Big, expensive NAS, or NAS + USB drive & backups

[lochwinnoch]

Odd title, I know. At home I run both a Sonos system and also now a WDTV Live system. I have a 500Gb single-drive NAS attached to my router (Buffalo Linkstation Live!).

With the WDTV Live running, I'm now ripping all the DVDs I own so I have easy access to them. But I'm very aware that I have no backup or RAID in place, which is not smart.

I've looked into big NAS drives. They're really expensive, and - running RAID - you only get 1/2 the size you're buying. I know that sounds dumb, but buying 2 x 2TB drives is obv 4TB. But running RAID is only 2TB space.

I was wondering if it's good/bad to buy, say, a 2TB NAS drive and a cheaper 2TB USB drive, and run an scheduled backup every night or something. I think the money saved could be quite a bit, but I don't know if this is possible or unwise for any reason.

[agrocott]

the chances of drives failing is quite low but when you've invested days into ripping several hundred dvd's the fact that you have the originals isn't much solace when you look at a 6 foot pile of disks and cry

there are different types of raid and its main thing is to allow a disk failure to be recoverable with things like raid 5 allowing the system to carry on until the dead disk is replaced

for high diskspace stuff its probably better to backup the collection once a week and dump it somewhere safe such as the desk at work/parents so if the house burns down (worst case) you have only to rip the stuff you have brought that week as the odds of both drives failing at the same time are really small

the main thing is with planning these sort of things is to think big and while you can fit 40-50 9gb dvds on a 500gb drive if you get a blu-ray drive and decide to make a few dozen films available it suddenly doesnt seem like much

[lochwinnoch]

Originally Posted by agrocott

the chances of drives failing is quite low but when you've invested days into ripping several hundred dvd's the fact that you have the originals isn't much solace when you look at a 6 foot pile of disks and cry

Yep - bang on the head. I want to rip em once and not have to do it again. Have about 120Gb of music, which is actually mostly my 800 or so CDs. Took a couple of months to do (every evening - ugh) and I back it up to another ex HDD from time-to-time. But I gotta get more room and should put a better backup plan in place

[topcatderby]

QNAP NAS's are the way forward !!

[njc]

I had this conundrum too recently, I finally decided to buy a cheap old laptop and put Windows Home Server on it. Will do what you want, storage is easy to add and as a plus it automatically backs up any Windows PCs you've got.

[Cockeye]

Originally Posted by topcatderby

QNAP NAS's are the way forward !!

What's a QNAP NAS?

[kaneda]

QNAP, the company/brand

Their current generation NAS are very well specced/performance and are at decent prices (without hard disks). Get them direct from QNAP or Amazon whichever is cheaper

[Dave h-j]

Originally Posted by njc

I had this conundrum too recently, I finally decided to buy a cheap old laptop and put Windows Home Server on it. Will do what you want, storage is easy to add and as a plus it automatically backs up any Windows PCs you've got.

This is what I've done. Use an old PC (or even buy a really cheap one) and connect a few USB drives to it. Then use synctoy/rsync/whatever to perodically copy/mirror the files to a backup drive.

The only benefit I can see for a NAS is lower energy usage and proper RAID functionality. However, in reality media files are large and static, therefore real-time replication probably isn't needed.

I've not tried it yet, but I bet those little £150 Acer Revo jobbies could act as decent fileserver..

[IAmATeaf]

Synology is another good brand, am thinking about getting a 4 drive model myself, something like the DS409j but damn are they expensive.

[Tempest]

I would like a NAS unit that I can sit next to my Switch and Router, then I can just come home, flip a a switch to turn it on (if it's not already on) then any PC or hand held device and stream video or musci from it (as well as acting as a large/long term storage device)

[Fatbloke]

I've a QNAP 4 bay unit too. It's got 3 x 1.5TB drives in it atm with room for a fourth. With Raid 5, you effectively lose one drive's worth of space. So with 3x1.5Tb disks I get 2x1.5Tb of space (3Tb).
If I added another disk then I'd be able to use 4.5Tb of space (3x1.5Tb).

I used to run my backups to another PC, but tbh, it was more noisy than it needed to be and undoubtedly using more power than it needed to.

My Qnap is about the size of a shuttle and sits on a cupboard shelf out the way.

Backups are not done by mirror, but I use Synctoy to perform backups of my media every week or so. My desktop (also Raid5 btw) has the master copy, then I synctoy to the Qnap. All the other devices (laptops, PS3 etc) then use the build in media server on the QNAP to read the data from there. That way the main desktop doesn't need to be on to stream to another device.

It might be overkill for the OP, but I'd certainly look at a NAS that offers additional applications built in. Newer Qnaps can also run SQL servers, email, webcam surveillance, remote connections, BT clients, Apple timemachine stuff, itunes server and other stuff I don't even understand

Back to the OP - at the minimum, I'd buy another USB connected drive and backup regularly to that. Don't leave it until it's too late!