Cheapest RAID 1 setup NAS for backup

[Novabutter]

My parents have plenty of photos & videos for about 10 lifetimes, and are constantly making backups on portable hard drives and disks repeatedly three or four times. Usually how the story goes is that a disk breaks or the hard drive is dropped (clumsiness is a family gene). I've even had to back up about a terabyte of photos on my personal rig for them, ensuring them my parents they wouldn't be lost or damaged. 

 

Well, I kind of want that space back, and I'd rather them have something, for their sake, they can backup all their photos and videos, with redundancy, and with minimal risk of failure. I suggested Google Photos's unlimited storage option, but they don't trust that, and were a little freaked out when I showed them a demo that identified their faces. 

 

My solution: A dedicated NAS server with RAID 1 for mirroring

 

1) Local, so no Google interfering with their stuff (like it matters, but alright)

2) RAID redundancy so they don't have to make multiple backups "just-in-case"

3) It wouldn't be too portable, so the risk of breaking it is minimal

4) They can offload their photos from their phone remotely and pull them up if they want outside of home

 

The problem is price: I have, at most, $150 to spend on drives and a server. 

So what would you all recommend with these parameters? What other options can you think of? 

[Novabutter]

Currently I'd be looking for 2 TB drives for long term storage. So, 2 2 TB drives would have to be included in the budget. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just going by budget, that'll probably be a little hard unless you buy up some used hardware and build a NAS yourself for them. You could head over to Amazon, Newegg, or your local Micro Center(if you have one) and see if they sell prebuilt NAS's. Those will be a little more expensive, but it will definitely get the job done.

[geo3]

9 hours ago, Novabutter said:

RAID redundancy so they don't have to make multiple backups "just-in-case"

That's not how RAID works. RAID is not a backup. RAID is a mirror. Anything thing that happens to one set of the data happens to the other.  Deleted it? Both are gone. Over wrote it? Both are overwritten. Virus corrupted your file system. Both drives are done.

 

RAID only saves you from one drive physically failing.  Nothing more. 

 

Unless the entire NAS system is a backup of an entire other data set your data is not protected. You need to run some kind backup solution if you care about protecting your data. RAID is not the magic get out of jail free card of data integrity. 

 

As for your initial question $150 will just about get you 2 2TB drives. So unless you have and old system laying around to use as the server you're not going to swing it on that budget. 

[Daniel644]

2 hours ago, geo3 said:

That's not how RAID works. RAID is not a backup. RAID is a mirror. Anything thing that happens to one set of the data happens to the other.  Deleted it? Both are gone. Over wrote it? Both are overwritten. Virus corrupted your file system. Both drives are done.

 

RAID only saves you from one drive physically failing.  Nothing more. 

 

Unless the entire NAS system is a backup of an entire other data set your data is not protected. You need to run some kind backup solution if you care about protecting your data. RAID is not the magic get out of jail free card of data integrity. 

 

As for your initial question $150 will just about get you 2 2TB drives. So unless you have and old system laying around to use as the server you're not going to swing it on that budget. 

pretty sure physical failure is the only concern here from the sounds of it.

 

 

OP, I don't even know of a RAID capable enclosure for that cheap, let alone an enclosure and drives, heck drives alone will eat up that budget, heck 2 2TB NAS grade HDD's (sure you could go a little cheaper) are gonna eat up more then your 150 budget, even cheap 2TB drives are like 60 bucks a piece, NAS enclosures are hundreds of dollars, like you would be better off simply adding the 2 drives to your desktop and setting up the RAID there then buying an enclosure if you have room to fit 2 additional drives in your case, thats the ONLY way I see you pulling this off at your budget.