Looking for a NAS for all our photos and backups - Do you have one?

[ShokWaveRider]

I started to think I need a real high-speed NAS for all my data, videos, photos, software and everything else.

Watched a lot of YouTube videos and there are so many to choose from. A 2 (two) bay will do the trick, ~16tb (2 x 8tb).

I want a FAST one though, it will live in my electronics closet along with all the other Tech; Security System, AV System etc.

I do have a 2.5gbe Router and Switch so I think it should suffice. Currently I store everything on our media player that has 4tb in it.

Currently looking at the Asustor Lockstor 2 Gen 2 AS6702T and the Synology 220+.

I probably would not use RAID, but they all come with it. Being on line is the key, at the moment I have USB hard drives all over the place as backups.

If you have one and have opinions, I would love to hear them.

 

[skyking1]

I build linux servers that do other jobs besides file server.
For example, it also hosts the camera server for my security and game cameras.
I also don't get wound up about speeds. It is limited by the 1GB network connections on the LAN so the performance numbers are not a big deal.
I do use software RAID1 and therefore have some leeway for a drive failure. I have never lost a complete data set doing that.
Because I use linux and software raid, if I have a hardware failure I can plug the drive or drives into another box and get to the files.
Hardware RAID controllers don't allow for that. If the board on the NAS or drive controller fails you are truly SOL in many cases. They can utilize a unique and proprietary file system.

All that said, I have heard good things about Synology.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I build linux servers that do other jobs besides file server.
For example, it also hosts the camera server for my security and game cameras.
I also don't get wound up about speeds. It is limited by the 1GB network connections on the LAN so the performance numbers are not a big deal.
I do use software RAID1 and therefore have some leeway for a drive failure. I have never lost a complete data set doing that.
Because I use linux and software raid, if I have a hardware failure I can plug the drive or drives into another box and get to the files.
Hardware RAID controllers don't allow for that. If the board on the NAS or drive controller fails you are truly SOL in many cases. They can utilize a unique and proprietary file system.

All that said, I have heard good things about Synology.

Thanks, I probably would not use raid for the reason you state about hardware failure. I would like a unit that supports a traditional file system like NTFS or FAT32 so I would pull the drive and plug it into any other drive bay to read it. I would manually back one drive to the other for safety, basically the same as I do now for all my media. I have 2 drives with identical data on them in my media player that I sync together, and all my software is on two Samsung 2tb USB 3 SSDs.

All a bit cumbersome which Is why I would like a central NAS with 2 whopping great drives on it.

 

[OldShooter]

Synology. RAID1. IIRC the "+" models are the fastest, subject to disk and network speeds. Superb software.


Edit: A disk is far more likely to fail than a controller.

 

[mountainsoft]

I have debated back and forth about getting an NAS, but so far I can't justify having one.

First, there is a significant cost involved, for the NAS and for the drives that go in it.

Second is speed, which is limited by my 1Gb home network. You're better off with a 2.5Gb network, but that's still far slower than what I can transfer to a USB hard drive. My cable internet connection is even slower which would make remote access useless for streaming video, and would use up my data allowance.

Third, a NAS is just storage. You still need to backup your data, which more than likely will take place over the slow home network.

Fourth is noise and power usage. Granted most NAS systems don't use much power, but it's a power draw never-the-less. I would want a UPS backup system if I had a NAS which would add to the cost. Noise may not bother you if the NAS is in a remote closet or something, but mine would have to be right here in my home office where I would listen to it all day.

I can see the NAS being helpful if you need access to data from multiple computers that may not be on all the time.

Personally, my computer is on 24/7 anyway, running backups, recording TV shows, etc. It is built out with 4TB of fast M.2 NVME SSD's, and nearly silent cooling fans. It's already running on a UPS to minimize power disruptions. And the data is backed up nightly to an external hard drive that I swap with an offsite drive about once a month.

I stream video files from my PC to my media player in the living room, no problems there. I share folders my wife can access on her computer if needed.

So far I just haven't seen any advantage to a NAS that I can't do with my current setup. Your needs may differ...

 

[skyking1]

do understand that RAID 1 duplicates your data on two or more drives, it is not for speed. RAID 0 is striping the data on two drives for high read/write speeds.

 

[mountainsoft]

I would manually back one drive to the other for safety, basically the same as I do now for all my media. I have 2 drives with identical data on them in my media player that I sync together, and all my software is on two Samsung 2tb USB 3 SSDs.

First, any backup you have to do manually will most likely be forgotten or postponed. Better to set up an automatic backup process.

Second, if both drives are on-site, they are both vulnerable to things like power surges, fire, theft, floods, tornadoes, etc. You should have at least one copy of your data off site somewhere. I keep a backup drive in our safe deposit box at the bank, and swap with my local backup monthly.

