Yet another buying advice :)

[Clairlune]

Hello there,
first of all nice site with lots of good informations.

Here is why i want a NAS :
- storage of my familly's photos / videos
- data (above) safe storage through raid
- video streaming to pc (linux) / ps3 / x360
- extensible storage space


considering this i reduced my choices to 4 slots nas , i was going to go for a readynas nv+ just before i found your site with lots of other brands. I m confused because the nv+ seems old and is not even in the performance charts on your site.

What nas with such features could you recommend?

thanks by advance

 

[thiggins]

Please read How To Choose the Right NAS for You and narrow your selections.

RAID does not ensure that your data is safe. Please read Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID.

Yes, the NV+ is an older model, but is very fully featured. Performance data can be found in the RAID 5 charts.

 

[Clairlune]

thank you very much for your patience and your answer
i will look a little further and come back with more focused questions

 

[Clairlune]

All right, i've been adjusting my needs and looking deeper into the site.
First a few questions :
in jbod mode can i take one disk out of the nas and plug it in my linux box to access the data in case of any hardware failure of the nas ( given i handle the filesystem compatibility myself; lets say ext3 and i read it under some linux box and the failure was not the disk of course) ?
is there any nas that can work in jbod mode and use one of the disks only for backup? I ll explain a bit what i want with that : i want one disk with data to use the nice network sharing media center features of the nas and one disk for backup that will not be used unless i backup to it.

This two questions leads me to what i want to do considering your articles about raid. I already knew raid was not for backup, but i guessed it would be enough in say mode 1 Well it isn't so i devised this solution considering your "use 2 nas" advice (one for use, one for backup) : use only one nas (for the sake of my wallet ) with at least two disks in jbod mode and use one disk for current use and one disk for backup if the nas can restrain use of the backup disk to backup time only. This way i have a backup disk with the 'long' life of disk used less often combined to an easy accessibility of the data in case of any hardware failure and i still get the nas nice data sharing features.

Is that possible, please tell me it is or my wallet is gonna get crazy and my wife too

 

[thiggins]

You can't do what you describe in "JBOD" mode. That mode combines multiple drives into one logical drive.

You can do what you want if a NAS supports treating each drive as a separate volume.

 

[Clairlune]

all right my mistake, i though jbod was exactly what it mean thanks for the precision.
I will now have a look at the reviews and charts

could you point to any nas implementing this behaviour?
or at least give me more specific words describing this behaviour so i can look for them in reviews and forums?

thanks a lot for your time and patience

 

[thiggins]

The problem is that the term "JBOD" is not used consistently by all manufacturers. I also have not been keeping careful track of NASes ability to support individual drive volumes, so you won't find the information in the Charts.

All multi-drive Synology and QNAPs support single drive volumes (Synology calls this volume type "Basic"). I think that Thecus also supports this, but they are one of the manufacturers that uses "JBOD" in a confusing way.

 

[Clairlune]

all right thanks for the insight, i m gonna have to work my way from here. Once again thank you and keep up the good work.