Which NAS would you recommend?

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Hi, as the title says really. I need a fairly robust back up system that doesn't need Bill Gates computer wizardry to set up! I have been looking at the LaCie ones but thought I'd ask here for advice first.

Something that has uber efficient cooling is a necessity as I live in Cyprus and it's ludicrously hot in the summer.

I have no set budget, I'm happy to pay and get the best product.

I recently ran Synctoy that successfully duplicated every individual folder, not amused!

I have just started along the business route in photography so I really need to sort my filing and back up out.

Any advice greatly appreciated.
 
Take a look at the following link, there's a good video comparing 3 of the popular NAS systems.

http://geekbeat.tv/drobo-vs-qnap-vs-synology-vs-g-drive-and-more-which-storage-should-you-choose/

I went for the Drobo 5N after doing some research, some would say the Synology is better, but I'm happy with the choice.

My only gripe is that the fan in the Drobo is noisier than I would like, but I'm one of those people who spend money on quiet PC stuff - I'm very averse to fan noise!

Chris
 
This thread will probably get moved to the computer section.....

I use a home-made server running Windows Home Server 2011 but I use it mainly as a file store so the principles are the same as for a NAS.
I use Acronis True image to back up my system volume and personal data volume (both on one physical drive) with a full image on the first of the month then differential backups every following day. There are some cunning batch files that run on the last day of the month so I have a rolling year's backup.
There are more batch files that run each day to synchronise my data drive with the server. I use Robocopy which I think is what Synctoy uses and it will copy everything the first time it's run but after that it only copies the changes (if properly configured).
I also use Acronis to do a full backup of the PC to one of several external HDDs on the last Sunday of each month and I also have a year's data in that cycle.
The server has four drives in RAID5 and the PC has two in RAID1. I've been responsible for backups in some major organisations over the years and I know data is only worth the effort you put into looking after it. I may also be a bit paranoid. ;)

If I was buying a ready-made NAS I'd go for an Asustor, possibly an AS-604T, then fill it with my choice of drives. I realise that model may be a bit pricey for many and there are cheaper versions available. I would also consider Synology as a manufacturer. I use WD Red drives as they're designed for the job. Do not use WD or Seagate Green drives as they're not......

I think that'll do for now.
 
I've had my Qnap for about 5 years and have never had any problems - All I have ever done is swap the hard drives for larger ones which was simple even for me.
 
I've had QNAP NASs and they were fine but I think Asustor are a bit ahead these days, possibly because they poached QNAP's development team.....
 
I have a synology DS214+

Cracking bit of kit and an easy to use interface. I was going to go down the route of a cheap nas enclosure (about £50) and add a couple of drives, but I picked this one up second hand with 2 X 3tb drives for £150.
 
Speaking as an IT guy (I'm new to photography) I would say that if it's safe backup you need then Crashplan from Code42 software is well worth a look. Not expensive, I pay about $4 a month, unlimited storage, encrypted transport and storage and you can even keep the encryption key yourself. If you choose to do this then subscribe to something like Dropbox to synch the key across multiple devices. Their client software is a breeze to use too.

Currently for my $4 per month I have 4 computers backed up and a total of about 3 terabytes of files all safe and off site. I do also have a local NAS which is a Lenovo IX4-300D but in the event of a fire or other catastrophe at the house I still have it all off site.

Hope that helps a bit.
 
Been doing a bit of reading myself on this....seems like Synology has the better interface/operating system and QNAP has the better spec device....at least at the four bay NAS's I have been looking at.

I think I need a four bay just because of the amount of data I can see me having.....I need to understand RAID's though and redundancy etc!
 
Online backups only work if you have a good (and unlimited) upload speed (I'm on 17Mbit up here so utilise an online backup service).

Also, Crashplan throttles uploads as far as I can tell, so isn't the best....

Don't use a NAS (well, unless you consider a tower case full of drives running Linux a NAS), but Synology seem well regarded.

Also remember RAID is NOT a backup in itself. RAID 0 increases bandwidth whilst RAID 1, 5, 6, Z, Z2, Z3... just increase redundancy (there, it has been said!!)
 
