NAS Drives

[RizzoTheRat]

I spent a while looking at QNAP and Synology, and eventually went with Synology based on everyone saying how good the software is. I opted for a 4 bay 920+ with a pair of 4TB drives, not cheap but gives me plenty of room for expansion and the + is a quicker processor for better video transcoding. With Synology's adaptive raid it means I currently have 4TB total storage, but adding third 4TB drive would give me 8TB, so I can expand up to 12TB before I need to start replacing disks with bigger ones. (my wife is getting more in to DSLR photography so storage needs are growing). However this does mean I've tied myself to Synology as if it dies the volumes couldn't be rebuilt on a QNAP or other brand.

The software is really easy to set up and use, both for backup and syncing stuff, and I also run Plex on it talking to my Chromecast plugged in to the telly.


However if you don't want Raid and other fancy functions and software, a basic single drive NAS like my previous Mybook Live might plenty for what you want, and a lot cheaper.

Edited by RizzoTheRat on Friday 11th June 13:59

[xeny]

I've not tried it, but https://kb.synology.com/en-uk/DSM/tutorial/How_can... mentions recovery of SHR volumes, so it may not be that bad.

[Craikeybaby]

I've bought a cheap DS216J with 2x 3TB WD red drives on eBay. I figured that it was best to try it out on a used one, then if it works for my usage, I can either buy a new one, or just continue with the used one.

[colin79666]

Probably not what the OP was after but something for Google to find/anyone looking for something similar keyword wise. An alternative to a NAS if all you want is cheap network storage for some time machine backups is to effectively make your own Apple Time Capsule (now discontinued) with a Raspberry Pi and USB drive. I've done it with the following:
Raspberry Pi Zero and case - £10 (had this already for PiHole)
Micro SD card - £10 (had this already)
Micro USB hub with ethernet - £15 (had this already)
Power supply - £10 (had this already)
USB pen drive - £25 for 256GB (obviously capacity depends on your requirements, hard drives would be cheaper per GB but I wanted something small)

Format the drive, setup a SMB share on the Pi (ignore old guides on HFS), add Bonjour/mDNS and finally point your Mac at it.

[Craikeybaby]

I actually have a spare Raspberry Pi, but I would rather have an all-in-one-box proven solution for my backups.

[RizzoTheRat]

colin79666 said:

Probably not what the OP was after but something for Google to find/anyone looking for something similar keyword wise. An alternative to a NAS if all you want is cheap network storage for some time machine backups is to effectively make your own Apple Time Capsule (now discontinued) with a Raspberry Pi and USB drive. I've done it with the following:
Raspberry Pi Zero and case - £10 (had this already for PiHole)
Micro SD card - £10 (had this already)
Micro USB hub with ethernet - £15 (had this already)
Power supply - £10 (had this already)
USB pen drive - £25 for 256GB (obviously capacity depends on your requirements, hard drives would be cheaper per GB but I wanted something small)

Format the drive, setup a SMB share on the Pi (ignore old guides on HFS), add Bonjour/mDNS and finally point your Mac at it.

If you can still find one, the Western Digital Pi-Drive cable is brilliant, but sadly no longer made. One cable that powers the pi and a hard drive, as well as giving the data connection between them. I used mine with a 1TB drive on it for ages. Very slow compared to my synology but fine for background backups or as a media player.

[Mr Whippy]

I moved to a single 8TB QVO SSD for my file server thing.

Much nicer. Quieter. Faster. Lower power usage.

Went from 2 x 4TB Ironwolf Pro striped in Win10 with storage spaces.

As I needed to expand storage, it was either an 8TB SSD or two more Iron Wolf HDD.


Yes I've gone single drive, but it's backed up. Also all my SSD I've ever owned still work. Despite hammering as a C drive or scratch discs etc.

About half of my HDD have died.

[Magnum 475]

Mr Whippy said:

Also all my SSD I've ever owned still work. Despite hammering as a C drive or scratch discs etc.

About half of my HDD have died.

I've found this. My oldest SSD is now 10 - a 128GB unit in a MacBook air from 2011. No errors reported, no issues. Still works perfectly. I'm waiting to see how much longer it will go for....

The company I work for deploys 'serious' storage solutions as part of our core business. Frequenty PetaBytes, so way too much for 100% SSD. In the systems we deploy, failures are invariably the mechanical hard drives, never the SSDs used for caching / frequently accessed files.

Edited by Magnum 475 on Thursday 8th July 09:29

[Craikeybaby]

I have been experimenting with the Synology set-up and quickly realised that you have to stick to their way of doing things...

