NAS Solutions

[powerslave77]

Hi all.... 

 

Looking into a NAS setup for Business and Personnel files and photo's, I have a single drive Netgear Ready NAS atm which is just used as a basic network drive that I manually backup to but am looking to expand into something with a bit more power and be able to 

do a few more things... our work isn't really that intensive in terms of how much we would use it and work from it but being able to have mobile access to documents and plans would be good... along with photo storage and general backups across all devices.

 

on the Hobby side I do quite a bit of photography and photo editing + I would like better functionality to view the finished photo collections from multiple devices,, we have 2 pc's a setting a automated 

backup system would also be good (not currently in place) 

 

pretty new to the NAS game so don't know a whole lot on some of the functions and features but keen to learn

 

as a starting point looking at the QNAP TS-451 or TS-453 ? could be willing to go as high as the TVS-463 ? and happy with suggestions.

 

Prob thinking 6-8tb would be plenty for now but as people use it could start to fill reasonably quickly (might take 12mnths)

 

is it worth going more bays now and getting the lower tier hardware set or going less bays now higher tier hardware set and expand later ?

 

and what sort of hardware set would be good as a base with enough headroom to expand I assume adding 4gb of ram to either of the first QNAP's would be a good option out of the gate... ??

 

also drive setup whats good ? was thinking 4TB HDDx3 Raid1 + SSD or 4TB HDDx4 in Raid1+0 looking at the WD Reds 

 

I may looking at adding some security cameras in the future.

 

 

thanks in advance 

[Equilibrium_FOOL]

Have you considered building a NAS and using FreeNAS?

[powerslave77]

Have you considered building a NAS and using FreeNAS?

 

Nope... will check it out, form factor is a bit of a issue too would like to stick it on top of my pc desk 

[SteveLee]

I'd certainly second the idea of building your own and getting to grips with FreeNAS. That said, I've gone with both options:

I'm currently running 2 NAS boxes: 1) Thecus N4800 Eco with 4x 4TB WD Se drives in RAID0 and, 2) a home-built NAS (Silverstone DS380 chassis, ASRock C2750D4I mainboard, 32GB (4x 8GB) Crucial DDR3-1600 ECC UDIMMs, 128GB Patriot Torx 2 SSD for the boot drive and 8x 6TB WD Reds for the storage) running FreeNAS in Z2FS. The chassis is small enough on a desk that it's not too much of a hindrance although the 3 supplied fans can become noisy when the room's hot. The second NAS was really designed to be a backup of the first with redundancy and additional storage in mind.

So far I've not been disappointed with the build of NAS#2 and the Thecus has proved to be a trooper.

[powerslave77]

Some good info cheers,, will look into a self build option as well 

[powerslave77]

What about something like this in comparison to the Qnap TVS-EC880 it works out to be around $700Aud cheaper for the same about of storage (2x SSD and 4x 3Tb HDD)

 

[scottyseng]

-snip-

 

Are you using this just as a NAS? Any programs or streaming on it? You can get even cheaper by using a Intel i3 Haswell CPU (Yes, they support ECC).

 

If you are running FreeNAS, you should be using a basic flash drive as the OS drive. A 120 GB SSD would be a waste of space (FreeNAS will take all of the drive space).

 

Otherwise if you're running Windows, maybe look at the 850 Evo drives?

 

Also, you might look at the Red 4TB drives, last time I did my math, they offered a better GB per dollar ratio. 6TB is still very high though.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there powerslave77,

 

I could suggest that you also check out WD's prosumer products and see if any of them can fit both your budget and your requirements. It offers great accessibility features, mobile and computer app for remote access, great user permition management, third-party apps and many other useful features. Here's a list of all WD NASs: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=gzFS4M

Regarding the HDDs themselves, using NAS/RAID-class drives is strongly recommended for safety and good and smooth peformance and WD Red drives are indeed such drives.

Do make sure you have redundancy and backup of everything important so you don't lose any data due to external factors such as power shortage, system failure or physical damage.

If you have any questions that I might help, feel free to ask.

 

Captain_WD.

[powerslave77]

Cheers will look into it...

 

want to set it up as mostly local backup, don't feel that comfortable about putting all my company documents and photos of the kids on the cloud to be honest, I know it's prob safe but it's just a thing for me... I have other non sensitive material I'm ok with but all in all I'd prefer the local + maybe an encryption backup to the web, atm I manually back up to a single drive NAS (ready pro) and to a external HDD which I swap out every once in a while with the in-laws which is stored in a fire proof safe...

 

the hopes is to possibly even run 2 servers or NAS setups to backup remotely to/from another location off site..

 

would like to setup a local stream of pic's as well maybe some music have a DNLA amp which I've never used 

 

possible some future server works help connect my workers in the field and storage dump possibly (but need to walk first lol)