NAS Build

[msommers]

Looking at building a NAS to back up my photos and music libraries. I know pretty much zero about these things so I'll need a little hand holding to be honest.

I'm just looking for a reliable place to store things, probably 12TB in size which should last me awhile, potentially with the ability to expand more if need be down the road.

With so many options out there I'm a little lost on what's the most cost effective route. I backup my stuff online but if my hard drives ever poop out I'll be downloading my stuff for awhile I'm sure so a hardware-based system would be faster if it came down to it (I think anyways).

What would be your suggestions to obtain what I'm looking for? What is an expected price to be paying for this kind of back up?

Also it seems like NAS harddrives and regular computer hard drives are different. Is this the case? If so, why?

Thanks guys.

[jacky4566]

My friend has a Drobo with 5x5TB hard drives. He loves it. They are dead simple to use so there is no chance of killing data.

From a noise, power draw, and performance standpoint WD Green and Red drives are pretty much identical. Really the only major specification difference between the two drive lines is that Red drives support TLER (critical for RAID arrays), have a longer expected lifespan, and an extra year of warranty.

[Xtrema]

2 routes, DIY or off shelve.

If you want 12TB, you probably need a 3-4 bay unit.

DIY requires software (free or paid) and a PC that has at least 4 sata ports. Does require some knowledge. FreeNAS has grown quite a bit in RAM requirement, UnRAID seems to impressive but I have not had a chance to play with it yet.

Off shelves will be units like Drobo or Synology. Most are simple and plug and play.

NAS vs desktop drive is more about the testing and expected life span. TLER isn't as critical as you think for home use. But make sure you also back up what's on the NAS. Building a NAS usually means you buy same drives from a same mfg batch. You can still be wiped out due to a bad batch of disks. It happened to me before.

[Mitsu3000gt]

I have a Synology DS 214 NAS and I love it. I have 2 X WD Red 3TB hard drives in it. Most people I talked to seemed to recommend Synology and where they have a huge edge is with the operating system, customer support, and application support which is unrivaled. They have an excellent, constantly updated OS along with really polished apps for mobile/tablet as well, so you can tap into your music/movie/file library or whatever else you want from anywhere. It's also almost completely silent. I can only hear it running if I put my ear next to it. When I was looking they seemed to also have the best hardware & speeds for the price, but that was a year or so ago now.

It has toolless drive bays with no cables needed, so it took me 10 seconds to install 2 drives (you would probably want 4 bays if you want 12TB in RAID). Synology has it's own RAID version as well for added redundancy. Also if a drive ever fails, you just pop in a new one and the device automatically does the rest (format & backup).

I haven't even scratched the surface with the stuff it can do either. It was basically a full-featured plug & play that does everything I could ever want. It works perfectly with my WDTV as well, so my computer doesn't even need to be on and I have full access.

I have this one:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX49441

The 4-bay version looks like it's $639 + drives. If you can reduce the space you think you need, it can be a lot cheaper. 6TB WD Red drives are $300 at memory express right now, which you would probably need 4 of. NAS drives are apparently more reliable and last longer, but you hear so many stories.

[schocker]

I almost built one and decided I liked the form factor and apps plus power useage of a dedicated nas
I have:
Synology 213J with 2x 3tb WD Red
Works great and the synology interface and apps are great
Qnap TS-451 with 4x 5tb WD Red
Works great, can even upgrade ram. Web interface is great but the apps are not as good video wise compared to the synology ones.

[BrknFngrs]

I would definitely recommend against the Drobo units. I used to be a big fan of their units but I had the unit unmount/remount/unmount/remount in rapid succession for no particular reason during a transfer and it ended up corrupting the whole "raid". Luckily I had backups but still incredibly frustrating and customer service wasn't helpful.

I've switched to a few QNAP units and they've been great (TS-469 Pro and a prior 4-bay version, can't recall the model number)

[taemo]

buy a dedicated NAS, found it more reliable and uses less power and heat than a tower with lots of drives plugged into.

I'm running a QNAP TS-453 with 4x 2TB Green WD drives on Raid 5 in the basement.
Gives me 6TB of space that's redundant if 1 drive fails, if 2 fails I'm SOL.
My 2TB WD Green are over 3-4 years old and still havent failed on me, the QNAP I've had it running for over a year now and haven't had a single issue.
It also alerts me if a drive goes down and I can check it's status through an app or PC browser.

That's insane though how much space you're using, all my shots taken in the past 6 years fits in a 2TB drive on my PC but then I don't shoot 36MP
I use the NAS only as movie storage and backup.

I actually have another NAS with 2 drives in RAID1 that backs up my pictures too just in case.

If you wan't redundancy, maybe look also into the cloud.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by BrknFngrs
I would definitely recommend against the Drobo units. I used to be a big fan of their units but I had the unit unmount/remount/unmount/remount in rapid succession for no particular reason during a transfer and it ended up corrupting the whole "raid". Luckily I had backups but still incredibly frustrating and customer service wasn't helpful.

I've switched to a few QNAP units and they've been great (TS-469 Pro and a prior 4-bay version, can't recall the model number)

I found my 5 bay Drobo unit has performance edge over my Synology 4 bay unit. But you are right on support. I did lose my RAID on Drobo but it was drive defect, not really Drobo's fault in the end but the troubleshooting effort is horrible.

Synology is a lot better from the apps perspective. DS Cloud basically allows me to back up everything I took on my last trip.

