Recommend me a NAS?

banie01

Folks,
I'm looking to buy myself a NAS,
Ideally I want a couple of Drive bays, USB compatibility, Utorrent server and all the usual bells and whistles too.
Budget is tight however and I'd like to keep the cost low.
My main use's will be as a media library, backup repository and online access for mobile devices.
Any suggestions greatly appreciated

CreepingDeath

I've one of these and am happy with it.

Zyzel NSA325

It's quite hackable too, as it's a Linux box.
I run ffmpeg to read my internet security webcam, so it doubles as a webcam recorder.

If your router supports VPN, you can login and kick off shell scripts via the Android App "ServerAssistant" remotely too on your smart phone.

As for torrents, it has a built-in peer blocklist app which reads the same blocklists as PeerBlock/Peer Guardian do to avoid some of your torrent activity been logged.
Apparently the likes of PeerBlock are typically only 66% effective at blocking you being tracked.
But PeerBlock and the like point to lists hosted here iBlockList.com, and you can point the NSA325 to download the lists and update them weekly.

I don't really use it much as a media server, but a lot of people replace the "Twonky" app with "Servillo" I believe and it's better.

Laviski

is it better to go for one of these more so than a already populated nas?

banie01

CreepingDeath wrote: »

I've one of these and am happy with it.

Zyzel NSA325

It's quite hackable too, as it's a Linux box.
I run ffmpeg to read my internet security webcam, so it doubles as a webcam recorder.

If your router supports VPN, you can login and kick off shell scripts via the Android App "ServerAssistant" remotely too on your smart phone.

As for torrents, it has a built-in peer blocklist app which reads the same blocklists as PeerBlock/Peer Guardian do to avoid some of your torrent activity been logged.
Apparently the likes of PeerBlock are typically only 66% effective at blocking you being tracked.
But PeerBlock and the like point to lists hosted here iBlockList.com, and you can point the NSA325 to download the lists and update them weekly.

I don't really use it much as a media server, but a lot of people replace the "Twonky" app with "Servillo" I believe and it's better.

Thanks for the info.
Its quite a nice little unit and pricewise it seems good value too.
Just trying to decide if I can justify buying it in the midst of redecorating the house!
Seems to be a very versatile unit though.

invaderzimirl

if you can stretch to it the QNAP TS-412 is a great unit i have a TS-410 previous model of it. dose everything for me and supports Raid 5 so you can loose a drive and loose no functionality while its rebuilding the data, i have 4*2TB drives which ends up with 5.5TB useable, but even my TV can pull video from it via DLNA server, it also have a torrent client if you want with and so much more its a larger outlay but you get a more versatile product for your money and it will last you a very long time

CreepingDeath

Laviski wrote: »

is it better to go for one of these more so than a already populated nas?

By "populated" you mean it includes hard drives ?
You don't get to choose the hard drives you want then... for NAS I think I paid a little extra for Western Digital drive designed for NAS.

Western Digital RED Disks

If you buy a NAS with the hard drives included you are forced to accept the drives you get.

banie01 wrote: »

Thanks for the info.
Its quite a nice little unit and pricewise it seems good value too.
Just trying to decide if I can justify buying it in the midst of redecorating the house!
Seems to be a very versatile unit though.

Yep.
It's the bigger brother of this long running bargain alert from 2012 - 1 BAY NSA310 Link

Laviski

CreepingDeath wrote: »

By "populated" you mean it includes hard drives ?
You don't get to choose the hard drives you want then... for NAS I think I paid a little extra for Western Digital drive designed for NAS.

Western Digital RED Disks

If you buy a NAS with the hard drives included you are forced to accept the drives you get.



Yep.
It's the bigger brother of this long running bargain alert from 2012 - 1 BAY NSA310 Link

cheers thats what i would have thought. I'm just looking a for a Storage solution for home use and just exploring the options. what are peoples thought of just going JBOD vs raid for home use as this would be the deciding factor of going for a 2 bay nas or 4 bay. As if going for a 4 bay nas would allow for expansion at a later date and possibly build into a raid 5. Personally setting up a raid 1 for just home use seems a bit of a waste and i would go with a 2 bay nas without raid. But paying that bit extra for expandability and getting the 4 bay seems it might be worth it in the long haul even if it means buying the extra disks at a later date and build it into a raid 5.

btw sorry to OP for hijacking thread :pac:

invaderzimirl

raid 5 is the best option yes you need a 4 drive for it (well it can be done with 3 but defeats the purpose of it) there is no good reason EVER to do JBOD as if one drive fails Date is lost. i know people say its only home use but tell that to your wife when all the pics of your baby under the age of 2 are gone.

as i said above i have a 4 Drive Qnap, best thing i ever bought.

