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2,5"hdd mini-nas besides Synology which other?

AcostaJA

Regular Contributor
Hi crowd, I'm new here, first post.

I'm considering to get an Mini-NAS, one like Synology DS414slim, My personal data is growing and I need about 1TB for all my personal files (docs, projects, photos, videos few music), not big requierements but gowing, so a Mini-NAS with Raid-6 array or similar (I'll love to ben available RaidZ2 but no mini-hardware with ECC ram to build an optimal RaidZ2 pool).

I Love the DS414slim concept, its small enough to fit on a bag or travel as equipage ( I would move from country to country soon on long periods about 6 months on each location).

Rigth Now I`m using my desktop and my laptop with torrent sync for that, but since I'ordered a retina MacBook and I plan to update later my desktop to an iMac with SSD only storage, so my new system are constrained in space (512MB), So moving not so often accessed data to an mini Nas capable to be Torrent Sync client/host too, sems ideal to me, of course I ve planned some general backup on a sencondary external storage "just in case" and maybe some cloud service.

My question is, besides Synology, ther is anther manufacturer building Mini-NAS with 4+ 2.5" HDD, at least as planned future product?
 
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Hi crowd, I'm new here, first post.

I'm considering to get an Mini-NAS, one like Sinology DS414slim, My personal data is growing and I need about 1TB for all my personal files (docs, projects, photos, videos few music), not big requierements but gowing, so a Mini-NAS with Raid-6 array or similar (I'll love to ben available RaidZ2 but no mini-hardware with ECC ram to build an optimal RaidZ2 pool).

I Love the DS414slim concept, its small enough to fit on a bag or travel as equipage ( I would move from country to country soon on long periods about 6 months on each location).

Rigth Now I`m using my desktop and my laptop with torrent sync for that, but since I'ordered a retina MacBook and I plan to update later my desktop to an iMac with SSD only storage, so my new system are constrained in space (512MB), So moving not so often accessed data to an mini Nas capable to be Torrent Sync client/host too, sems ideal to me, of course I ve planned some general backup on a sencondary external storage "just in case" and maybe some cloud service.

My question is, besides Sinology, ther is anther manufacturer building Mini-NAS with 4+ 2.5" HDD, at least as planned future product?
by saying "Sinology", do you mean
http://www.synology.com/en-us/
?

The slim is only slightly smaller than one supporting less expensive large capacity 3.5" drives.
Cloud service- untrustworthy for sensitive data. All of them. Useful only for small amounts data.
 
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by saying "Sinology", do you mean
http://www.synology.com/en-us/
?

The slim is only slightly smaller than one supporting less expensive large capacity 3.5" drives.
Cloud service- untrustworthy for sensitive data. All of them. Useful only for small amounts data.

Thanks for the Mistake, now corrected.

I Considered a Dual 3.5" solution with an DS214Play, but since actually I Have 2 availabe 1TB 2.5" HDD, I Only Needt to spend about 150 on another two to fill the DS414slim, which provides me with dual-failure redundancy and really fits well as normal equipage, I considred also the grew potential for the DS414Slim (now upto 6TB/3TB:r6) and the DS214Play(upto 12TB/6TB:r1) and the DS414slim also is cheaper (300$ today, 350 for the 214slim, plus 150$ extra 2 1TB HDD, are 450 Total, a DS214Play not so small and light cost with 2 2TB NAS HDD 550$. (today at Amazon), in case I need to buy all 4 hdd to fill the DS414Slim, it total less than 600, close to 550 for the DS214play.

But for my, the small size and availability of Raid6 is more important than inmediate grew/performance, so I choose the DS414slim.

About trust on Cloud Storage, I'm aware the risk, and I can Handle it with many ways, now I can contract 1TB cloud storage vry cheap from google, of course I dont ned that much, since I'll only back up the most critical files (with my own encription).
 
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Maybe the NASes other than the "play", which costs more due to transcoding goal, would be better. Just a simple 2 bay?
What is it now, DS214? (Last two digits are the year first shipped).

Does RAID6 make sense with less than about 4 or 5 bays?
My 2 bay doesn't run RAID so I'm not vulnerable to losing it all due to a file system corruption or motherboard/power supply failure that corrupts the sole file system in a RAID. With mine, each drive is a volume. The 2nd volume is a time backup of most folders on the first volume - last x versions of all files. Reverting has saved my buns several times when a file gets hosed up or lost due to human error. For a small NAS, it's my opinion that theft and human error and NAS electronics failure are more likely than drive failure. This has proven true for me in the last 10 years.
 
