Question about NAS

[Benliam12]

Hi, I have a small office at home with a "trash" backup system. To be short, this is how we work: 

We have a "central" computer that makes automatics backups of specifc folders on other computer on our network. 

On Thursday, a friend of mine comes and make a backup of this "central" computer. Backup is made with a "trash" software that requires us to insert its cd everytime we want to do a backup.

 

SOOOOO here comes my questions. Can a NAS such as (https://www.amazon.ca/Synology-DS218j-Station-2-Bay-512MB/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1530305653&sr=8-2&keywords=nas) can do these stuff :

 

- RAID 1,

- Automatic backup of folders on other computers on the same network.

- Being able to run with 3 HDD, 2 in the NAS and one out side that will be swapped every week. (Just to have a copy of our datas out of our house in case of fire (for example) Like, I'd like to be able to just come, shutdown the nas, swap de disk and power it on again.

 

In case I forgot some informations please just ask and I'll try to provide it.

 

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

1. Yep

2. Yep, dependon on how have teh network setup.

3. Yep you can backup to a external hdd with these.

[Benliam12]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

1. Yep

2. Yep, dependon on how have teh network setup.

3. Yep you can backup to a external hdd with these.

Though, can I just swap internal HDD from inside the nas ? Like always the same one (example, the disk that would sit on Disk2 place) ?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Benliam12 said:

Though, can I just swap internal HDD from inside the nas ? Like always the same one (example, the disk that would sit on Disk2 place) ?

You can't but i woudln't suggest it. You can't just mount the volume on most systems, like you could with the external hdd with ntfs, and it leaves room for corruption if the other dive has issues.

[Christophe Corazza]

Just now, Benliam12 said:

Though, can I just swap internal HDD from inside the nas ? Like always the same one (example, the disk that would sit on Disk2 place) ?

 

Yes, you can swap one of the two drives inside your NAS, drovided that they are configured in RAID 1.

The NAS will simply see this as if the drive has failed. Once you insert a new drive, it will start copying all of the data from the first drive to the new one.

[Benliam12]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can't but i woudln't suggest it. You can't just mount the volume on most systems, like you could with the external hdd with ntfs, and it leaves room for corruption if the other dive has issues.

So your telling me, I should have, 2 Disk on Raid 1 (so mirror disks) and one external that would sync up with the Raid 1 inside and I could take that External drive away when ever I want ?

[Benliam12]

1 minute ago, Christophe Corazza said:

 

Yes, you can swap one of the two drives inside your NAS, drovided that they are configured in RAID 1.

The NAS will simply see this as if the drive has failed. Once you insert a new drive, it will start copying all of the data from the first drive to the new one.

Even if the "new" drive has outdated data the NAS will find that it has to take the Datas from "disk1" in order to copy the good data ?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Benliam12 said:

So your telling me, I should have, 2 Disk on Raid 1 (so mirror disks) and one external that would sync up with the Raid 1 inside and I could take that External drive away when ever I want ?

You can setup the system to to auto backups onto a external hdd, then swap out the external hdd.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Benliam12 said:

Even if the "new" drive has outdated data the NAS will find that it has to take the Datas from "disk1" in order to copy the good data ?

If you put a new drive in, it assumes its blank and puts data on from the other drive.

 

But changing drives in a raid 1 is normally a bad idea, drives have random read error, and you will see those errors doing this.

[Christophe Corazza]

2 minutes ago, Benliam12 said:

Even if the "new" drive has outdated data the NAS will find that it has to take the Datas from "disk1" in order to copy the good data ?

 

What I meant is that if you remove 1 of the 2 RAID 1 drives and insert another one, your NAS will treat it as a blank drive.

[Benliam12]

2 minutes ago, Christophe Corazza said:

 

What I meant is that if you remove 1 of the 2 RAID 1 drives and insert another one, your NAS will treat it as a blank drive.

Thing is, I've been told its not a good idea to do so, What do you think about it ?

[Razor Blade]

3 minutes ago, Benliam12 said:

Thing is, I've been told its not a good idea to do so, What do you think about it ?

If you remove one of the drives and insert another, the array will show as degraded. You would have to tell your RAID card or software to rebuild the array before it will show healthy again.

[Christophe Corazza]

1 minute ago, Benliam12 said:

Thing is, I've been told its not a good idea to do so, What do you think about it ?

 

It is obviously not a good idea to do so. The NAS will write the full drive instead of making minor changes to it.

As you've ask in your third question in your original post, you're better off using an external enclosure with a drive to make periodical backups. The Synology OS has the option to program these periodical backup moments. The only thinkg you have to do is make sure there is an external drive connected when the system wants to perform a backup.

[Benliam12]

1 minute ago, Christophe Corazza said:

 

It is obviously not a good idea to do so. The NAS will write the full drive instead of making minor changes to it.

As you've ask in your third question in your original post, you're better off using an external enclosure with a drive to make periodical backups. The Synology OS has the option to program these periodical backup moments. The only thinkg you have to do is make sure there is an external drive connected when the system wants to perform a backup.

All right, I guess I'll use this idea when I'll buy my NAS  Thanks for your help  

[Christophe Corazza]

5 minutes ago, Benliam12 said:

All right, I guess I'll use this idea when I'll buy my NAS  Thanks for your help  

 

You can try a live version of the Synology operating system on their website: https://demo.synology.com/en-global/dsm

I don't use Synology, but somewhere in the settings you'll be able to set your preferences to make backups to external USB drives.

 

You should have a look before you decide to buy the NAS