I have been using drobo's for a few years, one for primary, one for backup - never missed a beat and super easy to increase the capacity when needed.
 
Beardy said:
Been doing a bit of reading myself on this....seems like Synology has the better interface/operating system and QNAP has the better spec device....at least at the four bay NAS's I have been looking at.

I think I need a four bay just because of the amount of data I can see me having.....I need to understand RAID's though and redundancy etc!
Click to expand...
Agreed on the understanding thing!

arad85 said:
Online backups only work if you have a good (and unlimited) upload speed (I'm on 17Mbit up here so utilise an online backup service).
Click to expand...
Lol, we're lucky to have a 'decent' internet here! And by decent we have an 8mb download, upload is VERY weak at under 1mb! I think it would take two years to upload everything!

Oh and before you lot enjoying fibre optic Internet at ludicrous speeds say anything, I know! But I'm used to barely 0.5mb download at my previous address in the UK so 8MB is lightning fast in comparison!
 
How will your ISP feel about you uploading a TB of data in one month? I always wonder how you guys use things like crash plan. I assume you only backup final images perhaps? Otherwise I doubt there are that many consumer ISPs that would allow you to upload 50GB a month on a regular basis.

I use a Synology DS414 which I find perfect. I then have two 2TB portable hard drives to back that up to. One off site at any one time (or at least it will be shortly), although I am going to hit trouble shortly as my photo collection is getting to that 2TB limit... Not sure how I'm going to sort that then.
 
Amp34 said:
How will your ISP feel about you uploading a TB of data in one month? I always wonder how you guys use things like crash plan. I assume you only backup final images perhaps? Otherwise I doubt there are that many consumer ISPs that would allow you to upload 50GB a month on a regular basis.
Click to expand...
A lot of the fibre packages have unlimited bandwidth versions if you're prepared to pay a little more. See: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband.html for the current crop. I'm on ClaraNet Soho 80/20 (but at a far better price than quoted there). In the 37 days since my firewall was last rebooted, I've done 600G down, 140G up. I use the internet for a LOT and the last month or so has been relatively light usage :)
 
synology or qnap in my opinion (both are on par in terms of spec/performance).

i had a synolgy for a few years, they support is excellent. had one of the SMB models and it was excellent and fast (over gigabit cabled).

you've always got the HP microserver option but that is a very manual setup. whereas the synology/qnap is very much follow the wizards.

i wouldnt recommend lacie, it seems like every other month im recovering data from one of their quadra (non nas) drives.

i wouldnt recommend drobo either, proprietry file system and from what ive read poor support.

whatever you decide on remember to factor in a backup. a nas still needs one.
 
arad85 said:
A lot of the fibre packages have unlimited bandwidth versions if you're prepared to pay a little more. See: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/guide/fibre-broadband.html for the current crop. I'm on ClaraNet Soho 80/20 (but at a far better price than quoted there). In the 37 days since my firewall was last rebooted, I've done 600G down, 140G up. I use the internet for a LOT and the last month or so has been relatively light usage :)
Click to expand...
We have infinity with BT and unlimited useage but generally it's also covered by a fair useage policy. Id say if hey wanted to an ISP could argue you're using too much with that useage!
 
I use Synology too, but note that you also need to mitigate against NAS failure, so whilst I use the Synology NAS in Raid mode I also back it up just in case there's a NAS related hardware failure, as opposed to one of the HDD's.

I also use the NAS to stream films, etc. It's the Synology 214Play, which is designed as a media streamer.
 
Amp34 said:
We have infinity with BT and unlimited useage but generally it's also covered by a fair useage policy. Id say if hey wanted to an ISP could argue you're using too much with that useage!
Click to expand...
Nope. Consumer oriented product (actually SOHO oriented) operating on a business class network (ClaraNet are a BIG business network). But then it's at a business price (or it was until I threatened to leave and got it for a lot less ;)). Actually, there is a FUP during business hours (9am-6pm) which is fairly wooly (it's there incase you manage to use enough to affect their business users, but that's unlikely given my throughput vs their networks throughput) but outside that, it's use as much as you want. Looking at traffic graphs, perhaps it's a normal month. In the last year I've moved 4.77TBytes down, and 1.92TBytes up....