 

[skyking1]

One system that I have employed for customers is a pair of servers, both with RAID1 and in two locations.
The server backs up to the backup server in a remote location. This gets a copy of the data offsite for things like flood and fire. It is done with an open source application that sends only the changed files and new files every night, but creates a symlink to unchanged docs in a bucket system, by date.
In the event of a problem you can easily find a document by date of backup, even if it is an old unchanged file it is still in the familiar tree due to the symlinkts.
Because it only moves what is needed and not whole backups, it is not a huge operation like a traditional windows backup archive file.
I ran it with 120 days of retention. It gave management 120 days to figure out if a bad apple deleted a bunch of files and was a good balance of backup and reasonable drive allocation.
The servers would send me an email in the event of a drive failure on the RAID array. It happened a couple of times in 20 years.
There was a spare drive on site ( 160 miles away from me ) and I would talk my assistant over there on which drive to hot swap.
He would pull drive A and put it in the box to mail to me, put in the spare, and I would issue a command and in about 12 hours or less the array was no longer degraded. I slept well.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

do understand that RAID 1 duplicates your data on two or more drives, it is not for speed. RAID 0 is striping the data on two drives for high read/write speeds.

Yup, I get that. My concern is that a NAS I had many years ago, too many years to remember much, but I do remember I could not take the drives out and read them on my Laptops without the NAS.

I am still researching but I am hoping the newer ones use a more adaptable file system.

 

[skyking1]

When we were on a cruise in the Baltic, somebody got a ransomware into the main network and anything that could be written got corrupted. I had a local contractor clean up the network, then I was able to restore everything to the server by command line, using my android phone and the 4G connections that I could get on the way into Stockholm. That was tedious and a real pain to do command on a phone. It was that vacation I left the laptop at home.
I have since fired them as a client. It was a good move.

 

[skyking1]

Yup, I get that. My concern is that a NAS I had many years ago, too many years to remember much, but I do remember I could not take the drives out and read them on my Laptops without the NAS.

I am still researching but I am hoping the newer ones use a more adaptable file system.

Yes that is why I do the software raid on linux. I can drop the drive into a SATA adapter dock and just read it like normal.

 

[Z3Dreamer]

I have a Synology NAS with Raid 1. Switching dead drives is easy. My consumer level Synology could handle the speed you specify. I backup my computers and phones to the NAS using whatever Windows and Android programs are out there.

A Raid 1 will not save you in the event of a fire or flood, so every so often I backup the NAS to an external drive that I connect directly to the NAS using a USB interface. Some will say that you need real time backup. Go for it. I don't need it.

Synology has a lot of small business programs that come with the NAS. I use a handful of them.

 

[Sojourner]

I have a Synology NAS with Raid 1. Switching dead drives is easy.

+1

I use my NAS primarily as a UPNP media server for my home theater system. I have the Kodi app installed on my FireTV stick and use that as the interface for accessing whatever media I put on the NAS. Two 8TB drives in a RAID1 configuration. Perfectly suits my needs. As an "always on" network device, the NAS is accessible from my laptop, desktop, the FireTV stick, and other devices, which is exactly what I wanted. Although I don't typically use it for storing backups, I do have some ZIP archives of important pictures, videos, documents, VMs, and disk images on there. IMHO, the integrated RAID hardware/software and the ability to swap in a new disk easily if/when one fails is all very compelling. I wouldn't want to try to build a "DIY" NAS solution when my little Synology rig is perfectly adequate for the job.

 

[OldShooter]

I have a three-level external storage approach. Synology box #1 (RAID 1) is used as shared storage between DW and me. It contains all of our photo files (thousands) but its main role is as a local "cloud." With this Synology software, we have a folder that is stored on the NAS and on our two laptops. When I upgrade a file in that folder locally, it is updated on the NAS and on DW's machine. This is especially useful for our Lightroom database because Lightroom insists on the database being local. The #1 NAS is backed up around once a month to a SATA drive that is kept in my gun safe. That is not as good as off-site, but it is adequate for us IMO.

The #2 NAS, again RAID 1, is the backup destination for the automatic backup software that runs on both DW's and my laptops.

Both the Synology boxes are hot-swap, which is unnecessary to the point of being silly. I have never needed to swap a drive but powering a box down to make the swap would be entirely adequate. Both are also the "+" series, which is the fastest model. Both the boxes have the "sleep" option enabled to power down the disks when there is no activity.

The Synology boxes are noiseless, although probably there is a fan in there somewhere. The only noticeable noise is the rattle from the discs when the automatic backups run. I could easily move them to another room, but the noise is so little that I haven't bothered.