[revelations]

Word of caution, if a fire or theft could cause loss of your entire media collection (baby photos eg.) then I strongly urge off-site backup/archives tied into the NAS - like Amazon Glacier.

Losing 12TB would be frightening.

[Zhariak]

I've got a Synology 8-Bay unit I use for backups... It's loaded with 8x2TB Seagate drives configured in RAID5.

Pretty impressed with the unit overall. I wouldn't recommend it for iSCSI stuff (which you're no doubt NOT using it for), but for everything else it works like a champ.

Stable, fully featured, etc... No complaints. Rebuild times on replacing a failed drive is about 10 hours in my configuration (plus or minus a couple).

[ga16i]

I use a Synology DS214SE with a single Western Digital 2TB Red. It mostly stores photos by myself and the wife. We both shoot RAW+JPEG. It's an archive dating from our first digital photos back in 2002. We're about 75% full. The data storage requirements had really ballooned the last few years since I started getting into DSLR's with its large RAW files in 2011.

Before the 2TB drive, I had a 1TB drive for ~3 years with a D-LINK DNS-323. It wasn't showing any sign of failure, but I replaced it anyway. When my current 2TB drive gets to 3 years old, I plan on copying all its contents onto a new 3TB drive and so on for as long as I can. With that much data, I find it really hard to have a quick and affordable backup offsite, so I've filtered my photo collection down to 10 shots per year and keep those JPEGs on my cell phone and have that organized collection pasted all over the place. I guess my approach to having so much data is to have a NAS that stores everything, replace the hard drives every 3 years and keep a very select super important must-save backup outside the NAS.

The Synology unit works great, I really like how customizable it is. DLNA was pretty easy to setup and I can connect my elcheapo Smart TV to it wirelessly (NAS plugged into wireless router) and display my photos and videos on it. I can access the photos anywhere in the house on any device (TV, phone, tablet, etc).

[jacky4566]

ga16i does the DNLA server in the Synology unit do transcoding for MKV files? What about exploring compressed files like RAR and ZIP?

[J-D]

Love my Synology, but it's not the cheaper option. Form factor and convenience though

[revelations]

Originally posted by ga16i
With that much data, I find it really hard to have a quick and affordable backup offsite, so I've filtered my photo collection down to 10 shots per year and keep those JPEGs on my cell phone and have that organized collection pasted all over the place. I guess my approach to having so much data is to have a NAS that stores everything, replace the hard drives every 3 years and keep a very select super important must-save backup outside the NAS.

Seriously, with a price of 1c per GB, you cant go wrong with AWS as for offsite NAS backups

I had no idea until last year how cheap it was. Its not intended for constant retrievals however.


http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/

† Glacier is designed with the expectation that retrievals are infrequent and unusual, and data will be stored for extended periods of time. You can retrieve up to 5% of your average monthly storage (pro-rated daily) for free each month. If you choose to retrieve more than this amount of data in a month, you are charged a retrieval fee starting at $0.01 per gigabyte. Learn more. In addition, there is a pro-rated charge of $0.03 per gigabyte for items deleted prior to 90 days. Learn more.

[msommers]

A lot of really great information in here.

It seems like 12TB might be pretty pricey at this point and I don't need that much space, but will eventually as my photo library and catalogues continue to grow at an alarming rate, hence the thought. But maybe I should hold out until that needs surfaces to save some significant dollars.

Also if I'm going to run RAID, which seems to be standard on a NAS for you guys (though for me, it's just another backup spot), it may not be required and need half as many drives.

I have the photos on my internal drive on the desktop and also uploaded to a syncing cloud service. I also have some on an external drive but a NAS seems like a more reliable, long-term solution as a hardware form of backup, and faster to recover if my desktop poops out.

[ryanallan]

I built a FreeNAS box out of lego last year. Still running strong.
4 x 4TB in ZFS-2 for a total of 8TB with 2 disks of redundancy.
Consumes 40W under load.
I get about 50MB/s transfer speeds.

It all depends on how much admin work you want to do. If all you want is somewhere to store photos, buy something. If you're a techy and want a project, build a FreeNAS box!

Google also offers unlimited photo storage now (for photos under 16MP).

[msommers]

I'm not completely tech retarded, I did build my desktop but I think it was more a miracle a fire didn't start. But I'm also lazy and want the simplest thing to deal with when it comes to a hardware-based backup platform.

Sounds like a Synology DS214/414 with 4TB WD red drives might be the answer!

For you guys running things in RAID, do you also use an online storage? Or is this your only place for playing music/video and hence want the redundancy?

[Asian_defender]

I have an 8 bay synology and I love it.
Spend the extra money now and get the 414, those extra bays will do you good
If you want to run raid try the synology hybrid raid. For a 4 bay it might take up too much of your storage. RAID 5 might be your best bet.
I don't bother with online storage as you'll be notified well in advance if one of your hard drives is going. It's hot swappable too

I use mine primarily for a central place to access all my music/video. Uses way less power than keeping a computer on 24/7

[msommers]

It lets you know if a harddrive is gonna go? Is there something I can install on my desktop to do the same thing?

Off to google what RAID 5 is

[taemo]

music and videos can be re-downloaded, pictures not.
i triple backup my photo library which is puny compared to yours (<1TB) but go through your catalog.

especially BIF shots, do you need 10+ of the same shot?