NAS backup solution

[chiggins]

I'm trying to put together a smaller, cheaper, quieter, simpler replacement for the desktop system we currently use for media and backups, and I figured some of you might have some experience, or at least passionate, hotly contested opinions about this kinda stuff

Here's what I'm lookin' at so far:

D-Link 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DNS-323: does mirrored network storage and some media serving as well, uses ext2 filesystem, comes in under $150. Pretty cool.

2 x WD Caviar Green 1.5TB 32MB/SATA-3G: cheap 7200rpm 1.5TB discs.

Any experience with these or something better or cheaper or quieter or more energy efficient?

[BLURR]

I have experience with SAN and NAS devices. The NAS is good for storing large amounts of data files. A SAN solution is more flexible than a NAS solution in my opinion, but for home use...you probably don't need to pro's of a SAN solution.

[Dogma]

I had poor luck with a Fantom G-Force NAS. Network configuration was continuously buggy and after about six months the enclosure fan failed leading to complete failure of both of the enclosed hard drives. That probably doesn't help you.

[black udder]

honestly, I've always just thrown a big drive in one machine and shared it over a home network. You could also just pick up a usb drive and share it off one machine. The only benefit of a NAS is that it connects to the network by itself without a pc, but I've always got my pc on, so it's never been an issue. You pay an arm and a leg for that storage and capability, too, compared to just sharing a drive off a pc over the network.

[SkaBob]

Whatever you get, make sure you mirror (raid 1) instead of striping (raid 0). If a drive in a striped array that isn't also mirrored (eg- not raid 10, or including a parity drive like raid 5 or raid 51), you lose all your data.

You lose the storage of half of your array, but the fault tolerance is worth it. That's what raid is for.

[black udder]

outside of corporate use, I don't see a need for raid. I know some folks have fun with it, but with faster drives, SATA drives and the other upgrades, raid for home users isn't the boost it used to be. And it's just throwing more hardware at your setup. What it can protect is having to reinstall everything, but if you backup daily, the consequences for a single user aren't as bad as they are for something like a corporate server.

I believe you'd need 4 drives to use raid effectively and protect yourself. You can use one drive and have it almost mirrored on another drive and have great protection at half the hard drive cost. There are programs that will monitor your system for updates and changes and save all of it if you want (and are willing to sacrifice the space).

[chiggins]

You lose the storage of half of your array, but the fault tolerance is worth it. That's what raid is for.

That's the plan. The current setup has two mirroring and 3 more doing Raid-5. It's old and runs hot and loud and uses lots of power, but it was a solid setup for the last several years. Time to update!

The only benefit of a NAS is that it connects to the network by itself without a pc

This is actually what I'm trying to do. Running that tower with the video and cpu it has is pretty wasteful for what's mostly a file server and DAAP server. This thing can get itself on the network, handle some light app serving duties, and doesn't need a fast processor, video card, sound card, etc. Low power, no fat, and it's linux based.

A buddy of mine did set up two USB drives with an NSLU2 network head that has a full linux distro available for it, also looked like a viable solution. But it seems like it'd be more work (doing firmware linux install, full OS configuration, etc etc). The D-Link seems like less time to get it up and doing its thing.

[chiggins]

I believe you'd need 4 drives to use raid effectively and protect yourself.

Just two to do RAID-1 (mirroring). I think it's worth doing, drives these days seem to have higher failure rates than they did 5-10 years ago but they're cheap.

[black udder]

but they're cheap.

not if you have multiple hobbies

But I get what you mean. Much more storage than you used to get for the price.