If you look at the table on the page I linked, some ISPs have a FUP, others traffic manage and a few have no restrictions on unlimited (Sky, Talk Talk, Zen - which is the other company I'd probably go with if I ever move from ClaraNet).
 
arad85 said:
Also remember RAID is NOT a backup in itself. RAID 0 increases bandwidth whilst RAID 1, 5, 6, Z, Z2, Z3... just increase redundancy (there, it has been said!!)
Click to expand...
And it needed saying.
 
I have a hp mini server which you can pick up for around £120 then add your own disks. I run a windows os but you could put other so there. I also use 3tb USB drives that get rotated offsite very week.
Be careful of the nas boxes with proprietary os as I had a the us which failed its main board after 18 months and everything was inaccessible without getting another identical device.
 
Just to add that Crashplan also offer a disk seed service which I used. Send them a disk of your initial data and they will pre-seed it on to your online backup. Saves a lot of bandwidth and they even return the disk. They also offer a disaster recovery service which is the same in reverse. As far as throttling goes I've never seen this. When I was at work where we have a 10GB internet pipe I backed up a whole laptop in under an hour.

Do ISPs still have bandwidth limited offerings? Surely not what with stuff like Sky unlimited for a few quid a month etc. Why would anyone still use a limited data service?

HP Mini Servers are excellent devices as they can boot from a memory stick leaving the disks for purely data. Format to something everything can read like EXT3 or NTFS and you'll never have to worry about getting at your data if the main board goes TU.
 
Another happy Synology user here, although I am now needing MORE storage. The convenience of a DS214 Play for streaming via Chromecast has meant the amount of media stored has dramatically increased!
 
I've got a Syno and a home built server.
The Syno is definitely the easiest to use :)

Also, Synology NASes use mdadm for their raid*. This is basically standard linux software raid and that means should the device die, you can still get at your data by installing Ubuntu on a spare PC, installing mdadm, adding your drives and then running a few commands.

The syno NAS has a relatively small single fan. I've no idea how it performs in a warm environment. I'd have much more faith in my home-built server in a warmer environment as it has a much larger case and a medley of much larger fans. There is an opensource version of the Synology operating system called Xpenology. In fact, using Xpenology means you could build your own NAS quite cheaply. There were some Intel Atom Boards on ebay recently with dual intel gigabit network connections and 5 sata ports. With a case, PSU and a couple of gig of memory you could put a nice build together for ~£150.

Installation of Xpenology is probably in the reach of anyone who has occasionally used a command line and/or created a USB boot disk: http://xpenology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17

*I suspect this is might also be the case for QNAP etc. but obviously can't confirm that.
 
neil_g said:
Whatever you decide on remember to factor in a backup. a nas still needs one.
Click to expand...
So, set up a NAS then have another separate back up? And store it off site?

Am I correct in thinking that Synology software would run these back ups?
 
Yes. Syno software makes it easy. It uses rsync under the hood too so you backup target could be an external hard disk, another NAS box or a remote server.
 
dsolds said:
Just to add that Crashplan also offer a disk seed service which I used. Send them a disk of your initial data and they will pre-seed it on to your online backup. Saves a lot of bandwidth and they even return the disk. They also offer a disaster recovery service which is the same in reverse. As far as throttling goes I've never seen this. When I was at work where we have a 10GB internet pipe I backed up a whole laptop in under an hour.
Click to expand...
I couldn't get decent rates to any service that had its main server in the US (I know I am not throttled by my ISP). I could only manage 1-2 mbits/sec up with both Crashplan and Carbonite, but both their data centres were US based. Backblaze (UK based) was a lot faster, although that didn't saturate my uplink. All this was 2 years ago now, and looking at Carbonite, the throttling they did have then has been removed. The service I do have is run by Autonomy (which means it is Iron Mountain Digital) which has servers based in the UK so I get the full 17Mbits/sec up. Having said that, there are lots of google hits for crashplan/carbonite slow, all reporting way less speed than is possible through a decent uplink.

