RAID is not backup, and throughput

[wilburpan]

Since I've been thinking about adding an NAS to my home network, I've been on a crash course sorting through the various options out there. I'd like to use the NAS for storing media files to be accessed by my family. Currently, it's just my wife and I on our laptops, but I can see this NAS being used for an HTPC in the future.

Here's my thought process so far.

1. Going to buy a 4 bay NAS for RAID5. Reason: future proofing, with the ability to expand the storage capacity of the NAS as time goes on.

Pitfall: Risky to expand capacity, and I've since learned that if there is a hardware failure, such as the controller, it can be difficult or impossible to recover the data.

2. Buy a 2 bay NAS, and use RAID1 for simple mirroring. I hear that if there is a hardware failure, you can get the data off one of the drives.

Pitfall: RAID isn't backup. Also, the issue of being able to get the data off of the drives may not be completely true.

3. Buy two 1 bay NAS's, use one as the storage, and the other to back up the first one. I don't need to worry about downtime, which I understand is the main real advantage of RAID1.

Pitfall: Throughput seems to be considerably less for these devices compared to the 2 bay devices.

BUT: I don't think that the actual NAS throughput is going to be the bottleneck. All of my home network is wireless, so I think that worrying about the NAS throughput performance issue isn't going to be relevant if the real bottleneck is my wireless network.

Am I missing something here? Based on this, two 1 bay NAS's seems to be the best solution for me. Most of the permanent storage requirements is going to be for audio, not video, so 2 TB will be way more than enough for us at this point in time.

 

[stevech]

Or a single-drive NAS with all the multimedia bells and whistles and an eSATA port. You arrange backups of the main drive to the external eSATA attached drive. Maybe always-connected, maybe only now and then and you manually initiate the backup. That eSATA attached drive could be a FAT32 file system so if the NAS crumps, the FAT32 drive can plug into any PC to get at the backups.

I'm thinking that's what I'll do. Esp. if the computer/controller in the NAS dies and that main drive is in some flavor of Linux which is hard to read elsewhere if that main drive is extracted. I think 2-3TB is all I need. We have just 500GB in RAID1 now and record a lot of TV programs per week (SageTV), but they all get deleted. The archived shows aren't more than 100MB or so. We don't copy DVDs to hard disk.

The leading candidate for me in this scenario is the Synology DS111 and a TBD brand 2 or 3TB drive. Despite its lower model # it has the faster CPU, DDR3 memory and an eSATA port. What would be nicer for a NAS in this price range is USB3 instead of or in addition to eSATA. But that's probably 6-12 months out.

Reading the users' forums, it looks like QNAP's competing product costs more and QNAP's RMA and customer support is not good. Synology is Taiwan based but perhaps (I don't know) their US west coast office's support phones have properly trained people. I wonder. Better yet, gimme a well documented product that works reliably and I won't need to call!

PS: Perhaps that eSATA drive could be NTFS, though Linux is rather slow when writing NTFS. I wonder if the FAT32 block sizes (Large) would mean the FAT32 drive might not have as much real capacity as if it were NTFS or a Linux format - but the goal is to be able to plug that drive into some Windows or Linux PC in an emergency.

 

[thiggins]

I use two single drive NASes, with one backing up the the other. The weakness of this is that both are in my home, although in different rooms. So in case of fire or theft, my data would be gone. At some point, I'll add backup of essential personal files to a cloud backup provider to complete the picture.

You are correct that if you are using only wireless, then you don't need to choose a NAS at all for performance. You also don't need to pay extra for all the performance, bells and whistles of QNAP or Synology. Consider Buffalo, Iomega, WD or other diskful single-drive NASes and look for deals on older models that are being inventory cleared.

 

[wilburpan]

I thought I'd post a followup on what I wound up doing. I wound up getting two Synology DS111 NAS units, and fitted both with 2 TB drives, set up one as the primary shared storage for my home network, and the other as a dedicated backup for the first NAS.

After trying to transfer some large video files from my laptop to the NAS, I've determined that the bottleneck is definitely the wireless network. On the other hand, I can stream a 720p .mov video from the NAS to my laptop while simultaneously copying another large file from the NAS to my laptop without stuttering using the QuickTime player, so I'm pretty happy with that.

As far as the physical separation of the backup to a location outside my home, if something happens to my house that's serious enough to take out both of these units simultaneously, I'll have much bigger problems than data loss.

Thanks for the input!

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the follow up.

As for offsite backup, don't forget the possibility of theft. And be sure to put both NASes on UPSes.

 

[wilburpan]

Again, if someone gets in my house and makes off with these units, I'll be dealing with much bigger problems than data loss.

Just out of curiosity, what good offsite backup services with a 2 TB capacity are there?

 

[stevech]

Just out of curiosity, what good offsite backup services with a 2 TB capacity are there?

None that are affordable. 250GB is affordable, e.g., Acronis.

 

[thiggins]

Just out of curiosity, what good offsite backup services with a 2 TB capacity are there?

Backblaze offers unlimited backup for $5/month per computer. They do limit individual file size to 9GB, though.

 

[stevech]

Classic: How does one choose a cloud storage service provider than will exist 2-3 years from now AND is cost-efficient. Ye ole story: caveat emptor.