NAS and RAID - what do YOU use?

[BobU]

Its time to replace my 12 year old NAS Just researching and lots new to learn. I use my NAS for all my images plus videos and music to stream to my home theater. So mulit purpose.

Got a brand or model you love? What version of RAID do you use and why? I am thinking a 4 Bay NAS, but might be convinced to go more for a great reason. On a budget as we likely all are. Looking for 12-24 TB most likely. And it seems for my needs, onboard GPU is essential.

Thoughts?

~Bob

 

[ctitanic]

Here is what I'm using now:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JY4QJZ8/ (BUFFALO LinkStation 220 8TB 2-Bay NAS) But This is not even close to what you are asking for. They have options for 16 TB.

 

[tpatana]

I wish there were cheaper options for my needs. I want to mirror everything so currently I need ~2x 40TB

Instead of buying NAS, I have stack of USB drives that I use for the storage. I manually mirror everything to 2 separate drives. So if someone knows affordable NAS with RAID1, I'd be interested to learn. I don't think I'd trust RAID5. I work on HW quality testing for electronics so I have inherit suspicion on HW quality

 

[miuzi]

I've been using a 4-bay Western Digital MyCloud NAS with 4x4TB drives, formatted to about 12TB with RAID 5, for about 6 years now, and it works great for my needs. Coincidentally given your question, I had a quick look around last week at what the market looks like, since I've been relying on this one for some time now and the thought of upgrading crossed my mind, but at a quick glance, the available options didn't seem to have changed much, either from a price (setting aside price for a given capacity constantly falling) or performance standpoint, since I put mine together. Similar to you Bob, I also use mine for video and music streaming to devices throughout my house.

 

[BobU]

I wish there were cheaper options for my needs. I want to mirror everything so currently I need ~2x 40TB

Instead of buying NAS, I have stack of USB drives that I use for the storage. I manually mirror everything to 2 separate drives. So if someone knows affordable NAS with RAID1, I'd be interested to learn. I don't think I'd trust RAID5. I work on HW quality testing for electronics so I have inherit suspicion on HW quality

That's exactly the question: Raid 1 or 5. So many people using 5 its hard to ignore and cheaper using smaller drives. Synology 423+ seems to be the sweet spot, but now looking at Asustor. Want to be sure as this coul dbe my last NAS.

 

[tpatana]

Synology DS923+ is sometimes at discount for $480, I'd probably get that with 4x same drive size and use RAID1. Problem would be that with my amount I'd need two of those... getting expensive.

Also me being paranoid about HW quality, I'd never buy all same drives. Using Raid1, at most I'd buy 50% one drive and 50% another. If they come from same batch, it's higher likelihood to die same time before you have time to replace the broken drives. Hence I never buy 2 same drives at the same time. Mix&match the brand or size, or wait ~6 months to buy same so most likely it's not same batch.

 

[BobU]

Great point on drives!

Problem with the 923+ for me is no onboard GPU, so no transcoding on the NAS and makes using for a media server much more difficult for mw. Which is why the 423+ makes a bit more sense. in my case. As a storage server, 923+ is fine and faster. But not for audio/video.

 

[tpatana]

I see. I only need storage, no need for audio/video.

 

[TenaCJed]

I work in IT, and I used to work in a sever farm supporting many servers, with the majority of these all running multi-disk storage arrays, running RAID5. I do not think anyone should have fear of running the same make / model from the same batch, nor fear of RAID5. RAID5 can withstand a single hard drive failure and continue running, that is why it was so popular for many, many years. NAS should alert you of failure, replace it sooner rather than later, extremely low risk.

Hard drives fail, does not matter if it is same batch or not, it is going to happen to everyone, but most of the time that failure will not happen for many years. Everyone is bound to get a lemon, but it is not common. I have been working in desktop support for years now, hard drive failures happen, but not common.

 

[TenaCJed]

As for the question, I recently purchased QNAP TS-464-8G-US 4 bay. Has 2.5GB network and can be upgraded to 10GB network if you want to run pictures directly from NAS instead of just a backup, if you have 10GB network.

Also has Intel CPU with built in video, so Plex can be ran or other video streaming and support transcoding.