NAS beginner questions

[Blizzforte]

Hi,

 

I really need your advice since I'm a total beginner. I just spend 500 dollars on two external HDD's, one of them for backup. Then I realized that I'd rather get a NAS because 

 

- I don't want a bunch of cables on my desk

- don't want to occupy all my ports

- don't want to hear all the noise they make all day

- want to access my data from my iPad and laptop 

 

So I think I just wasted all that money?

 

For redundency, should I buy two NAS or one NAS with two HDDs in RAID 1? RAID 1, because I feel like it's the easiest to have one HDD just mirror the other. That way I just need to copy the files manually from my PC once. Is that correct? 

 

There's also the question about RAID. If I do RAID and have the files all over the drives, so that I can access data more convenient, and can add storage that adds up to the existing storage... what if one drive fails and takes all the other drives with it? Can I just buy a seperate NAS with the same amount of drives in RAID as a backup for the 1. NAS?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id get one nas, and make sure you have good backups. Raid is not a backup. Id backup to something like a cloud provider or external drives. But you can backup to anouther nas if you want.

[the gamer that is bad]

7 hours ago, Blizzforte said:

Hi,

 

I really need your advice since I'm a total beginner. I just spend 500 dollars on two external HDD's, one of them for backup. Then I realized that I'd rather get a NAS because 

 

- I don't want a bunch of cables on my desk

- don't want to occupy all my ports

- don't want to hear all the noise they make all day

- want to access my data from my iPad and laptop 

 

So I think I just wasted all that money?

 

For redundency, should I buy two NAS or one NAS with two HDDs in RAID 1? RAID 1, because I feel like it's the easiest to have one HDD just mirror the other. That way I just need to copy the files manually from my PC once. Is that correct? 

 

There's also the question about RAID. If I do RAID and have the files all over the drives, so that I can access data more convenient, and can add storage that adds up to the existing storage... what if one drive fails and takes all the other drives with it? Can I just buy a seperate NAS with the same amount of drives in RAID as a backup for the 1. NAS?

you might be able to use those external hhd s in a nas

[Blizzforte]

16 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get one nas, and make sure you have good backups. Raid is not a backup. Id backup to something like a cloud provider or external drives. But you can backup to anouther nas if you want.

If I understand this correctly, first I have to get a NAS with 10TB, then another backup NAS with 10TB, and then a cloud storage with 10TB? This is going to be extremely expensive for only 10TB... 

[paddy-stone]

37 minutes ago, Blizzforte said:

If I understand this correctly, first I have to get a NAS with 10TB, then another backup NAS with 10TB, and then a cloud storage with 10TB? This is going to be extremely expensive for only 10TB... 

No, if you want a NAS, then that's your data repository, so you store stuff there instead of your internal HDDs on your devices. Then you need a backup for your data if it's important to you, so that if your NAS drives fail you don't lose your files... preferably more than 1 backup just in case that backup fails too, but that's personal choice.

 

I mean put it like this. What would you do if your NAS has a critical failure, such as the drives failing? if you don't have a backup you've lost all your files. If they're just media files like films/tv then they can be replaced fairly easily. But if they're family photos, work projects etc then you'd be extremely upset if you lost them right? so you'd at least want to backup any files you consider important, either with an external HDD/SSD on any of your PCs/laptops or cloud storage etc. So I'd at least backup those files you consider important.

 

It can get expensive, but the other option is to maybe lose your files, so think which is more important.

[Blizzforte]

So this means I need one NAS only and one external HDD only? Let's say this external drive is 10TB and the NAS is 10 TB. The NAS is upgradable but I want the data to be in RAID so that when I store the data I can upgrade easily and the added storage adds automatically. But if one drive fails, everything is gone... This is extremely complicated. At this point this feels like advanced astrophysics. 

 

Cloud storage is not an option. The only "private" one is MEGA that has more than 10TB, the rest of all the cloud storage providers only have 1-4TB which is not enough for backups at all. So cloud is not an option here. This is mainly for media and that quickly adds up. Then again I can't spend tens of thousands of dollars on storage that's insane. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Blizzforte said:

If I understand this correctly, first I have to get a NAS with 10TB, then another backup NAS with 10TB, and then a cloud storage with 10TB? This is going to be extremely expensive for only 10TB... 

This really depends on the level of risk your willing to take. If this was a buiness, id do that level of backups for sure, maybe more. For home use, its probably fine to just backup to a external hdd or two.

[Blizzforte]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

This really depends on the level of risk your willing to take. If this was a buiness, id do that level of backups for sure, maybe more. For home use, its probably fine to just backup to a external hdd or two.