The key thing with all online backups is to try before you buy....
 
Synology DS214 here with a pair of WD Red 3TB drives, and the Amazon Glacier module backing up into the cloud. All the resilience I'll ever need, and totally hands-off.
 
I'm looking at getting at least 12TB of storage....my iMac's hard drive is currently approaching 2.5 TB and is backed up onto an external hard drive.

That is mostly video of my kids, my photo's and music.

When I get a NAS I want to rip all my Bluray's/DVD's so I can play them in 1080p and change my music collection so that it's ripped in lossless rather than MP3. I can see my needs getting to 5TB pretty quickly (a year or two's worth of RAW images and more video of my kids). Makes me think I might need 16TB to have any kind of future proofing.
 
I have a Thecus N5500 5 bay - works really easily & is also fairly quick.. This however is just redundancy & I backup to a 4Tb external drive (when that fills up, I'll just get another !!)
 
afasoas said:
I've got a Syno and a home built server.
The Syno is definitely the easiest to use :)

Also, Synology NASes use mdadm for their raid*. This is basically standard linux software raid and that means should the device die, you can still get at your data by installing Ubuntu on a spare PC, installing mdadm, adding your drives and then running a few commands.

The syno NAS has a relatively small single fan. I've no idea how it performs in a warm environment. I'd have much more faith in my home-built server in a warmer environment as it has a much larger case and a medley of much larger fans. There is an opensource version of the Synology operating system called Xpenology. In fact, using Xpenology means you could build your own NAS quite cheaply. There were some Intel Atom Boards on ebay recently with dual intel gigabit network connections and 5 sata ports. With a case, PSU and a couple of gig of memory you could put a nice build together for ~£150.

Installation of Xpenology is probably in the reach of anyone who has occasionally used a command line and/or created a USB boot disk: http://xpenology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17

*I suspect this is might also be the case for QNAP etc. but obviously can't confirm that.
Click to expand...

The 4 bay synology NAS have twin 120mm fans for redundancy and twin gigabit network ports, at least they do on the 414.
neil_g said:
What he said. Some synology models have a USB port to connect external drives (or a printer for network sharing) which you can schedule backup to.
Click to expand...

They also have twin USB3 ports, I use one for the backup HDD and will probably use the second with another drive when I need to backup more than 2TB of data.

It's definitely worth getting at least a 4 drive bay for the space and the extra raid options, you'll loose less storage with 3 or more drive mirroring (relative). Increasing the storage is a lot easier too.
 
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Beardy said:
I'm looking at getting at least 12TB of storage....my iMac's hard drive is currently approaching 2.5 TB and is backed up onto an external hard drive.

That is mostly video of my kids, my photo's and music.

When I get a NAS I want to rip all my Bluray's/DVD's so I can play them in 1080p and change my music collection so that it's ripped in lossless rather than MP3. I can see my needs getting to 5TB pretty quickly (a year or two's worth of RAW images and more video of my kids). Makes me think I might need 16TB to have any kind of future proofing.
Click to expand...
what do you plan on using as a backup with all that data? I currently only backup photos and personal files, all my videos and music are not backed up at the moment (about 3TB and growing). My feeling is if the worst came to the worst they are easily replaceable, even if it'll take a long time to do it.
 
mid_gen said:
Synology DS214 here with a pair of WD Red 3TB drives, and the Amazon Glacier module backing up into the cloud. All the resilience I'll ever need, and totally hands-off.
Click to expand...

What is this amazon glacier module you speak of? The DS214 is on my shopping list and that would be lovely now I have unlimited amazon storage...
 
RichardtheSane said:
What is this amazon glacier module you speak of? The DS214 is on my shopping list and that would be lovely now I have unlimited amazon storage...
Click to expand...

Glacier is Amazon's cold storage server...costs me a few quid a month for 3-400GB of data to be archived. The Synology NAS has an app store effectively, you can run all kinds of stuff on it, one of them is an Amazon Glacier client that will automatically synchronise specified files/folders up into Glacier. Totally handsoff operation, I love it.
 
Bear in mind, glacier is cheap for backup but look at the price to retrieve your data!
 
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