Help NAS drives (again, again)

[old.user4556]

Reet,

I'm looking to move over to a Sonos system fairly soon; I'm tired of dicking around with media servers, PCs, ropey software, transcoding etc and just want to go over to a simple plug and play wireless media streaming setup (for music / audio) that will work all over the house (syncing if necessary for entertaining / parties) and can be controlled from my iPhone (actually fancy an iPad for it..).

I'm looking at:

Buffalo LinkStation Duo 1 TB NAS Drive - 2x 500GB.. | Ebuyer.com

This will be plugged into my router and will house all my music in FLAC format (the odd shit album in MP3 too) with two 500GB drives mirrored in case of a failure. Seems like a good unit, reviews well and is compatible with the Sonos system which is very important.

Are there other options? Would you recommend something else? Any reason not to get the Buffalo unit? The only pitfall that springs to mind is not being able to pick the drives you put into it unless you pay even more and replace them.

 

[Bodhi]

I'd go for one of the LG ones with built in DVD Burners, will make adding new music a piece of piss. It is also shiny, so will match all the other kit you're using.

Plus I'm told Steve Jobs has one. So it must be good.

 

[old.user4556]

You mean something like this?

LG N2B1DB2 1TB NAS Drive 2 x 500GB with Blu Ray.. | Ebuyer.com

Touch expensive.

 

[Trem]

I have a Buffalo LS and also a Netgear ReadyNAS, the Buffalo was far too slow/niggly for my liking. It was great for the first week but after that I wanted to kill it hard. The ReadyNAS DUO is 100% better, its faster when transferring files (although still shit slow when doing it via wireless) and it has a far easier and flexible system installed on it than the Buffalo. The torrent client (Transmission) I installed on it is a god send. Buffalo is an absolute fucktwat to install anything other than the supplied software that is on it, may not seem like a big deal at first but honestly it will make you want to set fire to your brain.

ReadyNAS Duo bar none if you want a NAS. Trust me G.

Also, you can claim a free 1tb hard drive - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143121

 

[old.user4556]

Looks the sex Trem, compatible with Sonos too .

 

[Moriath]

i second a readyNAs too i have one of those with 2 1tb drives raided

 

[ford prefect]

I run a readynas as well, fantastic little box and although not massively specced it does do pretty much everything well. For audio streaming it is ideal, and it is usually pretty good at HD video too, as long as it isn't too busy running its bittorrent client ect.

 

[inactionman]

Have a readynas ultra 4 myself (got 4x1.5Tb drives in RAID5). Which I run squeezecenter on, and my squeezeboxes connect to it for music.

The squeezeboxes have an android control app now, and I believe an iPhone one.

 

[Scouse]

# Ultra small form factor high performance 2 bay home NAS with Gigabit connectivity
# Never lose data due to drive failure by simply adding a second drive.
# X-RAID technology - Hot swap drives easily to add capacity when you need it, without any down time.

Have to say. How can you hot swap to "add capacity" when your mirrored 2 x 1TB drives fill both drive bays.

I'd like a NAS but, frankly, a couple of terabytes wouldn't even fill my existing requirement - never mind any future proofing. They're also bloody expensive for what they are.

If someone could find me a reliable NAS that would hot-swap say, 6 x 2tb drives in a stripe - so I didn't lose half my capacity then we'd be getting at least somewhere.

However, then I'd ask the question - what about hardware failure of the NAS? If that goes belly up would you lose your data if you hadn't got a hardware implementation that could read the data off your drives (i.e. could you happily import them into a windows PC and retrieve the data or would you be proper fucked?)...

Nice shiny storage toy. But limited in useability and I'd worry whether it really did keep your data as "secure" as advertised




Yes. I'm in a right grumpy mood. Still valid points tho

 

[old.user4556]

... and what if nuclear leakage from a nearby powerplant irradiated your drives anyway and ...

Ok I'm joking .

But yes, valid indeed Scouse. I guess it depends on how important your data is and how stringent your backup strategy is. Remember my NAS drive will be a music server only; music that I can either a) download very quickly or b) re-rip from my CD collection. The loss of the data isn't that big a deal as it's not a backup solution.

I don't think I would rely upon it as a robust archive solution, I tend to backup my photographs (something that I absolutely can't get back) every few weeks onto an external hard disk which is then powered down, disconnected and stored away from my PC. I should really consider an online backup solution for my photos, but it would be costly as I have tens of gigabytes.

 

[Scouse]

I'd consider secondary backup of your photos too old bean. One hard drive is too easily stolen/randombroken blah blah blah.

You know the drill. If I followed it myself I'd feel a lot better about my own data security



Edit: OK Peeps. Question. Does anyone run a "robust" backup solution?

If so, what?

 

[old.user4556]

Get your own thread!

Robust to me would be an automagic sync of "my documents" to another hard disk and a cloud based storage solution such that in the event of a total loss, you could restore from the backed up hard disk that was local, but if that failed you'd have the cloud solution to restore from.

Pricey to do it that way.

 

[MYstIC G]

If you go for a readynas I'd suggest that you skip the Duo now. I've got one and I love it but the readynas duo is sparc and the readynas hardware seems to be firmly rooted in x86 going forward which will mean you're far more likely to get add ons and software updates.

 

[Zenith.UK]

I'm thinking of a fault tolerant archive for irreplaceable data like home videos and pictures.

