NAS Newbie....

neil_g said:
synology normally give rough power consumption figures on their spec pages.

ive got a load of stuff running 24/7 (microserver N40L with 5 drives, 4 bay DAS, network kit, UPS) and it's not raised the bill by a figure id consider worrying about.
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Plus One. It would cost me more in my time to calculate it and finding alternatives than savings would be had. No noticeable impact on the bills.

If anything it reduced the gas heating bill :p
 
Synology is definitely one to be considered. If you have a spare PC/laptop or whatever - you could try the synology setup before spending the big bucks. Xpenology - basicallyu a group of geeks who have managed to play around with the source code and allow install for testing on almost any PC. http://xpenology.me/introduction/
 
neil_g said:
Apparently the HP G1610T microserver can currently be found online for £170 after cashback.

I've not had a change to google it yet.
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Cant find any cashback schemes for it.
I am thinking of getting another to replace my aging N40L
 
If you are feeling inventive, why not buy a cheap tower with a CENTOS front end. Shove 4 2TB drives in it (7200 rep should be okay) (or, even better, SSD). Then run FreeNas on it. Also a couple go 1gb NICs.
 
I have considered the question of NAS for some time and have run a few proprietary ones.
I decided it would be cheaper to build my own as I have some old hardware (case, PSU, DVD drive) lying around not being used.
I have just spent £80 on an ASrock Q1900-Itx board which has integrated CPU (intel quad core 2Ghz) as well as 4GB memory.
It has Sata3 for disks and USB3. It is also a low power user and runs cool even with passive cooling.
For my software of choice I loaded Debian netinst (RIP Ian Murdoch) and loaded Openmediavault to take care of the Raid.
I'm happy that my NAS will do what I want and can be upgraded just like a normal PC.
 
OK - it's been a couple of weeks now, so time to report back. I'm extremely pleased with the DS215J. To load data - and get it catalogued for the Synology apps took some time: a few days in fact! However, given the fact that the data included twenty five thousand photographs (I never knew I had so many) plus music and videos, I didn't consider that too bad.

Watching films over our wireless network is very good. There may be a delay for 10-15 seconds for a film starting initially, but after that it seems to be plain sailing. All in all, I can only recommend it!
 
Apologies for resurrecting a threat but seeing as I'm also quite new to this I thought I would tag along.

So I have recently bought a Synology DS215j but have no drives to go in it as of yet. On my PC I have 1x 960Gb SSD for Win7 and programs (plenty of space left) and another identical SSD with my photos on it (still some room to grow on it but more full than empty). Then I have 1Tb normal HD with my music files, documents and wife's photos from her old laptop on it (maybe half-full) and a 1Tb HDD that it backs up to just now using the normal Window back-up. Photos etc also back-up there (from the SSD) so it's always almost full.

So I'm trying to answer a few questions.

  1. For the NAS, would 2x 4Tb WD Red Drives in RAID1 cover my needs for backing up my photos and the other 1Tb drive?
  2. If so, what should I do with the current back-up drive - is there any advantage to having it and the 1Tb HDD in some sort of RAID configuration or just set up say, only one of the drive to back up there?
I feel like I've got myself into a bit of a mess but hopefully someone can point me in a sensible direction. I also have a 1Tb external drive (but USB2) that I could throw into the mix too if need be.
 
I would just max it out. Get the largest drives possible in the device then you are sorted.
 
dejongj said:
I would just max it out. Get the largest drives possible in the device then you are sorted.
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By device you mean the NAS? I could possibly stretch to 2x5tb but was wondering if I could get by with 2x4tb instead to save some cash. Is RAID1 the one to aim for in the NAS?
 
With two drives, RAID1 is your only rational choice. 4TB drives will certainly be enough for a good while so go with that. You won't need the second 1TB HDD in the PC any more so take it out and put it in an external caddy so you can have a completely separate backup of your most important files.
 
michaelg said:
By device you mean the NAS? I could possibly stretch to 2x5tb but was wondering if I could get by with 2x4tb instead to save some cash. Is RAID1 the one to aim for in the NAS?
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Depends on what your objective is. A NAS is not substitute for a backup. The cost of upgrading the disks later will be two new disks.
 
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