having dipped a toe in the streaming pool last year with the purchase of a Squeezebox Touch (plugged into my Linn Majik system accessing music on our MacBook Pro laptops via wi-fi) I figured it's now time to invest in a NAS to hold and share all our FLAC files.

I'm thinking of ordering a QNAP TS-212 and a couple of Samsung 2TB F4 EcoGreen drives (which I would run RAID 1) all from Amazon total £322 including shipping.

... unless someone thinks this a bad move ...

 

[Anonymous]

Have a look at this 4-bay NAS with gigabit ports for around £215. (plus the drives)

You can fill it with 2x2TB drives to start, running raid5 to give you 2TB useable. You can then add 2 further drives at a later date to give just under 6TB useable space with raid5.

http://www.dabs.com/products/netgear-readynas-nv--4-bay-gigabit-desktop-network-storage-nas-4PG4.html?q=readynas

 

[professorhat]

You can fill it with 2x2TB drives to start, running raid5 to give you 2TB useable.

Except that RAID5 would need 3 disks minimum - RAID1 would be needed in that config. However, I suspect you'd then have a diffculty switching RAID levels without having to wipe all your data at a later date. Correct me if I'm wrong on that particular unit, but I've not seen a device which allows this as yet.

So, if you decide to go with that unit, I'd say the best bet would be to get 3x 2TB disks and setup as RAID5 to give you 4 TB useable space. You can then add an extra drive later on to give you 6 TB useable (though I'd say it's worth checking if this can be done "on the fly" i.e. without having to destroy and rebuild the RAID - some devices allow this but others won't).

RAID5 allows one drive out of the three to fail without losing any data. If this happens, ensure you replace the failed drive as soon as you can to ensure you have that level of protection again. Also note, you shouldn't think of RAID as a backup - it isn't, it offers resiliency against failure. If you're storing data on a NAS which is very important to you, you should ensure you still keep a backup of that data on a different device.

 

[Anonymous]

The ReadyNAS uses a thing called x-raid which is an extension of raid5. It lets u start with just 1 drive, and automatically upgrades the raid as u add extra drives.

(of course with 1 drive u have no redundancy).

 

[professorhat]

Clever!

 

[moriarty]

Thanks for the advice guys! I'll investigate the NetGear option as well.