Advice on NAS system

Timmyethy123 · May 16, 2021

Hi guys and gals!

I'm semi-familiar with NAS systems and was wondering if you could help me out here.

My dad recently asked me if I could advice him in a NAS system to back up all his CD's, DVD's and Blu-rays. I'm totaly down to configuring and tinkering with it myself by using FreeNas or something like that.

What has me guessing is the enclosure and the storage capacity since I can't find anything online that gives me a kinda solid answer (For CD's acording to what I could find, it could range between 5 and 200 MB).

He needs to store about 500 CD's (Music, about 20-25 tracks per CD), 50 DVD's (All movies ranging from 1,5-2 hours in length), and about 25-30 blu-rays (Mostly concerts ranging from 60-90 minutes).

He wants to put it in RAID 1, to always have a backup of his files since he's thinking of getting rid of the originals after backing them up on a NAS.

Cost wise, we're looking at about $850 (€700).

Can any of you advice me in what to look out for or what to chose?

Thanks in advance!

FloRolf · May 16, 2021

16 minutes ago, Timmyethy123 said:

He wants to put it in RAID 1, to always have a backup of his files

Lesson 1: RAID is NOT a Backup!

Only a Backup is a Backup.

I'd honeslty just get a Qnap or Synology Box since TrueNAS is really a pain sometimes and you have to really work with it. The AIO solutions are pretty much plug and play.

tikker · May 16, 2021

Personally I've repurposed my old gaming PC into a NAS using Unraid. If footprint, energy consumption and some additional user friendliness are important I'll second the QNAP/Synology recommendation, as I've heard good things about those.

22 minutes ago, Timmyethy123 said:

He needs to store about 500 CD's (Music, about 20-25 tracks per CD), 50 DVD's (All movies ranging from 1,5-2 hours in length), and about 25-30 blu-rays (Mostly concerts ranging from 60-90 minutes).

He wants to put it in RAID 1, to always have a backup of his files since he's thinking of getting rid of the originals after backing them up on a NAS.

It'll depend a little bit on what quality those Blu-rays are, but we can do a quick sum: CDs can store 700 MB, a dual layer DVD up to 8.6 GB and a dual layer Blu-ray up to 50 GB (there are bigger Blu-rays, but I doubt concert recordings will be 128 GB). Summing this all up we get (500 * 0.7 GB) + (50 * 8.6 GB) + (30 * 50 GB) = 2280 GB total. Depending on how quickly the collection is growing I would say get a two-bay enclosure and put a pair of 4, 6, or 8 TB drives in there. With RAID 1 that will give you the capacity of a single drive (as it's mirrored to the other one).

As said above RAID is not and excuse for a backup. A backup is a separate copy of the data. RAID is not tha. If the NAS gets nuked, the data is gone. Secondly, any change you make is mirrored on the second drive. If you accidentally delete a file it's gone, because that delete will be mirrored. RAID is to maintain uptime and to some extent protect you from data loss in the situation where one or more drives (depending on the type of RAID) fail during operation. I will admit I do use it as a pseudo-backup, because I don't have the means to actually keep a proper backup of many TBs of data.

Timmyethy123 · May 16, 2021

2 hours ago, FloRolf said:

Lesson 1: RAID is NOT a Backup!

Only a Backup is a Backup.

Yhea, I know. But he told me he wanted some amount of security with the files and he's saying that he's going to get rid of all the CDs, altho I highly doubt it now that I'm thinking about it.

2 hours ago, tikker said:

It'll depend a little bit on what quality those Blu-rays are, but we can do a quick sum: CDs can store 700 MB, a dual layer DVD up to 8.6 GB and a dual layer Blu-ray up to 50 GB (there are bigger Blu-rays, but I doubt concert recordings will be 128 GB). Summing this all up we get (500 * 0.7 GB) + (50 * 8.6 GB) + (30 * 50 GB) = 2280 GB total. Depending on how quickly the collection is growing I would say get a two-bay enclosure and put a pair of 4, 6, or 8 TB drives in there. With RAID 1 that will give you the capacity of a single drive (as it's mirrored to the other one)

Thanks, I'll look into it and the enclosures you guys recommended!