Need Dual-Bay NAS Recommendations

[GTechGeorge]

I've been getting fed up with my WD My Book Duo recently for a number of reasons so I'd like to swap it out but I don't know where to start. While I don't actually need the "Network Attached" portion of a NAS as I will be the only person connecting straight into this enclosure from my PC and not routing it through the network of my house, NAS is the best term I know to use for it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Requirements:

• High-speed connectivity is a must as one of my two drives holds video files I edit directly off of, with the second drive being a full backup of both this drive & my RAID 0 Windows partition.
• I'd like to use RJ45 ethernet connectivity direct into my PC as I have both 2.5G and 1G ethernet unused on my motherboard. The USB connectivity of my current enclosure was abysmal when cloning 9TB across a USB cable.
• I ONLY have room for a dual-bay enclosure on my desk, so unless there's some slim vertical enclosure holding more drives I'm fine with just two bays for now.
• Automatic backup functionality would be nice, and I would still like to be able to access the files on my 20TB full backup drive if needed. My current drive enclosure uses Acronis True Image to do automatic backups but stores them as .tibx files, and the app is no longer allowing me to clean up old backup versions for some reason so I now have 600 GB of backups that cannot be removed.

I am not buying a slim office PC and cramming it behind my desktop. There's barely enough room for my current enclosure on my desk let alone an entire second computer.

 

 

[BiotechBen]

1 hour ago, GTechGeorge said:

I've been getting fed up with my WD My Book Duo recently for a number of reasons so I'd like to swap it out but I don't know where to start. While I don't actually need the "Network Attached" portion of a NAS as I will be the only person connecting straight into this enclosure from my PC and not routing it through the network of my house, NAS is the best term I know to use for it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Requirements:

• High-speed connectivity is a must as one of my two drives holds video files I edit directly off of, with the second drive being a full backup of both this drive & my RAID 0 Windows partition.
• I'd like to use RJ45 ethernet connectivity direct into my PC as I have both 2.5G and 1G ethernet unused on my motherboard. The USB connectivity of my current enclosure was abysmal when cloning 9TB across a USB cable.
• I ONLY have room for a dual-bay enclosure on my desk, so unless there's some slim vertical enclosure holding more drives I'm fine with just two bays for now.
• Automatic backup functionality would be nice, and I would still like to be able to access the files on my 20TB full backup drive if needed. My current drive enclosure uses Acronis True Image to do automatic backups but stores them as .tibx files, and the app is no longer allowing me to clean up old backup versions for some reason so I now have 600 GB of backups that cannot be removed.

I am not buying a slim office PC and cramming it behind my desktop. There's barely enough room for my current enclosure on my desk let alone an entire second computer.

 

 

Important clarification:

Do you have a budget, and if so what is it?

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

1 hour ago, GTechGeorge said:

The USB connectivity of my current enclosure was abysmal when cloning 9TB across a USB cable.

I had no issues with my USB JBOD enclosures running at USB 3.0 speeds (5gbit/s). It was an ICY BOX IB-RD3620SU3.

 

I don't understand why it needs to be external. If you have a spare slot cove on your PC you might as well just use two eSATA enclosures.

 

1 hour ago, GTechGeorge said:

Automatic backup functionality would be nice, and I would still like to be able to access the files on my 20TB full backup drive if needed.

Veeam agent for Windows.