Replacement trays for NAS?

[lleo19]

Hi All,
I would like to do a rotating backup schedule using a small 2-drive NAS by replacing the drives in it. (hotswap is not a must, just nice to have)
The problem is that I simply cannot locate additional drive trays or holders for just about any brand out there.
My choice of NAS was Synology DS211+ (for reasons not related to this topic) but there are no separate trays sold anywhere, including Synology. As I was looking into this realized that none of the major brands do this.
So my questions:
- any small, low power 2-drive nas out there for which one can get extra drive holders?
- why is this such hard to find?
Thanks for your insight...

 

[thiggins]

Do not do this. Removing a replacing a drive will force a volume rebuild, during which your data is at risk. You will also be putting unnecessary wear and tear on your drives.

Get an external USB drive (or eSATA or USB3 if your NAS supports it) or another NAS and use it for your backups.

 

[lleo19]

Thanks Tim for your reply.
I see your point in that a drive change is seen differently by a NAS compared to a tape drive for example, even if cold swapped.

The problem with external drives, USB or eSATA is sizing. Any recommendation for ~5TB of media backup, to create a rotating schedule where always two previous copies do exist?
Thanks, L.

 

[thiggins]

Wouldn't you have the same problem with your swap-the-internal-drive plan? 5 TB drives don't exist there, either.

The most robust way to do this would be rsync (network backup) to two other networked NASes, one of them preferably offsite. These NASes don't have to be ultra fast or full-featured, since the copy will be incremental after the initial backup.

You could even press old notebooks or PCs into service with multiple drives and a copy of DeltaCopy to handle rsync.

 

[lleo19]

If I could swap the drives, the limiting factor would be the number of drives/swaps.
In my simplistic way of thinking about this, I considered a 2-drive NAS, supporting 3TB drives as JBOD, in which could swap both drives to have a different "volume" in. Than have 3 sets of "volumes" to rotate. I can live with to require cold-swaps. Would this work?

 

[thiggins]

The SATA connectors in the NAS are not made for constant use like you propose. Besides, when you swap out the first set of drives, how do you get the data back onto the next set?

You really don't want to be swapping drives in and out of any NAS on an ongoing basis.

 

[lleo19]

Thanks Tim, sure I understand that consumer grade NAS devices have a limited number or insertion cycles.
I regret it, but probably was not clear on that I have a separate server and attached storage. This copy to additional devices is purely for the purpose of creating additional copies of content.