Which high capacity drive do you recommend? Should I get NAS?

[pastrychef]

OP is looking at 5Gb/s devices.

He is??? Which drives storage devices give 5Gb/s performance?

 

[LiveM]

I wouldn't expect real world performance, but the 'USB fast' drives are in that class.

Apple claims my LaCie Porsche Design as having 5 Gb/s speed, which I think is misleading in the extreme, at least to other potential buyers.

 

[adib]

Just remember don't expect to use a NAS for Time Machine or you'll see time machine errors when you least expect it.

I built a NAS for about $400. It runs XPEnology (open source implementation of Synology). My build has 8 hot swap bays, is powerful enough to run Plex server and stream 1080p movies to my Apple TV 4, and has transfer rates of ~110MB/s read and write.

$200.00 - ASRock C2550D4I motherboard/CPU
$150.00 - Silverstone DS380 enclosure with 8 hot swap bays
$ 50.00 - Silverstone SFX ST30SF 300W power supply
----------
$400.00

I had spare RAM from my Mac Pro that I stuck in there, you will need to factor in RAM cost if you don't have any spares.

If you want to get elaborate, you can add 10GbE and get at least ~300MB/s writes and ~800MB/s reads. Speeds will depend on the types of drives you have. I have seen much better speeds than what I am getting (I'm using Archive drives which are notorious for poor performance). I got 10GbE cards for my NAS, my Mac Pro, and 10GbE cable all for under $90.

Advantages of my NAS build:
1. Filename length will not be a problem.
2. You can mix and match different drive sizes.
3. Capacity can be expanded by replacing smaller drives with larger ones when needed.
4. Can have single or dual disk redundancy to protect against hard drive failures and you won't lose any data.
5. Run other applications such as Plex server or Download Station.
6. Can be accessed by multiple computers and/or devices at the same time.
7. Much less expensive than buying a retail prebuilt NAS.

Disadvantages of single drive solutions:
1. You will have drives and cables all over the place.
2. Transfer rates will be limited to the bus you use to attach the drives or the speed of the drives themselves.
3. No redundancy. If/when the drives die, your data is gone. (This is a very important one!)

I can't believe no one else has brought up redundancy as a major benefit of NAS. Redundancy has helped save my behind many times over the years.

 

[throAU]

Just remember don't expect to use a NAS for Time Machine or you'll see time machine errors when you least expect it.

Possibly.

Have been using FreeNAS to back up to for the past 3 years without issue.

But yes, YMMV, and i also have back ups to an external USB drive to keep off-site on a semi-regular basis.


Having a NAS as a primary backup location is awesome though (or a time capsule) because you can essentially turn it on and forget about it for the most part - you don't have the hassle of having to plug in a disk so regularly - i limited that to monthly (or so, i've been slack recently - but haven't generated much content i care about losing as of late) off-site backups.

 

[MRrainer]

Well, FreeNAS (on the right hardware) is the only low-cost NAS I would actually trust with valuable data anyway.
When people say "NAS" I still think they mean a NetApp or EMC box ;-)
But when I realize they mean some Synology or Buffalo or whatever crap, I want to shake their heads and yell "But it's not reliable, don't you see that?" at them ;-)
These things are "NADs" at best - Network Attached Disks. They usually have less reliability than the drives they're backing up from (because they contain equally or even cheaper disks, inadequate cooling, lesser quality PSUs etc.pp.)

 

[pastrychef]

Just remember don't expect to use a NAS for Time Machine or you'll see time machine errors when you least expect it.

As thruAU said, your milage may vary, but lots of people use their NASes for Time Machine without issues.

Well, FreeNAS (on the right hardware) is the only low-cost NAS I would actually trust with valuable data anyway.
When people say "NAS" I still think they mean a NetApp or EMC box ;-)
But when I realize they mean some Synology or Buffalo or whatever crap, I want to shake their heads and yell "But it's not reliable, don't you see that?" at them ;-)
These things are "NADs" at best - Network Attached Disks. They usually have less reliability than the drives they're backing up from (because they contain equally or even cheaper disks, inadequate cooling, lesser quality PSUs etc.pp.)

I don't know what your experiences with NASes are, but I've been using them for about 6-7 years and haven't lost any data since using them. Every time a drive failed, the redundancy has done it's job as expected.

I can't speak for Buffalo, but my experiences with the Synology software has been nothing but positive. Which version of the DSM did you have problems with?