Ah, ok. Thanks. Should I use RAID? I think about starting with only single drive in the NAS. Can I add RAID later on when I buy the second without losing any data? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

15 minutes ago, Blizzforte said:

Ah, ok. Thanks. Should I use RAID? I think about starting with only single drive in the NAS. Can I add RAID later on when I buy the second without losing any data? 

A single disk is probably fine. 

 

Adding a second drive to to raid really depends on the drive model and how its setup.

[Blizzforte]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

A single disk is probably fine. 

 

Adding a second drive to to raid really depends on the drive model and how its setup.

My choice would be a WD Red or Seagate IronWolf. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

33 minutes ago, Blizzforte said:

My choice would be a WD Red or Seagate IronWolf. 

Don't get a wd red, get a wd red plus instead. The wd reds are smr, and shouldn't be used in a nas.

[Blizzforte]

22 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Don't get a wd red, get a wd red plus instead. The wd reds are smr, and shouldn't be used in a nas.

WD Red are smr? What does that mean?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Blizzforte said:

WD Red are smr? What does that mean?

SMR is a hdd tech that makes them much slower for random writes. This can cause raid rebuilds to be much slower, and since price is simmilar id avoid them.

[Jameszy]

Well, you could run a 4 bay NAS and populate 2 drives with 10tb drives.. run them mirrored for a live backup... or as seperate volumes and sync between the 2.. or 2 seperate 1 bay nas and backup between the 2 over the lan.

 

with the 4 bay you'd have space to increase your storage... while you could add more 1 bay nas's in the future, its cumbersum and silly.

[Cavalry Canuck]

On 2/14/2021 at 6:33 PM, the gamer that is bad said:

you might be able to use those external hhd s in a nas

They could also be utilized as a remote/disconnected backup outside the NAS.

[Blizzforte]

On 2/17/2021 at 7:31 PM, Jameszy said:

Well, you could run a 4 bay NAS and populate 2 drives with 10tb drives.. run them mirrored for a live backup... or as seperate volumes and sync between the 2.. or 2 seperate 1 bay nas and backup between the 2 over the lan.

 

with the 4 bay you'd have space to increase your storage... while you could add more 1 bay nas's in the future, its cumbersum and silly.

Why would it be cumbersome and silly? Is it enough to have one NAS only and one external drive as a backup only? I’m no millionaire so I can’t buy several 10+ TB drives plus cloud storage as a backup each time I add 10TB to a NAS. Also that would not only be impossibly expensive but also extremely cumbersome to backup to 3 or 4 drives each time. Also when you’re going above 10TB and you want to add to that, cloud storage is just out of the question.

So one NAS and one external drive as a backup, is that enough? 

[Cavalry Canuck]

2 minutes ago, Blizzforte said:

Why would it be cumbersome and silly? Is it enough to have one NAS only and one external drive as a backup only? I’m no millionaire so I can’t buy several 10+ TB drives plus cloud storage as a backup each time I add 10TB to a NAS. Also that would not only be impossibly expensive but also extremely cumbersome to backup to 3 or 4 drives each time. Also when you’re going above 10TB and you want to add to that, cloud storage is just out of the question.

So one NAS and one external drive as a backup, is that enough? 

You think multiple 10+TB drives are expensive? Building 3 or 4 separate systems to achieve the same storage capacity you could get using one system with larger drives is even more expensive. 

 

In my opinion, using the NAS and the External Hard Drive is sufficient “backup,” so long as they are kept in separate locations (different buildings at a minimum, preferably different towns), and you update the External Hard Drive with some regularity.

[Blizzforte]

1 hour ago, Cavalry Canuck said:

You think multiple 10+TB drives are expensive? Building 3 or 4 separate systems to achieve the same storage capacity you could get using one system with larger drives is even more expensive. 

 

In my opinion, using the NAS and the External Hard Drive is sufficient “backup,” so long as they are kept in separate locations (different buildings at a minimum, preferably different towns), and you update the External Hard Drive with some regularity.

Of course multiple systems are more expensive and I don’t want to pay for several NAS that’s just overkill. I need it just for media like movies and a lot of music. So that means for every extra NAS hard drive I buy I need to buy an extra external hard drive with the same amount of storage as a backup...

[Cavalry Canuck]

1 hour ago, Blizzforte said:

Of course multiple systems are more expensive and I don’t want to pay for several NAS that’s just overkill. I need it just for media like movies and a lot of music. So that means for every extra NAS hard drive I buy I need to buy an extra external hard drive with the same amount of storage as a backup...

Well that’s what he meant by it being cumbersome and silly to not leave yourself room for expansion. You may not need a NAS that can slot that many drives now, but it could come in handy down the road. It’s better to spend a little extra now than a whole bunch later.

