RAID or NAS?

[Martinpa]

I have been having a lot of issues with my external hard drives (constantly disconnecting and reconnecting by themselves… so I just never use them for fear of corrupting the data), and so I’m thinking about replacing all of them, and I am wondering if a NAS or a RAID system would be a better option.

I need quite a lot of space as I want to use this additional storage for:

• Time Machine Backups
• Media Storage for Music and TV apps (ideally, it would always be on so that I would have access to this)
• Storage and work drive for photography (Lightroom/Photoshop)
• Storage and work drive for video editing, asset library and keeping past projects.

Because I want to work off of the drive, I’m leaning more towards a RAID configuration (RAID 5 I think) but would like to hear others’ opinion… and also suggestions of "affordable" products.

Thanks

 

[glenthompson]

A lot to cover here. Are you the only one using this storage? If so then you don’t really need a NAS. A raid array would work fine. Next, a raid drive is for fault tolerance not backup. If you follow the 3-2-1 approach to backups you will need two other copies of the array. Think about how you plan to accomplish that. An off-site backup with BackBlaze will be easy as they backup attached drives for one price regardless of size. If you use a NAS you will have to pay by the size of the backup.

Personally I prefer a JBOD setup as I don’t really need the fault tolerance and it lets me upgrade single drives as needed. I run a Mini as a server and have one drive for Time Machine backups, one for CCC backups, and a media/archive drive. The CCC backups are backed up offsite along with the media drive. The media drive is also backed up locally.

As for specific products I’m using OWC enclosures. Can’t address how well the RAID works since I don’t use it. Otherwise they have been solid with decent performance given you’re working with spinning drives instead of a SSD.

 

[satcomer]

I definitely suggest a smart NAS from either Synology or QNAP! I know on Synology they have an Package Store on their NAS to turn that NAS into mini server!

 

[chikorita157]

1. Raid is not a backup as it spreads out copies of data along with parity data if one drive fails, but it’s good for redundancy You still need to backup your NAS. Any changes would obviously affect the copies protected by redundancy. Raid 6 is best, but what is better is RAIDZ, which uses ZFS and provides better redundancy and bit-rot protection.
2. I do not recommend prebuilt solutions since they are insecure and targeted by ransomware attacks in the past with the deadbolt ransomware. You will be at your mercy of the manufacturer for software updates, including security updates. By building your own, you depend on the OS developer. TrueNAS and UnRAID is commonly used for custom built NAS.
3. It’s a bit more costly to backup a NAS since backup solutions are geared for desktop OSes and backing up incur a monthly fee to store along with bandwidth to upload and download. If you know how to use iSCSI, you can setup a machine that does the file server and create an iSCSI target on the NAS. The drive mounted with iSCSI will appear as a normal internal drive like a RAID Thunderbolt Array would. That mean you can use the regular Backblaze to backup your NAS data as long it’s on the iSCSI volume.

Personally, I built my own NAS using TrueNAS scale with 4 16 TB Seagate EXOS drives. I have an M1 Mac mini connected to the NAS via 10G Ethernet via Thunderbolt 3 using an iSCSI initiator software from ATTO, which is expensive, but the only thing that works on an M1 Mac. I have everything that is stored on the NAS backup to Backblaze personal as the drive appears as a regular external drive, saving me a lot of money storing the backups, when I need it.

 

[CalMin]

I grappled with this for years. I eventually found my way to investing in a 4-bay Synology NAS and stuffed it with 10TB hard drives in a RAID (SHR) configuration which can cope with a single drive failing. I also bought an extra 10TB drive and keep it on hand in case of failure. But then... I realized that I could have 2 or more drives fail, or something that kills the whole unit. RAID will not protect you if the whole thing fails and eats your data.

So now, I back the whole thing up on to a second external NAS, and then my most critical data to an external hard drive... that I keep in a fireproof safe (I know offsite is better but don't really have that available). My most precious data is in the cloud too.

Overall it was quite an investment, but I do sleep better. I'm not protected fully until I keep multiple offsite backups, but I can live with that.

--

In short, my advice would be to:

1) Get a NAS.
2) Backup the NAS. And as chikorita157 said...
3) Remember that RAID is not a backup.

 

[Ifti]

Echo the above - get a NAS with RAID and still have another means of backing it up.

I have a NAS that I don't really use very often TBH - just end up using external drives most of the time which are RAID enabled SSD arrays. I end up using the NAS as a means of backup!

 

[casperghst42]

1. Raid is not a backup as it spreads out copies of data along with parity data if one drive fails, but it’s good for redundancy You still need to backup your NAS. Any changes would obviously affect the copies protected by redundancy. Raid 6 is best, but what is better is RAIDZ, which uses ZFS and provides better redundancy and bit-rot protection.
2. I do not recommend prebuilt solutions since they are insecure and targeted by ransomware attacks in the past with the deadbolt ransomware. You will be at your mercy of the manufacturer for software updates, including security updates. By building your own, you depend on the OS developer. TrueNAS and UnRAID is commonly used for custom built NAS.
3. It’s a bit more costly to backup a NAS since backup solutions are geared for desktop OSes and backing up incur a monthly fee to store along with bandwidth to upload and download. If you know how to use iSCSI, you can setup a machine that does the file server and create an iSCSI target on the NAS. The drive mounted with iSCSI will appear as a normal internal drive like a RAID Thunderbolt Array would. That mean you can use the regular Backblaze to backup your NAS data as long it’s on the iSCSI volume.

Personally, I built my own NAS using TrueNAS scale with 4 16 TB Seagate EXOS drives. I have an M1 Mac mini connected to the NAS via 10G Ethernet via Thunderbolt 3 using an iSCSI initiator software from ATTO, which is expensive, but the only thing that works on an M1 Mac. I have everything that is stored on the NAS backup to Backblaze personal as the drive appears as a regular external drive, saving me a lot of money storing the backups, when I need it.

There are many discussions about the good and bad things using mdadm (normal Linux Raid) or ZFS (which btw. require ECC memory). And you say that RAIDZ(2) is better than Raid6 then you mush also list the reasons. In general Raid is secure because it spreads the data across multiple disks, and you can loose one (or more) disks before you start loosing data. But it's not a backup, as a backup will allow you to restore data which was corrupted or deleted or otherwise lost.

 

[dpavid]

I paid $7000 to restore a RAID5 with 32GB of storage. Get offsite backup! I did and never worry anymore. It does cost me about $150 per month.

 

[varezhka]

Having dealt with one too many corrupted RAID arrays and dead controllers at work, the only RAID I personally like to use for home is RAID 1. Sure, it's not the most space efficient or the fastest, but the pain of dealing with broken RAID is just not worth it. I don't know how much data you intend to store, but HDDs are cheap. Simple is best.

And like what everyone else has said, RAID is *not* backup. Make sure to maintain a separate backup solution for your new NAS. Ideally offsite.

 

[joker00]

I don't believe your requirements for a WORK DRIVE (Video and Photo Editing) are addressed above.
Quite simply, a NAS is typically to slow for a work drive or you need a very expensive NAS with 10GB connections.....

Anyway, for work drives, its probably best to stay locally attached, using the quickest interface available.
And drives can determine speed ie M2 > SSD > HDD

We have a NAS for storage and streaming media. But then have TB Drive for local backup, work drive, etc.

And even the NAS with 2xHot Spairs is backed up.