Which NAS would suit my needs?

[truckmount]

I would like to setup file sharing and backup all our work from 4 computers. I would need it setup so if a drive fails it will be backed up, im guessing atleast maybe 4 drives just in case?

We are all on macs in the shop.

Looking to have about 4-6TB

 

[Gav2k]

A qnap 2bay could do the job for you set up to mirror one drive to the other if you want to keep cost down. With 6-8tb drives available it's a no brainier.

 

[truckmount]

@Gav2k thanks. I looked at a couple QNaps,I guess my biggest problem is finding reliable drives to go inside?

Wouldnt mind SSD, got any recommendations?

Also do I ever need to hook up a NAS directly to my imac or do I just plug it into the verizon router and its good to go?

 

[Gav2k]

There's no need for ssd unless your hitting it hard. That said if you were to get say a 453 you could put an ssd in bay 4 and set it up as a cache drive. Drives I'd recommend.... Wd 6tb red's and funnily enough the new Seagate 8tb drives seem to be solid I'm actually testing them now and they've not skipped a beat.

 

[jeyf]

Hmmm; work related sit;
Pay attention to how powerful the appliance's cpu is. Anything Drobo is sloooow. Buy something rad5 and fast enough so ℅ workers don't hate you. 4 or 5 slots

 

[truckmount]

@Gav2k @jeyf I am gonna go with the QNAP TS-453 or the 471 which holds 4 drives. What do you think of getting like 4 x 3TB drives and use up 6TB and have the other two drives mirror the first two drives? I dont know much about this but I just want to use up 2 drives and have 2 other drives as a backup solution just in case one of the 1st two die. Is this what I should do or you have any other better solutions? What kind of raid setup should I use?

I would only get 2 drives but I am fearful of both dying at the same time etc.

 

[phrehdd]

4 drive set up has a few RAID variations
RAID 6 - This is the same as RAID 5 but 2 drives can fail (less usable storage is trade off)
RAID 5 - 3 drives used, 1 spare or cache (if 4th is SSD). Risk up to 1 drive failure.
RAID 5 - all 4 drives. Risk up to 1 drive failure, requires rebuild and for some that prove problematic.
RAID 1 - pair of drives mirrored, one spare + SSD for cache, rebuilds usually go without a hitch and are faster than R5.
RAID 10 - mirrored and striped. 2 disk failure before replacement but see below
etc. ...

RAID 10 offer speed and some level of drive failure safety with added speed. You could have 2 drives fail but they can't be of the same mirror. Thus mirror 1 striped with mirror 2 give RAID 10. If one of mirror 1 fails and one of mirror 2 fails, the RAID continues. If 2 drives of mirror 1 or mirror 2 fail, you are out of luck. The trade off between RAID 10 and 5 as example is you get more volume with RAID 5 but higher risk and depending on set up, often not as fast as RAID 10. RAID 10 is faster but again, though you can have up to two drives fail, it isn't random. After one drive fails, its mirror counterpart must not fail or you lose the RAID.

I can't tell you which one to do as it is a combination of personal choice, budget, required usable storage space, speed and ease of remediation if a disk (or more) fails. I can say that if storage space is not on top of the list (see RAID 5), then either mirror drive with spare and SSD cache is smart as is RAID 10. I would pick RAID 10 as my personal first choice of the two. Incidentally, I have a 5 bay NAS running RAID 5 for several years without a hitch while my friend had a similar NAS running RAID 6 for about 14 months and 1 drive crashed followed by 2 months later another.

 

[truckmount]

4 drive set up has a few RAID variations
RAID 6 - This is the same as RAID 5 but 2 drives can fail (less usable storage is trade off)
RAID 5 - 3 drives used, 1 spare or cache (if 4th is SSD). Risk up to 1 drive failure.
RAID 5 - all 4 drives. Risk up to 1 drive failure, requires rebuild and for some that prove problematic.
RAID 1 - pair of drives mirrored, one spare + SSD for cache, rebuilds usually go without a hitch and are faster than R5.
RAID 10 - mirrored and striped. 2 disk failure before replacement but see below
etc. ...