• My backup proposal is to get a hardware RAID1 box + 4 drives.
  2 in the box mirroring each other. 2 spare.
• Once in a while (maybe monthly), yank a drive from the box and slot in a spare. Drive to my Dad's place (10mins) and leave the drive with him.
• The following month, do it all again. This time I drop off the backup with Dad and pick up last month's backup.

As I see it, that ticks all the boxes for a "proper" offline, off-site, secure backup. If I had a catastrophic house fire, the data is still safe at Dad's.

The catch is getting a box that performs the RAID function but allowing the individual disks to be readable independently.
Anyone have any suggestions? The ReadyNAS sounds like a good option, but doesn't provide simple means to read unplugged disks on their own.

 

[djpringle]

Have to say. How can you hot swap to "add capacity" when your mirrored 2 x 1TB drives fill both drive bays.

However, then I'd ask the question - what about hardware failure of the NAS? If that goes belly up would you lose your data if you hadn't got a hardware implementation that could read the data off your drives (i.e. could you happily import them into a windows PC and retrieve the data or would you be proper fucked?)...

Nice shiny storage toy. But limited in useability and I'd worry whether it really did keep your data as "secure" as advertised

Yes. I'm in a right grumpy mood. Still valid points tho

The hot swap capacity increase is a bit of a ball ache but it does work.

• Hot swap out one of the drives with new bigger drive
• Wait for hours and hours as it copies itself
• Hot swap out the remaining old drive
• Wait for even more time as it copies itself
• Swear uncontrollably as the capacity is still the same
• Read the instructions and restart the NAS

Obviously there are 2 big periods of vulnerability during the copy process but you'll still have the original drives.

I bought a cheap external SATA drive dock that was able to read the old NAS drives fine

 

[Deebs]

I'd consider secondary backup of your photos too old bean. One hard drive is too easily stolen/randombroken blah blah blah.

You know the drill. If I followed it myself I'd feel a lot better about my own data security



Edit: OK Peeps. Question. Does anyone run a "robust" backup solution?

If so, what?

Personally I would never get a NAS for my home setup they just don't seem to have the horsepower to stream to more than 1 device at a time (HD quality) as the processor is usually some low powered atom. Having said that they have their place for those that don't have the space to have servers setup, luckily I do, one room dedicated to my toys.

So, my setup:

• Ubuntu Server with 2gb RAM, dual core AMD, 2 x 300gb in RAID1, 2 x 2tb in RAID1 (this is where all my media files sit).
• Media PC with 4gb RAM, quad core AMD, 4 x 500gb, all individual drives. This is where I rip my CDs to flac and I hold the master copy of my music library here.
• Main PC with 8gb RAM, dual core Intel, 4 x 500gb.

Now, backups in my house work as follows:

Media PC music library is mirrored nightly to the Ubuntu Server and Main PC (so I have 3 copies), once a week I mirror the Music Library to a USB powered 500gb drive and leave it offsite.

My documentation, emails, photos are stored in a truecrypt container on Drive 3 in the Main PC, this is mirrored daily to another truecrypt container on Drive 2 in the Main PC. Once a week as above the container gets copied to the USB drive.

All the FH SQL databases are backed up daily between 0500 and 0515 to a drive on the main SQL Server in London, on this drive I keep a weeks rolling copy. This is mirrored to my Ubuntu Server daily and I also compress and encrypt a copy and store it on a mate's server hosted in Germany. (3 copies again).

All the websites I host are also backed up twice a day to the "backup" drive on the SQL server, once a day I pull that down to my Ubuntu Server as well.

In the next few days I am going to be looking at building my own hosted Cloud Backup service for a few mates that keep pestering me. Once that is down I will then also sync the backups to this device.

 

[TdC]

nerd!

 

[soze]

After playing with one of the big boys i work I got myself a DS410 and filled it with 4 2TB Samsung drives. The web interface really is second to none if i could just find a better way to download NZB files i think i could do all my downloading from my phone. After Installing it i yanked a wiped a drive to test it out. It took the new drive and rebuilt the array with no problems. They also sell disk enclosures you can connect via esata to increase capacity.

 

[MYstIC G]

Synology Inc. • View topic - sabnzbd recommended settings on ds-410?

 

[soze]

Cheers, It downloads from torrents and News Groups already but you need to give it a NZB file which I only know how to do using NZBIndex ect.

 

[MYstIC G]

If you've got an iPhone: myNZB for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store

 

[Embattle]

After playing with one of the big boys i work I got myself a DS410 and filled it with 4 2TB Samsung drives. The web interface really is second to none if i could just find a better way to download NZB files i think i could do all my downloading from my phone. After Installing it i yanked a wiped a drive to test it out. It took the new drive and rebuilt the array with no problems. They also sell disk enclosures you can connect via esata to increase capacity.

Got a DS410 myself, top stuff.

 

[old.user4556]

Looks nice, too expensive for what I need.

 

[Embattle]

I use an app called Synodroid with my DS410.

 

[soze]

Thanks both I will look into the apps.

 

[smurkin]

I'm interested here - so the 410, can it auomatically recieve files from PCs on the rest of a wireless network - is there software to do this automatically? tia.

 

[soze]

There is backup software you can use to automatically backup directories you decide on a schedule. But it is also very easy to use via windows shares and they integrate very well with AD if you have that kind of set up.

 

[Scouse]

Win...

Cool

 

[Embattle]

Synology Inc. - NEW NAS Experience - Synology DSM 3.1 :: Desktop Backup

 

[Trem]

Can you mess with the 410 like you can the ReadyNAS though? You know, stuff like install a torrent client that my torrent sites don't mind....such as Transmission (which is on RN Duo)?