Laviski

invaderzimirl wrote: »

raid 5 is the best option yes you need a 4 drive for it (well it can be done with 3 but defeats the purpose of it) there is no good reason EVER to do JBOD as if one drive fails Date is lost. i know people say its only home use but tell that to your wife when all the pics of your baby under the age of 2 are gone.

as i said above i have a 4 Drive Qnap, best thing i ever bought.

Cheers,
Just wanna ask, there wouldn't be an issue going for 1 drive first and build the raid at a later date?

invaderzimirl

no there wouldnt be but just depends how you expand your array there might be some migrating time as if you get a second drive and do a RAID 1mirror all the data from the first needs to be copied to the second, if you go to raid 5 all the data will have to be moved about to get the redundancy

also there is some debate about non matched drives, i got 4 at the same time, 1 has failed and was replaced by WD all data still good.

Ste-

Some other helpful info here.

davo2001

The Linkstation 421 Enclosure unit might be worth a look:

http://www.buffalo-technology.com/en/products/storage-devices/network-storage/linkstationtm/ls421de-eu-linkstation-421-series-network-attached-storage/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffalo-Linkstation-421-Disk-Arrays/dp/B00E7VKW38

L'prof

invaderzimirl wrote: »

if you can stretch to it the QNAP TS-412 is a great unit i have a TS-410 previous model of it. dose everything for me and supports Raid 5 so you can loose a drive and loose no functionality while its rebuilding the data, i have 4*2TB drives which ends up with 5.5TB useable, but even my TV can pull video from it via DLNA server, it also have a torrent client if you want with and so much more its a larger outlay but you get a more versatile product for your money and it will last you a very long time

You have 4*2TB drives, could I put 4*3TB drives in it?

Would this Synology NAS be a better option looking at the specs?

invaderzimirl

to be honest i was weighing up the two the Synology and the Qnap and all reviews seem to be the Qnap was better now that was with the TS-410 but im more then happy with the Qnap, have a look here it takes 4 TB drives if you want now you will loose a bit due to RAID and formatting as i said i have 4*2TB and have usable space.
there are a lot of Qnap apps available and you can even write your own if you want also.

personally id go for the Qnap over the synology but that's most likely based on i have never had an issue with it. i find the interface clean when you rarely need to access it and I've pulled from many systems from it at the same time

end of they day its a personal choice im sure some synology user could say everything im saying about the qnap im just saying what i know about for sure. hope its helpful

L'prof

invaderzimirl wrote: »

to be honest i was weighing up the two the Synology and the Qnap and all reviews seem to be the Qnap was better now that was with the TS-410 but im more then happy with the Qnap, have a look here it takes 4 TB drives if you want now you will loose a bit due to RAID and formatting as i said i have 4*2TB and have usable space.
there are a lot of Qnap apps available and you can even write your own if you want also.

personally id go for the Qnap over the synology but that's most likely based on i have never had an issue with it. i find the interface clean when you rarely need to access it and I've pulled from many systems from it at the same time

end of they day its a personal choice im sure some synology user could say everything im saying about the qnap im just saying what i know about for sure. hope its helpful

And was it the same Synology device I linked to? The better processor and extra ram have turned my head is all. Reckon it'll be one of those 2 that I get and 4 WD reds. Then it's HTPC time

invaderzimirl

i think it was the 411j i was weighing up to the ts-410
prob what would be best is also what i couldn't find was synology users that are singing their praises, i have had my st410 running for about 3/4 years without an issue.

vibe666

you can't go wrong with either the qnap or synology nas's tbh, they pretty much match each other feature for feature.

just stay away from thecus. i was stuck deciding between a synology and qnap nas and ended up buying a thecus because it looked good on paper, was cheaper and promised all the same features as the others, but it turned out to be a terrible decision as it is worthless for anything other than as a straight file server. the apps are terrible and support is abysmal at every level.

one word of advice though, regardless of which NAS you buy. DO NOT under any circumstances trust critical, irreplaceable data to RAID without at least one other backup copy elsewhere.

RAID does not equal a backup and there are several situations that could easily result in lost data even without failed disks. I've had a RAID 5 rebuild on a 4 disk set fail due to URE (unrecoverable read errors) on the remaining disks in the set and I've also had the controller in a NAS throw the RAID config on both a RAID5 and RAID6 set which was very nearly not recoverable.

whatever NAS you go for, if you have personal documents and photo's and video's etc. then you need some kind of external storage to create a backup copy on in case of NAS failure. ideally, you'd also want some kind of cloud backup like dropbox or google drive etc. to cover you in case of a house fire or something else like that.

most people son't think of hat kind of thing until after the first time it happens, so don't be that guy!

banie01

I went with the Zyxel Nas recommended by Creeping Death.
I managed to pick up a refurbed unit on Dabs for €82 delivered and that price I couldn't pass it up.
Now to source some drives and set up my cloud
Thanks for the advice folks.

just do it

banie01 wrote: »

I went with the Zyxel Nas recommended by Creeping Death.
I managed to pick up a refurbed unit on Dabs for €82 delivered and that price I couldn't pass it up.
Now to source some drives and set up my cloud
Thanks for the advice folks.