I found the initial set-up very easy, especially for Time Machine. But then backing up my data from the Synology device is not quite so straightforward:

• The Glacier Archive app does not support AWS Glacier Deep Archive, likely as it is a competitor to the Synology cloud storage product.
• If you use Hyper Backup to back up content to AWS S3, for some reason you cannot then archive the files to Glacier Deep Archive.
• I was hoping that I would be able to sync with a USB drive that I take on my travels, but it seems like the USB Copy application only works USB drive to Synology or vice-versa, not a 2 way sync.

Other than that I am impressed at how quiet it is and once your are playing with the rules how easy it is to configure tasks etc.

[xeny]

Craikeybaby said:

• I was hoping that I would be able to sync with a USB drive that I take on my travels, but it seems like the USB Copy application only works USB drive to Synology or vice-versa, not a 2 way sync.

I think USB Copy is really intended for dumping flash media with photos or videos onto a NAS when the camera person gets back to base.

If your LAN is reasonably fast then using your preferred sync tool with the drive plugged in to a computer works well and has the added bonus you can check there's what you want on the drive before you set off.

[Craikeybaby]

I think I’ll just have to use a separate HDD/USB drive then use USB copy to import to the NAS, before copying to my usual export drive, not ideal, but not a big problem either.

[xeny]

Is there a reason you need to plug stuff into the NAS at all? I tend to copy stuff on and off via network shares rather than plugging stuff directly into it, albeit in my case it's deliberately located nowhere near the PC I normally use.

[Craikeybaby]

To backup the content onto a separate device that is usually stored at a different location.

[xeny]

I get that bit, but why not plug the portable device into a computer on the LAN, mount the NAS share on that computer, and copy that way?

[Craikeybaby]

I was hoping for something simple, because the easier it is, the more likely the back up is to be done frequently.

[eccles]

I'm after a bit of advice, I'm looking at buying a second hand Synology NAS and it comes with two, 4tb drives.
One is a WD red, but the other is a WD HC310. My research tells me that the HC310 is a data centre drive and I was wondering if it's suitable for use in a NAS setting.
Many thanks in advance.

[vetrof]

eccles said:

I'm after a bit of advice, I'm looking at buying a second hand Synology NAS and it comes with two, 4tb drives.
One is a WD red, but the other is a WD HC310. My research tells me that the HC310 is a data centre drive and I was wondering if it's suitable for use in a NAS setting.
Many thanks in advance.

Personally I would try to use identical drives. Also, from what I have read 'data centre' drives can be noisier than domestic ones. Where will your NAS be?

[eccles]

vetrof said:

eccles said:

I'm after a bit of advice, I'm looking at buying a second hand Synology NAS and it comes with two, 4tb drives.
One is a WD red, but the other is a WD HC310. My research tells me that the HC310 is a data centre drive and I was wondering if it's suitable for use in a NAS setting.
Many thanks in advance.

Personally I would try to use identical drives. Also, from what I have read 'data centre' drives can be noisier than domestic ones. Where will your NAS be?

Proposed site for it would be under my desk, in the corner of the living room.

[bmwmike]

+1 on noise

I replaced a lovely readynas duo, silent when not being accessed etc, and very quiet when in use, to a qnap and the 8tb ironwolf drives are constantly chattering away. Its utterly annoying. I think its mostly the fault of the drives than the qnap itself.

[c_henry]

For me it's Synology all the way. QNAP seem to offer better value for money, but in my experience I've found them to be unreliable, slow, noisy and the interface poor. I've just had a 6-bay QNAP go down for the second time, first time was 2 weeks before the warranty ran out and it got replaced under warranty. This time, 2 years later, I'm out of luck. Just stopped working. It has six 10TB drives in it with around 24TB of data on it. I'm either going to have to spend another £750 to buy a new one or spend that on 2 new Synology's and pop the disks in there, which is what I'll end up doing. I have two other QNAP's, both 2-bays, which are OK, but I wouldn't buy them again. I'm just waiting for them to die.

My Synology's on the other hand have been extremely reliable, with just one going pop after 4 years. I have 7 (4x 4-bay and 3x 2-bay) in the UK and 4 in France, all running fine. They're quick and easy to manage. I use RAID-1 on the 2-bays and RAID-5 on the 4-bays. I have an external USB drive on each and backup to that.

In the 2-bay's I use either NAS specific drives, WD Red or desktop drives. In the 4-bay's I use NAS drives. Overall, the drives have been very reliable, though I did have to replace a 4TB WD Red drive yesterday, which was quick and easy.

Files like photo's and home videos are backed up to multiple NAS's and then also backed up to external USB drives, so probably 5-6 different places. When we go to France I take one of the external USB drives and copy it there as well.