NAS HDD Options

[RazorSharp]

If I were to build a personal home NAS, would it be worth buying 2 HDDs for a raid 1 setup? It will be used for PC backups and movie/TV/music streaming. So I guess the data isnt TOO important. (I have 2 other PC backups elsewhere)

 

Also, what are your opinions on using 2.5in HDDs for this 24/7 NAS? I would absolutely love to use this mini-box case I have laying around.

http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure

 

Thanks guys.

 

[Eniqmatic]

If the data is important enough to have 2 backups of, why not just save yourself the hassle in the first place by doing your best to make sure you won't have to restore from backup?

 

WD Red's are good drives for someone starting out.

[RazorSharp]

If the data is important enough to have 2 backups of, why not just save yourself the hassle in the first place by doing your best to make sure you won't have to restore from backup?

 

WD Red's are good drives for someone starting out.

Its not the backups im worried about losing, its the movies/TV shows/music that the family and myself will be streaming daily. The NAS will be the only place they're kept. 

[Eniqmatic]

Yeah that's my point, why not do yourself a favour and create the NAS properly with a good setup so you do your best to minimize any corruption. Are you putting a RAID controller in if your going to do it this way?

[MrBucket101]

WD RED or Hitachi Deskstar NAS

You could use 2.5in drives but they cost a little bit more.

[alpenwasser]

Well, in the end it's for you to decide how important your data is to you and how much

money you're willing to spend in keeping it safe. Personally, I run RAIDZ2 (RAID6) for

my movies and TV show collection, and the stuff which I consider important I back up to

a second machine. My personal data is backed up on a second machine as well, plus on an

external HDD. Not that you need to run this setup, I'm just laying out how I've placed

my personal priorities; yours may naturally differ.

As for 2.5" HDDs: WD make a 2.5" 1 TB version of the Red, I would recommend that. If you

use regular drives in a RAID setup you can run into trouble with regards to the drives

dropping out of the array (see here for a very brief overview). Common NAS drives have

firmware which avoids that issue. Don't forget that 2.5" drives will cost you a bit more

per gigbyte of storage.

Something else to keep in mind: Instead of running RAID1 (which is primarily about your

data's availability, less so about a backup, since RAID is no backup), you could also

have one drive in the machine and keep an external backup. Cost would be about the same,

give or take an external drive enclosure, availability in case of drive failure would

suffer a bit (since you'd need to replace the drive before having access to the data

again), but in return your data would be better protected against things like user error,

software bugs which accidentally remove or damage data, power surges which damage the

hardware and so on.

[Captain_WD]

If I were to build a personal home NAS, would it be worth buying 2 HDDs for a raid 1 setup? It will be used for PC backups and movie/TV/music streaming. So I guess the data isnt TOO important. (I have 2 other PC backups elsewhere)

 

Also, what are your opinions on using 2.5in HDDs for this 24/7 NAS? I would absolutely love to use this mini-box case I have laying around.

http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure

 

Thanks guys.

 

 

Hey RazorSharp,

 

Whichever drives you choose, I would strongly suggest that they are identical NAS/RAID class drives for minimum chances of compatibility problems and drive dropouts. Also the drives should have all the necessary features for safe and reliable performance in a NAS environment such as TLER, etc.

 

As the guys pointed out, WD Red are such drives and are great for the purpose.

 

Captain_WD.