First Time Building A Nas

lexmarkz51 · May 1, 2013

Working as a Paramedic I spend a lot of time posting in various places with nothng to do but wait for the next call. I would like to be able to access all of my data on both my laptop and my Ipad from any where. From the research that I've done I plan to use a Synology disk station ds212j with two WD red drives in raid 0. All of my data will be backed up on external hard drives.

I'm just curious if you all agree with my hardware choices? And if there is any way that i could accomplish this task for less $$$?

Incase it matters my rig is a X58 board with an I7 950 12g ram and a gtx 570

Thanks in advance!

wpirobotbuilder · May 1, 2013

No to RAID 0. It is inherently unsafe for data you care about. If you have two drives, run a RAID 1.

If you're accessing data directly from the Synology then your rig shouldn't matter.

CamisaTX · May 1, 2013

I think that a Synology NAS would be a perfect solution for you. They are easy to set up and they work!

I bought a DS213 a few months ago and love it. It's super quiet and energy efficient. I use two WD 3TB Reds in RAID 1.

Be aware with Synology "j" items because they have slower processors than non j items. This is important when considering LAN transfer speeds and the time it takes the NAS to do things (RAID rebuild, indexing files, media conversion, virus scan, etc.). In regard to LAN transfer speeds, having a good processor is important. I get about 40MB/sec write and 60MB/sec read on the DS213 (using a gigabit network). Compare this to the real world top speed rates of around 100MB/sec on gigabit. I imagine that the DS212j would have slower LAN transfer speeds than this. If you plan on moving around large files regularly, I'd recommend getting the DS213 or better.

For your case, your ISP upload speed is going to be more important, though. If you have 2MB/sec upload speeds, things might be a bit laggy (especially if you try to watch HD videos from your NAS).

A great thing about getting a Synology NAS is that you can use "Cloud Station." Imagine it as a personal DropBox, where all of your files sync on all of your devices. It's super easy to set up, and you don't even need a static IP or a DDNS. Synology gives you a custom ID which you use to log into your Cloud Station from outside of your network. Synology has a Cloud Station iOS app and downloads for Mac/PC/Linux.

http://www.synology.com/dsm/home_file_sharing_cloud_station.php

lexmarkz51 · May 1, 2013

Thanks for all the advice. It think that i am going to save up for a little bit longer and buy a ds413j with two 3tb WD red drives in a raid 1 configuration. That way i can upgrade to more drives in a raid 5 in the future if I need to.

My ISP upload speeds vary from 5-10 mb/sec. So I think I should be ok with streaming content? And I definetly intend to use all of the services and apps available from Synology to baisicaly have my own drop box.

CamisaTX · May 2, 2013

Your welcome for the help. The 4 drive models are superb for future expandability. And actually you would want to use "Synology Hybrid RAID" instead of RAID 1. This RAID type is similar to what Drobo does (albeit slightly differently) where you can mix and match HDD. It would work great for adding similar size or larger HDD later on.

Depending on how long you wait, WD may release the 4TB Reds. If they're still on schedule it should be within a few months. This creates some cool possibilities for the future.

With your ISP speed from 5 to 10 MB/sec, I think that you should be able to view HD videos fairly seamlessly. No 40 GB Blu-Ray rips, but 3 to 8 GB movies should work.