Mirroring two drives separately in the same NAS?

[gaikokujinkyofusho]

I have posted a bit about recommendations for 4bay NAS boxes in various places and have gotten a few responses. One thing that hasn’t been clear to me (I am a noob so perhaps I am just not understanding the obvious) is that of the 4 bay NAS boxes I have looked at they don’t really seem to support “two mirrors or two separate drives” that is, in one box You have drives A, B, C, and D and you want A to mirror B (btw RAID 1) and C to mirror D. I have seen of course RAID 5 etc and I could just say get two separate two bay NAS boxes (I have a DNS-323 and like it well enough) but with my work I move about once every 1.5 years so the more “condensed” the solution the better. Any anyone point me to NAS boxes that do this “dual mirroring” or maybe point out something that I might be missing the description of these boxes? (the seem to be like 10 forms of raid [or more?] and I confess that I don’t understand all of them).

Any help would of course be appreciated!!

Cheers

-Gaiko

 

[thiggins]

The key is to look for products that support multiple RAID volumes. However, this isn't easy to determine from most manufacturers' documentation.

If anyone has it, it will be QNAP, Synology and/or Thecus. But, again, I can't tell from their documentation. So I'll ask them and post back.

You should, of course, not use the second RAID 1 volume to back up the first. Any backup should be done to a physically separate device.

 

[thiggins]

QNAP says it supports multiple RAID 0 and RAID 1.

 

[gaikokujinkyofusho]

QNAP says it supports multiple RAID 0 and RAID 1.

Thanks so much for checking on that. That does help narrow the search down alot.

As for the backup. The setup i am aiming for is to have the one RAID1 vol mirror the other RAID1 vol internally and then have that box mirror an offsite box (you answered a previous post of mine about remote syncing which i am hoping to setup).

Cheers

-Gaiko

 

[thiggins]

I don't think you're really buying any extra security by the internal RAID 1 to RAID 1 mirror.

BTW, I haven't heard back yet from Synology and Thecus. I'll post when I do.

 

[gaikokujinkyofusho]

I don't think you're really buying any extra security by the internal RAID 1 to RAID 1 mirror.

you are right, but I work abroad and the remote i want to back to is in the US so really the "dual mirroring" in one box is just to save me from having to sync 4tb of data via the net. One drive dies, i still have another (instead of having to either wait for 4tb to sync up or go back to the US and copy the drive).

BTW, I haven't heard back yet from Synology and Thecus. I'll post when I do.

Ah, noted (thanks again).

Cheers & Gratitude

-Gaiko

 

[peterk]

I have a Synology DS409 which supports multiple raid1 volumes as well.

Since Synology provides (almost) the same firmware functionality for their entire product line, i think all their 4+ bay NAS-es are capable of working with multi raid1 volumes.

I'm curious though, why do you prefer 2xRAID1 over RAID6? Both configurations allow to loose 2 drives, but in RAID6 it can be any 2 out of the 4, while in RAID1 you cannot loose 2 drives from the same RAID set.

 

[ttran55]

Check out Promise NS4300N and NS4600

I believe the NS4300 supports multiple volumes.
At the beginning, I had 2x1TB so the box created RAID1 and named it VOLUME1. Later on, I added a 750GB drive and the NAS created a new VOLUME2. So bad that I don't have a second 750GB. I believe the newer NS4600 can handle multiple volume too.

 

[beisser]

all netgear nas support multiple volumes as well. you can have 2 or more (if you got more than 4 drives that is) raid 1 volumes if you want by using flexraid instead of x-raid.

 

[thiggins]

Synology and Thecus both support multiple volumes in their RAID 5 capable products.

 

[gaikokujinkyofusho]

I have a Synology DS409 which supports multiple raid1 volumes as well.

Since Synology provides (almost) the same firmware functionality for their entire product line, i think all their 4+ bay NAS-es are capable of working with multi raid1 volumes.

I'm curious though, why do you prefer 2xRAID1 over RAID6? Both configurations allow to loose 2 drives, but in RAID6 it can be any 2 out of the 4, while in RAID1 you cannot loose 2 drives from the same RAID set.

Thanks for the synology info.

As for the RAID 1 over RAID 6, I read (though i can't find the article now) an article by tim i think that said something to the effect that RAID1 is the safest (maybe recoverable?) setup. I am most certainly a noob and open to other solutions (haven't bought anything yet), i had previously thought about a RAID 5 solution but somehow it seemed like the raid 1 would be the easiest to use/recover from.