NAS Drives

[Gad-Westy]

I'm looking for some network storage drives to run Time machine backups from our imac and macbook and possibly a third drive to run backups from my work laptop.

For a couple of reasons, I like the idea of using network drives for this. Firstly because I could position them in my garage where my network switches are which means there's a fire barrier between the house and the back up drives. Secondly, for laptops, it means that they're backing up without having to periodically plug them into a drive.

I think the theory is sound unless anyone has any pointers otherwise.

But I know naff all about NAS drives. I don't really know what I'm looking for or any nuances of the spec or set up I should be aiming for. I'm not too bothered about RAID as we have backblaze as well so I feel okay with the amount of redundancy we'll have. I also don't really need remote access to the drives away from home as we use dropbox for all that stuff generally.

Any recommended buys so I can start to cost it all out a bit? Probably looking for a 10tb drive and 2x 1tb drives (for the macbook and laptop).

By the way, I realise I could probably partition a single larger drive to do this but I'm not massively tech savvy and I really would prefer as clean an out the box solution as possible.

[xeny]

You're not very tech savy but have switches in the garage and back up to backblaze?

Be aware there's a price break point between 2 and 4 drive units and it's if anything simpler to manage 3 files shares on 1 drive than 3 separate drives each with 1 file share. Separate drives are adding complexity rather than reducing it, as well as increasing the likelihood of experiencing a drive failure by a factor of 3.

I like Synology NAS units, so I'd suggest a DS120J or 220J (probably the 220J, there's usefully more CPU grunt as well as the extra bay you may well never use) and a Toshiba (what used to be the old HDS drive business) Toshiba N300 12 TB drive.

£150 for the NAS - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B084CLC39K

£290 for the drive - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07NVC7C8F

edit - fixed links

Edited by xeny on Saturday 4th July 13:25

[mikef]

A NAS box like this will give you time machine backup space, provide online storage, act as a media server and do a whole lot more besides

https://www.comms-express.com/products/synology-di...

May be available cheaper elsewhere, especially with smaller disks

[dhutch]

No expert, but believe Synology are considered good, and that's what I have.

[SS2.]

We've had a Synology NAS at the office for the past 5 years or so.

I'm probably tempting fate here, but it's never missed a beat, never stuttered, never needed a reboot.

If I was on the lookout for another NAS, I wouldn't look any further.

[Gad-Westy]

xeny said:

You're not very tech savy but have switches in the garage and back up to backblaze?

Be aware there's a price break point between 2 and 4 drive units and it's if anything simpler to manage 3 files shares on 1 drive than 3 separate drives each with 1 file share. Separate drives are adding complexity rather than reducing it, as well as increasing the likelihood of experiencing a drive failure by a factor of 3.

I like Synology NAS units, so I'd suggest a DS120J or 220J (probably the 220J, there's usefully more CPU grunt as well as the extra bay you may well never use) and a Toshiba (what used to be the old HDS drive business) Toshiba N300 12 TB drive.

£150 for the NAS - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS220j-Bay-Deskt...

£290 for the drive - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toshiba-N300-12TB-SATA-HD...

Cheers Xeny. When I say not tech savvy, I suppose I know more than nothing but I often cannot keep up with these type of threads once it gets into acronyms and things.

Links don't seem to work but from the text I assume this is a 2 bay enclosure but with a single drive suggested?

So if I went with a set up like this I assume I would need to partition it? Is that straight forward on a NAS drive?

Edited by Gad-Westy on Saturday 4th July 12:26

[Gad-Westy]

mikef said:

A NAS box like this will give you time machine backup space, provide online storage, act as a media server and do a whole lot more besides

https://www.comms-express.com/products/synology-di...

May be available cheaper elsewhere, especially with smaller disks

Cheers. Synology seems to be a good option generall.y

[Ham_and_Jam]

I’ve had a Synology DS213+ for quite a few years now, and it has been fantastic.

Currently looking at upgrading, as I want to use it to stream 4k media.

I suggest you look at the DS220+ or the DS720+ depending on your budget. Populate them with 2 x 4TB RED drives. Both are the latest 2 x bay (home user) performance models.

Whilst the DS720+ is a bit pricey, it also supports SSD caching so a big speed improvement, and 4k transcoding.