 

Yes/no/maybe. Honestly that depends on a lot of factors. Frankly this thread is a bit cumbersome, so I am just going to go through my speal to try and answer all the questions you asked as best as possible. I don’t remember you explicitly stating that your External Hard Drive(s) were 10TB, but you used that figure in your example above, so I am going to roll with it.

 

At the most basic level, the number of drives you use for storage doesn’t really matter. A Terabyte is a Terabyte. Your 10TB NAS could be a single 10TB drive, two 5TB drives, five 2TB drives, ten 1 TB drives, or some other exotic combination (two 4TB drives and one 2TB drives, for example). Regardless of the arrangement, if you don’t do anything fancy, you have 10TB of total storage space to play with. Your 10TB External Hard Drive will accept all the data off your 10TB NAS Array regardless of how many drives that data is stored over in the Array. If you add more storage to your NAS and you wish to back it up with External Hard Drives, you will need more External Hard Drive capacity. You can do that by either buying more of them as you need them, or getting a bigger one.

 

Now to get into RAID. Let’s spitball a little bit and say your 10TB NAS Array consists of two 5TB drives.

 

If you don’t need 10TB of storage, you can just mirror those two drives. They will store the same data on both. If one drive fails, you can replace it and all your data will be copied over to the new drive without the use of your External Hard Drive. Perk here is that you’ve only used half the available space on the External Hard Drive. You can expand the storage capacity of your NAS down the road with more/bigger drives (up to 10TB), and still have enough room on your Externals Hard Drive that you don’t need to get another.

 

If you do need the full 10TB of space, then what you can do is stripe the data across both drives. If one drive shits the bed on you, you will have to replace the drive, reformat the Array, and then use your External Hard Drive backup to replace the lost data. If you want to expand the capacity of your NAS down the road, you’ll need either a bigger External Hard Drive, or more of them.

 

There are other basic RAID formats, but you need four or more drives for them to really be useful. The one I use is called RAID 5. Rather than the Drives being mirrored, they are stripped, but with a parity drive. This allows the loss of one drive in an array without data loss. 

 

This works because the RAID controller sets a value that every stripe must add up too. These stripes are in large data blocks of a fixed value, but it is easier to wrap your head around what is going on when you imagine it in individual bits on a stripe.

 

You have data striped across four disks. Every stripe must add up to 0, be it because all four disks have a 0 bit, two have a 0 bit and two have a 1 bit, or all four have a 1 bit. The parity drive is what makes the stripe add up to that value. Normally there is no one specific parity drive. Instead, the parities for each strip are distributed amongst the drives. I’ve made a very basic example below, and the parity for each stripe is indicated with an asterisk*.

 

1,0,0,1* = 0

1,1,0*,0 = 0

0,0*,0,0 = 0

1*,1,1,1 = 0

 

Say the 3rd disk fails on you.

 

1,0,x,1* = 0

1,1,x,0 = 0

0,0*,x,0 = 0

1*,1,x,1 = 0

 

The RAID controller just does the arithmetic, drawing from the known values and what they should add up too. From the first stripe, third stripe, and fourth stripe, two pieces of raw data are put together with the parity data, and compared to the intended value. The missing data is reconstructed from this (Drive one is 0, three is 0, and four is 1). For the second stripe, no raw data was lost. All that will be needed is for the parity to be recalculated in the same manner.

 

I bring this up because it may be possible (not 100% on this) with some software RAID controllers to use your External Hard Drive as a parity drive. Then your NAS storage can get as large as you want it to be without needing more external drives (as long as none of your NAS drives are larger than your External Hard Drive). If one of your NAS drives dies on you, swap it out, plug in your External Hard Drive, and rebuild the lost data. But by doing this, your External Hard Drive isn’t a backup, it’s really just making for a more complicated (and vulnerable) RAID Array.

 

The reason you want the External Hard Drive as a backup, regardless of the RAID setup you choose, is in the event of a total failure of your Array. Whether it’s a virus/ransomware attack, the NAS ends up bricked/wiping the drives some how, theft, a physical calamity (water damage, fire, nukes flying because WWIII, etc.), the backup will still exist. This is why your backup should be detached and off-site. As long as you have that backup somewhere safe, you can always build a new array and preserve most/all of your data. But to do that properly, your backup must have enough capacity to store all the data on your NAS.

 

I suppose the long and the short of it is, backing up your data properly is going to be expensive no matter how you do it. Buying more and/or larger External Hard Drives as your backup when the capacity of your NAS increases will always be cheaper than building/buying additional NASs to be your backup.

 

I hope this helps. If I just left you feeling even more confused, feel free to tell me to buggar off.

[Jameszy]

adding more 1 bay nas' is adding complication and expense to something that could have been done if planned properly. Eventually, you'd spend more money on 1 bay nas's, cables, power, the set up time and complexity, than that if you bought a multibay nas to start with.