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.

[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

[Gad-Westy]

OnaRoll said:

xeny said:

OnaRoll said:

Would a two bay drive drive be able to mirror (raid1) and still behave as a media sever, CCTV and back up for home use if I put two large drives in for enough storage?

Yes, but remember RAID isn't backup.

Confused even more now

If I were to backup to the NAS from my laptops and the NAS is setup RAID 1. If one of those drives fail I still have my DATA and just need to pop a new drive in????

That is my noob understanding as well. Maybe the reason you shouldn't rely on it as backup is that if you delete a file from one drive it is also deleted from the 'backup'. But in my OP example, Time machine would get around that issue as long as you had a reasonable size drive and realised the problem early enough.

[Gad-Westy]

When I started this thread I'd asked about simple solutions but at the time I hadn't realised that NAS drives all seem be multi disk bays which brings in the question of RAID config, which drives to fill it with etc.

Is there nothing equivalent to a simple external hard disk that plugs into an ethernet port instead of USB? I must admit all the different options have got me pretty confused!

I have local backup already and cloud back up and a network drive would be another level of backup again so (rightly or wrongly) I'm just not bothered about RAID mirroring etc as well. My data is important but this isn't a business environment requiring instant resolution of problems.

Ideally I would have just liked a single disk unit off the shelf. Does such a drive exist?

[Gad-Westy]

Cheers again. I was just a little concerned with earlier talk of compatibility/reliablity of certain HDD's so was looking for a one box solution including drive. It does actually look like those exist too now that I've spent more time on it.

I think the key thing that I missed is that these NAS drive effectively a computer themselves so a level above a typical external drive hence why I seem to be looking at having to pay 2-3 times as much for a NAS drive.

There is an off the shelf synology 2x6tb model for about £500 that is maybe a decent option though I admit more than I was expecting to pay when this idea kicked off.

Just need to gen up how it's all partitioned etc for setting up time machines from different devices.

[Gad-Westy]

bhstewie said:

You can definitely get much cheaper ones.

I haven't bought one for years but last time I looked it tended to be a bit of get what you pay for thing.

Synology aren't cheap but they are good and they tend to get updates for a long time etc.

I'm sure there are loads of £100 ones that may do exactly what you need.

I've seen Buffalo 3-4tb NAS all in ones for about £150 but they seem to get mixed reviews. Haven't seen any large capacity versions.