If I was going pick a NAS, QNAP and Synology is probably what I would use. The 3 years bothers me.
I just feel a server is a better long term solution.
Since you had a network in the past with backups and offsite storage and all the problems associated with the day to day work to keep it running you have the basic idea.
The problem you ran into is you did not have backups of your NAS. As long as your house does not burn down or someone does not steal your computer backups, onsite backups will cover you. It is easy to talk about backups but it is hard to maintain them day to day.
You need to pick a new NAS. How big you need only you can decide. If 4 or 6 terabyte is enough then I would buy 2 matching drives and run a mirror(RAID1). Choose Segate or Western Digital drives built for a NAS or server not the cheap PC drives. If you need bigger, then RAID5 or RAID10 is in order but at this point I would switch to a server. RAID is complicated and takes a lot of processing power and there are many different qualities of RAID cards. Some I trust and some I don’t trust.
No matter what you need a good APC UPS battery backup is required but especially if you run RAID. Don’t plug unnecessary devices like monitors into the APC as it will shorten the battery time. Setup auto shutdown if you expect long power outages.
Just make sure you have solid backups. BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP.
With that said you should be good to go. Happy backups.
Challenge with DIY NASes is finding freeware that is comparable to Synology or QNAP's system software. I've tried most.I don't believe home built systems are bad either
I don't believe home built systems are bad either
User built systems can be good. But most are best suited when learning about or dabbling (non-business use) in new areas of computing.
In no particular order.
- The Good
- They can excel in price - especially when using parts that are just lying around.
- They are a great way to learn / solve in depth about a range of computing problems / solutions. In addition to reaching / achieving the original goal.
- They can take that goal + lots of free time and turn it into something worthwhile.
- They can have more performance, for the price / cost.
- Satisfaction of doing something yourself.
- The Bad
- Power usage
- Optimization of the O/S for a specific purpose.
- Not knowing you had to worry about 'X'. 'X' being a specific security, performance or reliability concern with your homebrewed method.
- Time. Is money. Even if you value your time at $0/hr.
- Especially when spouse / kids / friends are being neglected.
- Finding out (eventually) that the money saved was not worth the tradeoffs.
- Finding out that the gold standard solutions are rated that way for a reason.
- (Myself, I find that the cost is more than offset by the benefits offered, no matter how much time or money I could throw at any homebrewed NAS setup).
And, this is from someone that still builds / spec's their own desktops.
Hybrid drives are junk too. Especially for NAS use. SSD caching is also not a method for higher performance from most normal network uses.
The best HDD I've used are Hitachi. WD a not so close second.
Not picking on you, but what is 20GB/SB?
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