Cheap NAS?

[Pixel5]

if you have amazon prime you can also sync your photos to your amazon account for free.

 

i would not invest is so insanely outdated hardware, you could literally get better hardware for free from people as this stuff has no value anymore.

[Kered124]

I have to agree with Doramius. I have had much better luck with NAS drives than desktop drives. I don't purchase desktop grade hard drives anymore for this very reason. This is a very opinionated subject, as everyone's luck seems to differ between different types of drives. I do own a couple of desktop drives that have been around forever and still work perfectly, but my NAS drives have outlasted almost all of the desktop drives I have owned. 

[Doramius]

11 hours ago, KuJoe said:

I didn't.

 

How does RAID0 offer redundancy?

Not understanding.  RAID0 is striped, but thought we were talking about redundancy in a backup.  Are you talking about RAID1?  RAID 1 is redundant, but it is not striped.  I've found some expandability issues with RAID1 unless mixed with RAID0 in a RAID 10 setup.  

On 6/27/2017 at 5:02 PM, KuJoe said:

If the NAS is the sole backup of your data or mission critical, then yes an enterprise drive is your best bet.

This would be a confusion.  For home use, an enterprise grade NAS is not necessary and an extra cost.  Use regular NAS drives in a redundant setup for home use, and you should be fine for the light use that is being described.

[KuJoe]

1 hour ago, Doramius said:

Not understanding.  RAID0 is striped, but thought we were talking about redundancy in a backup.  Are you talking about RAID1?  RAID 1 is redundant, but it is not striped.  I've found some expandability issues with RAID1 unless mixed with RAID0 in a RAID 10 setup.  

This would be a confusion.  For home use, an enterprise grade NAS is not necessary and an extra cost.  Use regular NAS drives in a redundant setup for home use, and you should be fine for the light use that is being described.

You are adding a lot more confusion than there needs to be in this topic. You suggested that the OP run striped (RAID0) for redundancy which is incorrect.

 

I said two cases in which spending the extra few bucks for enterprise drives would make sense, I never said enterprise drives were needed and in fact recommended the exact opposite.

[Not_Sean]

at this point surely just going with a hosted solution be cheaper ? if the OP was happy with 160gb at first than surely a onedrive/google drive option would be way cheaper, less maintenance and zero chance of a drive failure that he won't be on site to diagnose if it does go belly up. also its expandable. surely $70 a year for 1TB onedrive or $20 a year for 100Gb at first ? 

 

For me the main thing that stands out is you will not be located anywhere near the NAS, so building a cheap one when you can't have quick access to it to fix what will go wrong, just sounds like a nightmare to me. 

[Doramius]

@KuJoe I'm not continuing further on this.  You've identified a miscommunication that doesn't relate to the topic, and it is straying.

@Not_Sean The online storage is getting more popular and cheaper.  It's still not as cheap as one might believe:
1 - You have to regularly pay to continue to access data you own.  It's great for a short period of time, but if you don't want to continue to pay, you either have to buy physical storage anyway, or risk losing access to your data.  
2 - At some point the regular payments on larger data stores adds up to the cost of the physical device.  In the long run, it's far cheaper owning physical storage.

3 - If there's a problem with internet or the site that holds your storage, you're not stuck at the mercy of the site.  While unlikely with most larger storage companies, it has happened far too often with people going with some the smaller local data centers where some offer lower cost online storage.  

Don't misunderstand.  There are many benefits to online storage.  Smaller sizes are fine, but don't consider them permanent storage solutions.  100GB is very small, and anything important should be backed up on physical storage.  The accessibility of these online storage solutions is very convenient.

[Not_Sean]

4 minutes ago, Doramius said:

 The online storage is getting more popular and cheaper.  It's still not as cheap as one might believe:
1 - You have to regularly pay to continue to access data you own.  It's great for a short period of time, but if you don't want to continue to pay, you either have to buy physical storage anyway, or risk losing access to your data.  
2 - At some point the regular payments on larger data stores adds up to the cost of the physical device.  In the long run, it's far cheaper owning physical storage.

3 - If there's a problem with internet or the site that holds your storage, you're not stuck at the mercy of the site.  While unlikely with most larger storage companies, it has happened far too often with people going with some the smaller local data centers where some offer lower cost online storage.  

Don't misunderstand.  There are many benefits to online storage.  Smaller sizes are fine, but don't consider them permanent storage solutions.  100GB is very small, and anything important should be backed up on physical storage.  The accessibility of these online storage solutions is very convenient.

Yeah i do agree with your points but that does cross the point of Business and Personal. for business we do dropbox for our clients but its prices ain't worth it for personal use, we also do on site backups. 

 

I dunno her on price for me $70 a year even after 4 years of using it would be $280, thats really not much compared to the parts, maintainace, repairs and power bills not to mention something like Onedrive is accessible from everywhere in the world. But I do agree with the smaller guys but personally I wouldn't bother with them. 

 

It all comes down to what you using it for, If the OP just wants to store collage stuff and all the rest than even a normal onedrive should be good, but if he wants access to movies and large picture data dumps I'd prob first just recommend a external drive. Just find in todays world and not a business a NAS is a very complicated solution when much simplier options are available. 

 

But its all personal to me $240 every 4 years I'd happily pay than have to rebuild RAID arrays,or OS or PSU, done that enough at work and Bored of it. 

[aubryscully]

On 6/28/2017 at 6:18 PM, Doramius said:

That's not true.  There's no magic, but the drive components are meant to handle the 24/7 operation of constant running, reading & writing better than the desktop drives.  You can use Desktop drives, but they will fail much sooner or are just unable to handle the volume or data loads, constantly.  Saying NAS drives are the same drives is like saying dump trucks use the same engine as a Honda Civic.  The firmware is setup to utilize the component structure of the drive to its specific use.  Someone could reflash it and use the drive for another purpose, but using a standard desktop drive in an environment it was not built for will reduce reliability and life.  This is a topic that is regularly discussed, and a common issue comes up with people using Desktop drives in environments like home surveillance, and home streaming services where people constantly have their desktop drives failing. 

Don't confuse NAS with NAS Enterprise.  They are different.  While similar, the grade of components is higher in enterprise drives.  Enterprise actuators and motors are able to handle higher RPM speeds, reading & writing, etc.  While both have vibration reduction, Enterprise tend to be to a much higher level and sometimes incorporate gases like helium.  You can store more drives in a single stack, as they won't vibrate as much.  Regular NAS drives, you really don't want to go more than 8 drives in a stack.  Most of the time, you'll see stacks of 5.  Firmwares may be similar, but that's about it.  A regular NAS drive is less expensive.  And if you run a striped RAID, you'll have your redundancy for data.  

Nicky V upgraded Linus' civic engine to one from a dump truck so your point is invalid

[Doramius]

6 hours ago, aubryscully said:

Nicky V upgraded Linus' civic engine to one from a dump truck so your point is invalid

ROFL  I'll have to think of a funnier RGB analogy then.

 

@Not_Sean Very understandable.  I use online storage on frequent occasion.  It is VERY convenient.  As with anything, you need to do your homework ahead of the investment.  I actually have several various home NAS items used for multiple different instances.  My larger one is my Plex, which houses about 40TB.  That's an expensive setup, and unless someone was planning a similar function, it would be totally overkill for something like a teen girlfriend's temp storage for daily selfies (at least that seems like what my kid's girlfriend does all day.)