 

[skyking1]

The hot swap feature is trivial to do, thanks to the SATA drive standard. You can hot pull a SATA drive easily. Hot swap on IDE drives was more challenging.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

It is interesting reading all the comments here, with each poster's own requirements and usage.

The more I think about it, I really only need a dual disk enclosure that is network addressable. I currently use Sync. Software (Syncovery) to keep all our computer and media player integrated disks in sync. I have 3 copies of everything. I do not need or want raid as such, although Raid 1 would suffice.

My REAL requirement is that they can all be read by any of our computers if the hardware fails. Perhaps a small Windows PC in a box type system would do the trick. I could set up sync. software to run automatically every day.

The thing that puts me off the NAS is the disk system, I would prefer one that runs NTFS.

Maybe I am overthinking this.

 

[Sojourner]

The thing that puts me off the NAS is the disk system, I would prefer one that runs NTFS.

Maybe I am overthinking this.

I assume you probably have already, but if not, check out True NAS.
https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/

 

[qwerty3656]

Obviously lots of value in a NAS, but OP said it was for photos. If you have amazon prime, you get unlimited photo storage online.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

Obviously lots of value in a NAS, but OP said it was for photos. If you have amazon prime, you get unlimited photo storage online.

Not only, I also said media (Video files) and software backups. Aside from that, I do not want my stuff, at least the stuff I can control, on someone else's server.

 

[OldShooter]

The hot swap feature is trivial to do, thanks to the SATA drive standard. You can hot pull a SATA drive easily. Hot swap on IDE drives was more challenging.

Synology hot swap trays are different than the fixed drive trays. Not sure why, but you have to choose at the beginning.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sojourner View Post
I assume you probably have already, but if not, check out True NAS.
https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/


No I had not seen this, Thanks. I think this is what I can try before purchasing a dedicated NAS.

Now I need to find a "Flat" Computer case about the size of a traditional CD/DVD Player, ideally it would be the width of an AVR and about half the height, so I can fit it into my AV cabinet. It needs to have 2 drive bays.

 

[skyking1]

https://www.newegg.com/black-silverstone-ml03b-micro-atx-media-center-htpc-case/p/N82E16811163174?Description=horizontal%20case&cm_re=horizontal_case-_-11-163-174-_-Product

There are slimmer cases. You may need to get creative with mounting a second drive, and if super slim is the goal then the 2.5" drives are your friend.

 

[jollystomper]

For my NAS I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo V2. It is old, but it works. Note that Netgear no longer seems to be making NAS devices. It is a 2 bay storage device that takes 3.5" drives in a small footprint (4" x 9" x 5.5"). I actually first used a ReadyNas Duo at home; the Duo V2 was a workplace purchase and used at Megacorp. When I retired Megacorp said since it is an expense more than 3 years old, why don't you take it if you want it.

It is running Linux under the covers so nothing proprietary in terms of disk format (Linux ext4). I have it it a RAID 1 configuration, currently with 2 4TB drives. It has done well alerting when a a drive may be failing; the previous drives were 2TB, one failed, but I had zero data loss due to RAID 1. I did use that opportunity to upgrade to 4TB drives, which was actually very easy through hot swapping.

I have shares set up and share among my Windows and Linux systems fine. It supports a variety of network protocols, so it works for SMB shares, NFS shares, etc. It is my first level of backup for critical files, including photos and videos. It is fast enough for my needs, faster than the Duo V1. In addition to backup storage, I also use it as storage for my virtual machines running on VMware/KVM/Promox severs. I was able to upgrade the memory so that helps with the speed (better transfer caching).

In addition to the RAID setup, I have a 4TB portable drive attached that I can backup the main storage to. It supports USB 3.0, so backups from the main storage to the USB drive are pretty fast.

Netgear NAS devices are likely only available on eBay these days, and you might not want a used one. But For the years I have have them, the base system has not given me an issue.

For grins I built another storage server using Ubuntu Linux and 2 2TB disks in a RAID 1. That one works, but it is in a tower system. I could move it to a smaller footprint but I am lazy and my computing center has a lot of room . I use this for S3 object server API testing, which I use to automate backup transfers to my cloud storage.

I still have the Duo V1, and also the WD My Cloud (which is non-raid, but fine for sharing and storing things I do not need backed up, like downloaded software packages). The But Duo V2 is the home NAS for critical backups, and has not failed me yet.

 

[harley]

I've been thinking of a NAS too, and had been looking at Synology.

I have a small business, and I'd like to be able to access my spreadsheets and files from wherever I am. Have any of you set your NAS up to be internet accessible? If so, how hard/easy was it? And is it pretty secure?

 

[ShokWaveRider]

TrueNas uses ZFS not NTFS so it is the same Linux based NAS.