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Maybe the NASes other than the "play", which costs more due to transcoding goal, would be better. Just a simple 2 bay?
What is it now, DS214? (Last two digits are the year first shipped).

Does RAID6 make sense with less than about 4 or 5 bays?
My 2 bay doesn't run RAID so I'm not vulnerable to losing it all due to a file system corruption or motherboard/power supply failure that corrupts the sole file system in a RAID. With mine, each drive is a volume. The 2nd volume is a time backup of most folders on the first volume - last x versions of all files. Reverting has saved my buns several times when a file gets hosed up or lost due to human error. For a small NAS, it's my opinion that theft and human error and NAS electronics failure are more likely than drive failure. This has proven true for me in the last 10 years.

I cannot emphasis this enough. RAID isn't really a back-up system. It is more of an up-time system (or performance). Beyond the fact that if you accidently delete a file, its gone off the entire array, there CAN be file system level corruption that hoses both/all drives.

If I were looking for redunancy in a small NAS, I'd just back-up the first drive to the second drive as seperate volumes with an hourly/daily/weekly mirroring process. I only rely on RAID for performance (RAID0 in both server and desktop, but the desktop is the backup of the server, or vice versa depending on your point of view).

As for capacity, I'd think if you were looking at RAID1, 5 or 10 that you'd probably be better off just selling off those 1TB drives, getting a 2 bay 3.5" NAS and getting a couple of 3TB 3.5" drives might be cheaper.

Do you need something for transcoding? If not, just the regular 214 + a pair of 3TB drives shouldn't be more than $400.
 
Maybe the NASes other than the "play", which costs more due to transcoding goal, would be better. Just a simple 2 bay?
What is it now, DS214? (Last two digits are the year first shipped).

Does RAID6 make sense with less than about 4 or 5 bays?
My 2 bay doesn't run RAID so I'm not vulnerable to losing it all due to a file system corruption or motherboard/power supply failure that corrupts the sole file system in a RAID. With mine, each drive is a volume. The 2nd volume is a time backup of most folders on the first volume - last x versions of all files. Reverting has saved my buns several times when a file gets hosed up or lost due to human error. For a small NAS, it's my opinion that theft and human error and NAS electronics failure are more likely than drive failure. This has proven true for me in the last 10 years.

I considerd also 2hdd units from WD,

About Raid, Raid 1 provides single Failure protccion (HDD failure), as Raid5 did, requires 2: one for data, one for mirror, simple !

Raid5 only good for performace but weak on data protection, since you only have one chance to survive a complete failure, then a 2nd failure will lose all your data, and on aged drives you have big chance to get a 2nd failure when rebuilding the lost drive.

Raid6 Rquires at least 4 drives, you can survive any combination of succesive drive failures, its slower than raid5 but by far safer on long term.

Mi entreprise experince with our host (I was an R&D Engineer on a big industry on my country) is that HDD failures are more often than other Hardware Failures, specially ones related to controller boards ( on HDD ), but Data Corruption due electronics failure or surge failure not so common or at least you can deal with it, but an total lost on a Raid Array its an Nightmare we see at least two times, the first an extreme power surge burned both host and 2/8 hdd, on raid 5 no possibility to rebuild, luck was on night and we only lost few data from SCADAs we could recovery later (automatic tape backup every day was our policy) second time we saw a dual failure on a Radi5 storage array hopfully we had another set on Raid5 mirroing (no raid6 available on our server that time), known asl Raid 5+1.

Filesystem corruption on Ext4 is very unlikely due hardware failure due the Journaling and while dont have the byte by byte ECC verification that have ZFS/RaidZ is very good for non-critical applications.

So, back to the thread, I give high value to Raid6 reliability than scalability, and portability is another Plus on the DS414slim, I dont care really on multimedia features but are welcome, so my 2nd option in case i dont buy an DS414slim is the DS214Play, I Also consider BTsync availabilty and it only seems stable (or at least usable) on Synology and freeNAS, I read it works on WD myCloud EX2 but with some issues, coz didnt allow to sleep the unit.
 
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