Looking into Creating a Simple Home NAS

[roxasodale91]

Good day,

It's my first time writing here in this forum.

 

As my title says, I'm looking into building a simple NAS server that will be used for 5 computers simultaneously. We wanted a dropbox-ish kind of storage to store all our media( pictures/videos/files ).

It was boxing day recently here in Canada and saw this piece of hardware and made an impulsive purchase.

 

I got the Mediasonic PROBOX HF2-SU3S2. I was planning a long time ago that I wanted to make a NAS server that makes use of RAID array for the disks but here's the thing, the Enclosure that I got DOES NOT support RAID. Turns out that this is a JBOD enclosure.  I understand that I can still create a RAID array for the server as long as if I plug the enclosure via SATA on my MoBo but the MoBo sata drive should support multiport(?) right?

So my question now is that, can I set up a NAS from an old PC and plug this thing on it and use the drives for the NAS server? doesn't matter If it's RAID or not just as long as I can efficiently use this for a NAS server.

 

here is a link on the enclosure's specs :

http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1357290977

 

are all the things I stated possible or I'm on the wrong track?

 

[JefferyD90]

1 minute ago, roxasodale91 said:

Good day,

It's my first time writing here in this forum.

 

As my title says, I'm looking into building a simple NAS server that will be used for 5 computers simultaneously. We wanted a dropbox-ish kind of storage to store all our media( pictures/videos/files ).

It was boxing day recently here in Canada and saw this piece of hardware and made an impulsive purchase.

 

I got the Mediasonic PROBOX HF2-SU3S2. I was planning a long time ago that I wanted to make a NAS server that makes use of RAID array for the disks but here's the thing, the Enclosure that I got DOES NOT support RAID. Turns out that this is a JBOD enclosure.  I understand that I can still create a RAID array for the server as long as if I plug the enclosure via SATA on my MoBo but the MoBo sata drive should support multiport(?) right?

So my question now is that, can I set up a NAS from an old PC and plug this thing on it and use the drives for the NAS server? doesn't matter If it's RAID or not just as long as I can efficiently use this for a NAS server.

 

here is a link on the enclosure's specs :

http://www.mediasonic.ca/product.php?id=1357290977

 

are all the things I stated possible or I'm on the wrong track?

 

Get a WD My Cloud if you're wanting something simple and cheap.

[roxasodale91]

1 minute ago, JefferyD90 said:

Get a WD My Cloud if you're wanting something simple and cheap.

Yeah saw that too but was afraid of future problems such as Disk corruption, isn't it that when that thing gets corrupted, the whole thing goes down? Thank you!

[JefferyD90]

Just now, roxasodale91 said:

Yeah saw that too but was afraid of future problems such as Disk corruption, isn't it that when that thing gets corrupted, the whole thing goes down? Thank you!

I don't understand your question.  It would only go down if you lowered it...

[roxasodale91]

1 minute ago, JefferyD90 said:

I don't understand your question.  It would only go down if you lowered it...

oh sorry, what I meant was, if the WD My Cloud's storage gets corrupted, the whole thing gets corrupted? or that won't happen if I partition it?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, roxasodale91 said:

Yeah saw that too but was afraid of future problems such as Disk corruption, isn't it that when that thing gets corrupted, the whole thing goes down? Thank you!

Disk corruption isn't really a huge issue, and your bay won't really help your. Id probably setup that box with a btrfs or zfs in linux or storage spaces in windows. Don't use the raid on your motherboard, is much worse than a software solution.

[JefferyD90]

1 minute ago, roxasodale91 said:

oh sorry, what I meant was, if the WD My Cloud's storage gets corrupted, the whole thing gets corrupted? or that won't happen if I partition it?

Are you saying that you're concerned about the drive failing?  I mean if you have a corrupted file, you have a corrupted file... nothing you can do about that.

[roxasodale91]

2 minutes ago, JefferyD90 said:

Are you saying that you're concerned about the drive failing?  I mean if you have a corrupted file, you have a corrupted file... nothing you can do about that.

uhm my concern regarding corruption is not just for a single file but the whole drive/s itself.

Because what happened with our shared hard disk before got corrupted and now the whole disk is unusable.

 

 

[roxasodale91]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Disk corruption isn't really a huge issue, and your bay won't really help your. Id probably setup that box with a btrfs or zfs in linux or storage spaces in windows. Don't use the raid on your motherboard, is much worse than a software solution.

I see so should I just return the bay and just go with the WD box?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, roxasodale91 said:

uhm my concern regarding corruption is not just for a single file but the whole drive/s itself.

Because what happened with our shared hard disk before got corrupted and now the whole disk is unusable.

 

 

raid and backups and thats not a issue.

[JefferyD90]

Just now, roxasodale91 said:

uhm my concern regarding corruption is not just for a single file but the whole drive/s itself.

Because what happened with our shared hard disk before got corrupted and now the whole disk is unusable.

 

 

Well a failed disk, is a failed disk... There isn't anything you can do about that.  The great part about WD's My Clouds is they do monitor disk health... And if you're really concerned perform regular back-ups.  You should anyways.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, roxasodale91 said:

I see so should I just return the bay and just go with the WD box?

thats what id do. also look at synology and qnap.

[SCHISCHKA]

if i had a spare disk i would rather use it as a incremental offline backup than use it in a raid array. my NAS uses RAID0 for performance and I use an externa USB as backup incase of fire, theft, lightning, ransomeware

[kirashi]

16 minutes ago, roxasodale91 said:

Yeah saw that too but was afraid of future problems such as Disk corruption, isn't it that when that thing gets corrupted, the whole thing goes down? Thank you!

The same thing will happen if you use something like your MediaSonic JBOD enclosure and RAID the drives using port multiplying through a computer. You may or may not be able to recovery the RAID array if something happens to the JBOD enclosure since even though the disks should operate "as disks only", I can almost guarantee the chipset in the JBOD enclosure is doing *something* to mask the true block layout of the drives.

 

I'd recommend software RAID, as known as Disk Pools, since you can recover those from any computer that can run the Drive Pooling software in the event that your enclosure fails you.

[roxasodale91]

THANKS EVERYONE FOR YOUR HELP! I'll take further look into my issue and take in mind all the info you guys have given to me