True value of a NAS??

[kris44dad]

At one time, I was hot to get a NAS device for my home network.  Nothing professional just my stuff, probably a Synology product, or similar. But then I heard compelling arguments that stopped me.

 

1) If the box itself fails (not the drives),  your data is still just as gone until you get the box replaced due to some of the proprietary raid'ish solutions offered by some of these products. (Maybe not even then.) You need to back up your data elsewhere, in case that happens.  

2) If you use a backup PC with multiple drives and "standard RAID implementations" {huge gain of salt}, the data on the drives is at least recoverable once the failed hardware is replaced.

 

I opted to forgo any decision and stick with external USB storage hung off my router, accessible over the home network. I admit not perfect.  I'm sure there is older data on the backup, not present elsewhere on the network. But that would be the case with a NAS also. I thought, why have a NAS if you need to back up to a third location anyway?  (Oh, and I get the reasoning to having an offsite backup, in case the house burns down. I am using cloud storage for everything that needs an off-site backup.)

 

Your thoughts?

[WereCatf]

7 minutes ago, kris44dad said:

Your thoughts?

I wouldn't imagine #1 is anything to worry about. Maybe it was in the past, but many of the big NAS-manufacturers seem to let you take this disks and just chuck them in another box if you were e.g. upgrading the box to a newer model nowadays, all without any special hassle, so replacing a failed box should work exactly the same.

 

Besides, Best Practices(TM) states that you should have a third copy of all the data anyways, so whether the box can just be replaced as-is or not shouldn't matter.

[Hugh54321]

We use nas at work coz it services many devices and we use more data than can fit on one disk. I have no idea why anyone would use an Enterprise solution at home. I'm using Intel nuc as a router and nextcloud server for our phones. I don't need more than that

[WereCatf]

53 minutes ago, Hugh54321 said:

I have no idea why anyone would use an Enterprise solution at home.

What do you mean? NAS-boxes are not an enterprise-solution.

[Lurick]

22 hours ago, kris44dad said:

1) If the box itself fails (not the drives),  your data is still just as gone until you get the box replaced due to some of the proprietary raid'ish solutions offered by some of these products. (Maybe not even then.) You need to back up your data elsewhere, in case that happens.  

2) If you use a backup PC with multiple drives and "standard RAID implementations" {huge gain of salt}, the data on the drives is at least recoverable once the failed hardware is replaced.

I've got a QNAP and I pulled drives out that were in a RAID, threw them back into the enclosure all mixed up and QNAP detected the drives, the RAID, and all my data was there and accessible. I know others who've had their enclosure fail, pull out the disks and throw them into another enclosure and had the same experience with no data loss.

[paddy-stone]

Same with freenas, have moved drives to new hardware, and just had the freenas OS say it detected that there was existing data and imported very quickly and with no problems.

[Mihle]

With Unraid you don't even have to plug them in to something with Unraid, because no file is striped. You don't get more speed tho....

[PeterT]

The purpose of a NAS is that it can handle more than one drive, the files are accessible from anywhere in the network, and many users can access it at any time. If you don't need 24/7 operation, and just occasionally need the files, your solution is perfectly ok. 

Personally I use my NAS more than file sharing in the local network. It runs backups via Syncthing, a Plex server for 4K streaming to the living room tv, a Nextcloud server for large file sharing to other people, a torrent client of course.

Whileit's cool and everything to have a NAS, but you're right, not everyone need to have one. 

[kris44dad]

On 12/9/2019 at 11:16 AM, Mihle said:

With Unraid you don't even have to plug them in to something with Unraid, because no file is striped. You don't get more speed tho....

What was the file system you used, in this case? Are there certain file systems you should use [or not] to insure recovery, even if you must recover with 'dissimilar' hardware? Also, is Unraid compatable with UPS units that send a signal (probably over USB) to allow a graceful shutdown? I would likely only use a UPS that has enough capacity for a shutdown, not one of the larger ones. How does Unraid handle a power outage, assuming the drives are not being actively written to at the time of the outage?

[Salacious B Crum]

On 12/16/2019 at 2:16 PM, kris44dad said:

What was the file system you used, in this case? Are there certain file systems you should use [or not] to insure recovery, even if you must recover with 'dissimilar' hardware? Also, is Unraid compatable with UPS units that send a signal (probably over USB) to allow a graceful shutdown? I would likely only use a UPS that has enough capacity for a shutdown, not one of the larger ones. How does Unraid handle a power outage, assuming the drives are not being actively written to at the time of the outage?

the File system is xfs or btrfs but I have experience with that my ups is USB and integrates with unRAID just fine have had several outages and no issues or data loss