[mikef]

Gad-Westy said:

Cheers. Synology seems to be a good option generall.y

I would say so; I have a couple of 4-disk Synology NAS boxes, one dedicated to Time Machine in SHR (Raid-5), one for general file storage, backups and media server (Raid-10) and also recently picked up a cheapish 216+ off the Bay to use as a dedicated web serve (Raid-1)

[xeny]

Gad-Westy said:

Cheers Xeny. When I say not tech savvy, I suppose I know more than nothing but I often cannot keep up with these type of threads once it gets into acronyms and things.

Links don't seem to work but from the text I assume this is a 2 bay enclosure but with a single drive suggested?

So if I went with a set up like this I assume I would need to partition it? Is that straight forward on a NAS drive?

Edited by Gad-Westy on Saturday 4th July 12:26

sorry - links now fixed. 2 bays and separate folders rather than partitioning - this may be worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9U6iktvcIo

[dapprman]

You can't go wrong with either Synology or QNAP, I have a couple of the latter bu also recommend the former.

Netgear used to be really good value - they had a range of solid, reliable, cheap, twin drive units - I used to recommend them for non-techie friends who needed resilience for work, however for some reason they decided to vastly uplift the prices to the point where they rival QNAP and Synology but without the side benefits.

[Murph7355]

ash73 said:

Synology owners will recommend Synology, QNAP owners will recommend QNAP. Both are fine, don't bother with anything else.....

Except ReadyNAS owners will recommend ReadyNAS

(tbh if I were buying now I would consider both Synology and ReadyNAS...but I've had ReadyNAS for nearly 15yrs now and they've been excellent)

ash73 said:

...
And don't bother with RAID it's just a waste of storage space for a home setup.....

Except disks are the things that fail most often...and are cheap (the clue is in the name RAID)...treat "home" stuff as expendable at your peril.

ash73 said:

...
It's good that it's in a separate building, but you should also get a usb drive to backup your backup, say once a quarter.....

For any meaningful size of NAS you're going to struggle with USB drives that aren't large and likely slow and fragile themselves.

If money is less of an issue, have 2x NAS units, RAID in both, separate buildings but connected network. Back one up to the other. If you want to increase your odds even more, buy one Synology and one ReadyNAS (And have a spare HDD on site).

[Ham_and_Jam]

ash73 said:

Synology owners will recommend Synology, QNAP owners will recommend QNAP. Both are fine, don't bother with anything else.

Yep, I suppose that says a lot about both makes. They are both good.

[bloomen]

Ham_and_Jam said:

Populate them with 2 x 4TB RED drives. Both are the latest 2 x bay (home user) performance models.

Sub 8 TB WD Reds are now inferior cost saving technology and Synology themselves don't recommend them. If you work them hard to any degree they're going to be painfully slow. Shop elsewhere at that capacity.

[Ham_and_Jam]

What’s the optimum drive recommended for the Synology DS220 or DS720?

Seriously looking to replace mine with one of them later this year.

Personally the 2 x 4tb would be ok as far as capacity is concerned, but don’t want to suffer with speed if I’m getting a decent spec NAS

[xeny]

Both Seagate (Ironwolf), and Toshiba (N300) offer NAS optimised drives at 4 TB.

WD are now branding SMR drives as "Red" and non SMR drives as "Red Plus" which would also be suitable - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/western-di...

[dapprman]

When in doubt check the compatibility list. QNAP publish one and I would be very surprised if Synology did not.

[xeny]

dapprman said:

When in doubt check the compatibility list. QNAP publish one and I would be very surprised if Synology did not.

Synology do, but they (I' don't know about QNAP) occasionally get caught out - the WD shingled drives were on the compatibility list for a while as an example.

The way WD didn't differentiate the shingled drives from conventional drives was the cause of the large part of the upset by their customers.

[LeadFarmer]

So should NAS drives always be CMR and never SMR? Is there a way of telling the difference when buying?

[Ydnaroo]

The current WD Red Plus CMR drives seem to be end of life according to span.com who now suggest that the SMR drives are suitable for SOHO and small business installations. These drives seem to be OOS in other places as well. I've got a 4GB on order with a NAS and need to decide what to do now.

WD Blog says the there are new CMR NAS drives coming out.

Edit. The part Nos supposedly at EoL are those in the above blog as being 'available soon'.

Edited by Ydnaroo on Monday 6th July 11:19