 

[phrehdd]

Well, FreeNAS (on the right hardware) is the only low-cost NAS I would actually trust with valuable data anyway.
When people say "NAS" I still think they mean a NetApp or EMC box ;-)
But when I realize they mean some Synology or Buffalo or whatever crap, I want to shake their heads and yell "But it's not reliable, don't you see that?" at them ;-)
These things are "NADs" at best - Network Attached Disks. They usually have less reliability than the drives they're backing up from (because they contain equally or even cheaper disks, inadequate cooling, lesser quality PSUs etc.pp.)

MRainer, I don't think we agree. The term NAS has been around for a long time and often contrasted and compared to DAS. I expect some folks would not know the acronym DAS though they often use one (directly attached storage) and refer to it as simply an external drive(s).

For me, the biggest weakness of these smaller units (other than a power supply replacement) is reconstitution of data if a drive fails and is swapped out. Then again, similar can be said for enterprise level RAID units as NAS, SANs etc.

Btw, do a search on "NADs" and see what comes up. I think you might rethink your position.

 

[ewkid]

Just remember don't expect to use a NAS for Time Machine or you'll see time machine errors when you least expect it.

I haven't run into this error with my Synology in a long time. But when I did I used this procedure to fix the error.
http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,...ine-sparsebundle-nas-based-backup-errors.html

 

[MRrainer]

For me, the biggest weakness of these smaller units (other than a power supply replacement) is reconstitution of data if a drive fails and is swapped out. Then again, similar can be said for enterprise level RAID units as NAS, SANs etc.

No problem if you use ZFS software RAID (which FreeNAS uses).
It doesn't even matter how the drives are arranged on the bus (if you boot from an USB stick) - ZFS will figure out which drive is which.
ZFS protects you data. Your hardware must be spec'ed a bit better than usual (ECC is recommended) - but will give you peace of mind in exchange.

Personally, I just use an external drive attached via IEEE1394-B - wouldn't want to have a server with FreeNAS running 24x7 just for TM.

 

[MRrainer]

I don't know what your experiences with NASes are, but I've been using them for about 6-7 years and haven't lost any data since using them. Every time a drive failed, the redundancy has done it's job as expected.

I can't speak for Buffalo, but my experiences with the Synology software has been nothing but positive. Which version of the DSM did you have problems with?

As said, I don't use a NAS at all, currently (no real need, no physical space for the machine itself).
The problem with your non-ZFS RAID is that while it was "restored" when you replaced the disk, you have no way of knowing if the data that was read from the remaining disks was actually still correct.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Data_integrity

 

[pastrychef]

As said, I don't use a NAS at all, currently (no real need, no physical space for the machine itself).
The problem with your non-ZFS RAID is that while it was "restored" when you replaced the disk, you have no way of knowing if the data that was read from the remaining disks was actually still correct.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Data_integrity

If you don't use a NAS, how are you qualified to even comment? It's akin to a person who has never driven advising someone about to purchase a car which makes sinks and what type of engines are bad.

I don't know what the theoretical risks are regarding data integrity but if it were a serious enough problem, I'm sure there would be much written about it on the internet.

As far as I can tell, ZFS just uses data scrubbing to verify and repair any data integrity issues, which is exactly what a Synology would do.

 

[Tomorrow]

As said, I don't use a NAS at all, currently (no real need, no physical space for the machine itself).

Not having a need is one thing, but how in the world do you not have physical space for a NAS? Mine's smaller than a toaster!

 

[MRrainer]

Not having a need is one thing, but how in the world do you not have physical space for a NAS? Mine's smaller than a toaster!

I want one with ZFS, of course ;-)
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If you don't use a NAS, how are you qualified to even comment? It's akin to a person who has never driven advising someone about to purchase a car which makes sinks and what type of engines are bad.

I don't know what the theoretical risks are regarding data integrity but if it were a serious enough problem, I'm sure there would be much written about it on the internet.

As far as I can tell, ZFS just uses data scrubbing to verify and repair any data integrity issues, which is exactly what a Synology would do.

I deal with data in an enterprise environment. Administrating ZFS (fileservers) is part of my job.
Storage is storage, after all.
Looks like newer releases of Synology use BTRS, a similar-but-not-quite-equal re-implementation of ZFS for Linux.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/Btrfs

That may actually work, sort-of.
Though you probably need one of the larger models to take advantage of it.

I do acknowledge that Apple's own HFS filesystem is woefully inadequate at protecting your data from even the simplest forms of "bit rot". As such, storing your data on one of the models mentioned in the article above is probably a sane move.