LaCie 5big Network

[gdelprete]

Hello to everyone!

I'd like to buy a NAS for home, and move all the data I have in my current 500gb external non-RAID HD plus all the burned DVD/CD onto it.

I'm oriented towards a LaCie 5big Network 5TB NAS; my first choice was for a WD ShareSpace, but I changed my mind after reading the horror stories in the thread at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/705844/.

My priority is to have a very reliable mass storage system, because some of the materials I'm storing is very rare (anime fansubs of old 80's serials, which you cannot find anymore anywhere), and I would really regret losing them due to a hardware failure.
My worst nightmare is of course the death of the NAS's mother board... is there any experience on this issue for the LaCie 5big NAS?
Does the LaCie support recovering the data on the hard drive by buying a new box?
Is there any report/review regarding board failures on LaCie drives?

Note that speed is not my concern, as the performance I read on reviews are enough for my needs (20-30mb/s read, 15-20 write).

Would anyone recommend stressing the drives buy having them filled with random data during the first days of usage, just to test against early failures? Any other hint ?

I read great things on NETGEAR's ReadyNAS, but they're too pricey and yet I don't know if they would support board exchange/data recovery in case of board failure.

Regards,
Gabriele

 

[geoffreak]

Avoid a NAS and use a direct connected storage solution. These are ALWAYS faster, higher quality, and cheaper than equivalent NAS solutions.

I recommend a Drobo for fansub storage needs

Keep in mind that you will hear horror stories for every product on the market. Most people only bother posting about problems, not good experiences with products.

All these solutions based off hard drives are naturally venerable. If you really want a secure solution, you should be backing everything up to DVDs, Blurays, or tape.

 

[gdelprete]

Thanks for the answer!

Avoid a NAS and use a direct connected storage solution. These are ALWAYS faster, higher quality, and cheaper than equivalent NAS solutions.

I recommend a Drobo for fansub storage needs

I keep hearing about the DROBO, but I don't really understand if it's more safe than standard NAS or Firewire/USB RAID boxes.
Does DROBO's maker guarantee that in case of device failure I will be able to just buy a new device (possibly without hard drives),put my healthy drives in, and get all my data back?

All these solutions based off hard drives are naturally venerable. If you really want a secure solution, you should be backing everything up to DVDs, Blurays, or tape.

I'm wondering if Blu Ray are good choice for storage. A part from their cost (I started looking at NAS due to the cost of Blu Ray burner + needed disc being more than 500 euro), I heard that they're fragile.

Gabriele

 

[geoffreak]

I keep hearing about the DROBO, but I don't really understand if it's more safe than standard NAS or Firewire/USB RAID boxes.

The reason it is "more safe" than other RAID solutions is the fact that it removes human error out of the equation by handling the array automatically. It still uses hard drives, so it can still fail.

Does DROBO's maker guarantee that in case of device failure I will be able to just buy a new device (possibly without hard drives),put my healthy drives in, and get all my data back?

They don't guarantee it, but they do advertise it as such. The Drobo itself doesn't hold any data as the array information is stored on the drives in the array.

I'm wondering if Blu Ray are good choice for storage. A part from their cost (I started looking at NAS due to the cost of Blu Ray burner + needed disc being more than 500 euro), I heard that they're fragile.

Just don't forget that data is priceless and all hard drives will fail at some point. Optical media is much less likely to fail over time and is therefore a better long term backup medium.


In all honesty though, I don't think that these old series you have are that hard to find. Have you tried looking at AniDB to see which fansub groups subbed the anime you have?

 

[hh83917]

gdelprete,

Since you are aiming high for the LaCie 5Big, I'd like to recommend the DroboPro instead of the Drobo. The DroboPro gives you 8 bays, 2 drive failure redundancy, data scrubbing, and iSCSI connection, which is much useable (in my opinion) when compared to the regular Drobo. It will give you data protection, expandability, and is a setup-it-up-and-leave-it machine. I have been using drobo since they first started up and owned all the previous versions of Drobos, but I'm most happy with the DroboPro for it's speed. You can check out their website for more information and what the fuss is about with the drobo. However, if you are looking for something with extra functionality like built-in BT client or webserver, you can try the Drobo (4-bay) + the Drobo Share attachment or maybe look somewhere else.

I've tried the Netgear NV+, after hearing good stuff about it, but didn't like it. It was a lot of setting and restarting and waiting to bootup experience for me, so I returned it.

 

[VirtualRain]

Avoid a NAS and use a direct connected storage solution. These are ALWAYS faster, higher quality, and cheaper than equivalent NAS solutions.

While that depends on how you connect it to your PC, there are instances where a NAS makes more sense than direct connected storage. If you work or live in a multi-computer environment and want easy access to your mass storage from a variety of computers then NAS has its advantages. GigE can also be very fast, especially if accessed through iSCSI.

If you are considering NAS, then I recommend SmallNetBuilder.com for some comprhensive reviews.