Move from HP EX490 to NAS

[bucketfoot]

I've got a 5 year old HP EX490 running WHS that I'm looking at possibly moving away from it due to HDD size limitations and the fact that it does not work with Win 8.

My usage is pretty typical: back-ups, document, photo, music & video storage. I also use it as my interface for cloud back-ups.

I have primarily been looking at 4-6 bay Synology and QNAP setups and would welcome any commentary/suggestions on if this would or would not be a good move.

One basic question, are there any issues with running mixed size drives with these systems (would like to start by re-using what I have in the HP).

 

[stevech]

I've got a 5 year old HP EX490 running WHS that I'm looking at possibly moving away from it due to HDD size limitations and the fact that it does not work with Win 8.

My usage is pretty typical: back-ups, document, photo, music & video storage. I also use it as my interface for cloud back-ups.

I have primarily been looking at 4-6 bay Synology and QNAP setups and would welcome any commentary/suggestions on if this would or would not be a good move.

One basic question, are there any issues with running mixed size drives with these systems (would like to start by re-using what I have in the HP).

Mixed size and RAID are an issue.

I get by with a 2 bay 2x2TB NAS. No RAID is used by my reasoning. Extensive USB3/SDcard/Other backups used.
If I were buying today, it'd be the same, but with 4TB drives chosen very carefully. Consumer drives, not NAS spec drives.

 

[bucketfoot]

I'm curious as to why you would not go with NAS specific drives.

 

[stevech]

I'm curious as to why you would not go with NAS specific drives.

Not only my opinion, but the WD Red drives and the like differ only in warranty duration. And my experience is that WD/Seagate replace warranty drives with refurbished/used drives, so why bother with the price premium?

 

[KenZ71]

I'll be the contrarian here.

I am running a 3 drive mirror made up of 2 3TB drives & one 2TB on NAS4Free with ZFS. Drives are WD greens I bought on eBay.

Why the different sizes? Because when I bout the 3 TB drives about. 1 year ago they were only a few $ more than 2TB. A 3 drive mirror, Raidz2 in ZFS terms, allows me to lose 2 drives w/o data loss. The pool size is defined by the smallest drive, so swapping out the 2TB for a 4TB in a year or so will give me 1 more TB of usable space. Then replace the 3s when they are showing their age.

This strategy has served me well for the past 5 years when I started with 500GB drives.

 

[vnangia]

Based on your usage, may I suggest that one option might be to simply upgrade your EX490?

There is an extensive forum dedicated to WHS and upgrading the EX490 to run WHS2011. It's a relatively painless process and once you're done, you can use either Drive Bender or Drive Pool to build a mixed size pool, with none of the size concerns that WHSv1 has - I've put a 6TB drive in mine and it was recognized just fine.

The only gotcha is that you have to download a hotfix to enable Windows 8.1 backup to WHS2011. Other than that, it's relatively painless once setup.

I will say that this is not the way to go if you intend to expand your usage significantly. For example, I would not recommend your installing Plex or similar and building a transcoding server using the default hardware, and given the cost of the upgrade (4GB of DDR2 RAM, a fast chip), I would suggest that your resources are better spent elsewhere.

That said, if you have any questions, happy to answer. Just let me know.

 

[bucketfoot]

I had actually thought about upgrading my EX490 to WHS2011, but copies are not readily available anymore. Being able to do folder duplication on mixed sized drives has probably been my favorite thing about the EX490.

I also had Server 2012R2 Essentials recommended to me and looked into it somewhat, but the cost of it would pay for the majority of a new NAS.

For the record, I've bought a QNAP TS-451 that should arrive today. With that in place I'll be much more ready to look at options for upgrading the EX490. Bottom line is you can never have too much storage!!!

 

[stevech]

I'll be the contrarian here.

I am running a 3 drive mirror made up of 2 3TB drives & one 2TB on NAS4Free with ZFS. Drives are WD greens I bought on eBay.

Why the different sizes? Because when I bout the 3 TB drives about. 1 year ago they were only a few $ more than 2TB. A 3 drive mirror, Raidz2 in ZFS terms, allows me to lose 2 drives w/o data loss. The pool size is defined by the smallest drive, so swapping out the 2TB for a 4TB in a year or so will give me 1 more TB of usable space. Then replace the 3s when they are showing their age.

This strategy has served me well for the past 5 years when I started with 500GB drives.

I avoid the green drives in a NAS as often they are 5400RPM and/or fast spin-down and/or have other power saving schemes that affect speeds.

I really dislike RMAing a drive and getting a refurb with perhaps a zillion RPMs on it.

 

[vnangia]

I had actually thought about upgrading my EX490 to WHS2011, but copies are not readily available anymore. Being able to do folder duplication on mixed sized drives has probably been my favorite thing about the EX490.

I also had Server 2012R2 Essentials recommended to me and looked into it somewhat, but the cost of it would pay for the majority of a new NAS.

For the record, I've bought a QNAP TS-451 that should arrive today. With that in place I'll be much more ready to look at options for upgrading the EX490. Bottom line is you can never have too much storage!!!

Interesting, I hadn't realized that copies of WHS2011 had dried up in the sales channel - especially since my local Microcenter here in VA has stacks of them they're trying to get rid off for a song and dance. Windows Server is indeed pricey - unless you have a .edu address, in which case it's free - and probably not worth it. If you're interested in further experimentation, there's a bunch of options, ranging from NAS4Free to OS X ... As to never having too much storage, well, I may have accidentally crossed the 100TB mark last week and I'm looking to simplify.