What drives are you going for? Also when you say "set up my cloud", do you mean a back-up or just the ability to connect to the NAS remotely? I'm just mindful of what vibe666 has said and thinking a 2-bay like you've gone for with a remote back-up is the most viable economical option. (those baby photos are in mind (or more's to the point the potential backlash from OH)!!!)

wheresmybeaver

I use a synology nas for storing media (DVDs and box sets primarily) but also for family photos, home videos and laptop data / backups. I also specifically use an external drive formatted in ntfs for making manual backups of my personal stuff every few weeks. I use Beyond Compare on a windows computer to compare changes and make identical backups. I also have the most important stuff on Skydrive in the event of a house fire! As another user said above, never rely on one box for your media as despite all the RAID configs in the world that thing could still burst into flames or be stolen.

about two years ago I converted my families old VHS tapes to mp4 (about 30 3 hour video tapes). I have a nas copy, an external hard drive copy, but I've also made copies on about 3 or 4 other computers / external drives in other family members houses just in case. I've also recently copied all the vids to a 32gb SD card in a nice box in my parents attic for future generations in case everything else is lost! (hope SD cards last that long..) as far as I'm concerned this very important media is safe for good!

banie01

just do it wrote: »

What drives are you going for? Also when you say "set up my cloud", do you mean a back-up or just the ability to connect to the NAS remotely? I'm just mindful of what vibe666 has said and thinking a 2-bay like you've gone for with a remote back-up is the most viable economical option. (those baby photos are in mind (or more's to the point the potential backlash from OH)!!!)

I'm going to go with Western Digital or perhaps Samsung(I have a HD103sj running in a dvr for 3yrs now issue free) perhaps 4TB each in a RAID array for some redundancy.
As for connecting to the NAS remotely, I mean using it as a server to feed my mobile devices(Have @30mb upload so it will be great for that)whilst out and about as well as around my home.
Also goint to use it for general back up duties with critical/irreplaceable files backed up to an external cloud service too.

just do it

Thanks banie01
I'm leaning towards a synology 2 bay with one 3TB WD red HD to begin with. I'm inclined to go with quality and capacity for expansionat this stage. Whilst 3TB is way more than I need now, it seems to be the best bang for buck size wise. I've a 500GB external HD which will more than suffice as back up for now. In time this configuration allows me plenty room for expansion, i.e. the second bay! With the rate we're taking photos of the kids and the likelihood that we'll start downloading movies it's no harm have the extra capacity. When budget allows I'll add the second HD and go with a RAID configuration.

Any thoughts on this welcome.

vibe666

the only raid config worth talking about in a nas with two bays is a raid1 mirror, but that will only duplicate your 1st drive, you won't get any more space from using the 2nd disk, it just gives you a 2nd copy of your data in case one disk fails.

what you can do however is get two bigger drives in the future, say 5 or 6tb disks in 4 or 5 years time (when they become available) and put in one, migrate the single disk to a raid1 mirror using the 2nd bigger disk (you'll still only see 3tb of space for now) then swap out the original disk with the other new one and rebuild the raid1 mirror onto the 2nd bigger disk, then expand your raid1 volume to take full advantage of the extra free space on the bigger disks.

you can also (and this goes for most NAS's) buy a new NAS with more drive bays from the same manufacturer and just add your disks and it will allow you to import your raid1 config into it, then add extra disks to migrate to raid5 or 6 in the future as your needs grow, which is handy for proper future proofing.

worth noting though that most NAS companies use their own proprietary form of raid, so you can't normally do this between manufacturers.

banie01

vibe666 wrote: »

worth noting though that most NAS companies use their own proprietary form of raid, so you can't normally do this between manufacturers.

Thanks for the above, never realised this!
I thought each version of RAID would have been a ''standard' akin to IEEE and as such a drive from a for example a Synology in a RAID 1 config could be used to recover in any other RAID 1 capable NAS.
Good info!

invaderzimirl

the most likely use different RAID controllers, im sure Synology do them also but i know better QNAP

qnap do an extension to its NAS connected via E-Sata if i need more room ill get one and exten my array into a second Box.

if you get another NAS at a later date you'll prob have more storage as drive capacity will grow and migrate your date to new one then reset your current one as a second for different files.

vibe666

they're all upgradable as far as disks go, so you don't need to buy a new NAS (or external storage) every time you run out of disk space, you can just upgrade to bigger disks on the fly as and when they become available and still use the same NAS.

i got my 7 bay Thecus NAS in 2009.

it started off with 4x 1.5tb disks in RAID5, but (after trying out freenas for a couple of years) I've just upgraded it to 7x 4tb disks in RAID6 which gives me a big fat 16tb data volume and a couple of tb leftover for iSCSI storage for my servers.