RAID 10 offer speed and some level of drive failure safety with added speed. You could have 2 drives fail but they can't be of the same mirror. Thus mirror 1 striped with mirror 2 give RAID 10. If one of mirror 1 fails and one of mirror 2 fails, the RAID continues. If 2 drives of mirror 1 or mirror 2 fail, you are out of luck. The trade off between RAID 10 and 5 as example is you get more volume with RAID 5 but higher risk and depending on set up, often not as fast as RAID 10. RAID 10 is faster but again, though you can have up to two drives fail, it isn't random. After one drive fails, its mirror counterpart must not fail or you lose the RAID.

I can't tell you which one to do as it is a combination of personal choice, budget, required usable storage space, speed and ease of remediation if a disk (or more) fails. I can say that if storage space is not on top of the list (see RAID 5), then either mirror drive with spare and SSD cache is smart as is RAID 10. I would pick RAID 10 as my personal first choice of the two. Incidentally, I have a 5 bay NAS running RAID 5 for several years without a hitch while my friend had a similar NAS running RAID 6 for about 14 months and 1 drive crashed followed by 2 months later another.

wow thank you for this info, very informing! When you say fail, so that means i wouldnt be able to get the info off that drive at all again right? But then it should auto be mirrored/saved onto another drive for until i put in a replacement drive?

Also if i was going to go with the raid 10 setup like you mentioned, what 4 drives would you recommend if all I am trying to get up to is about a 'total' of 6-10TB of storage for all of us to have access to by saving our media on there and editing files - what drives would you recommend to accomplish this?

I wouldnt like it but if 1 drive fails im ok t replace it quickly but if 2 drives fail and my entire data is on those 2 drives then i dont want to be out of luck. Just trying to understand the best solution for what we are all trying to do here. :/
[doublepost=1453683939][/doublepost]Forgot to mention if i go with raid 5 what 4 drives would you recommend as well

 

[phrehdd]

wow thank you for this info, very informing! When you say fail, so that means i wouldnt be able to get the info off that drive at all again right? But then it should auto be mirrored/saved onto another drive for until i put in a replacement drive?

Also if i was going to go with the raid 10 setup like you mentioned, what 4 drives would you recommend if all I am trying to get up to is about a 'total' of 6-10TB of storage for all of us to have access to by saving our media on there and editing files - what drives would you recommend to accomplish this?

I wouldnt like it but if 1 drive fails im ok t replace it quickly but if 2 drives fail and my entire data is on those 2 drives then i dont want to be out of luck. Just trying to understand the best solution for what we are all trying to do here. :/
[doublepost=1453683939][/doublepost]Forgot to mention if i go with raid 5 what 4 drives would you recommend as well

Before I go on, please don't take advice and apply it straight from here (including my advice on NAS/RAID) but investigage on line. Learn the basics of the types of RAID and in particular, RAID 1, RAID 10, RAID 5 and 6. As for drives, someone above mentioned Western Digital Red drives and Seagate's counterpart for consumer RAID drives. If you can afford it, venture into perhaps 4 gig drives so you have room to grow rather than later having to replace drives with larger drives.

RAID 1 - if one drive fails, you can continue with the other drive until it is replaced.

RAID 10 - requires 4 drives, two pairs of mirrored that are striped (RAID 0). You can lose up to two drives as long as each failed drive is of a different mirrored pair. The rebuild time is faster than with RAID 5 or 6 as only a single drive is being reconstituted from its complement in the mirror drive schema. Think of it this way

[a, a1] = first pair
[b, b1] = second pair

If drive a or drive a1 fails, you can also lose ONE drive from the other pair and still be operation. Same if one of the second pair of drives fail, you can then lose one from the first pair (same thing in reverse on which drive failed first). Obviously, if you lose both drives within a pair of mirrored drives, you cannot restore/reconstitute. Some folks might even insist it is better to have two separate RAID 1 pairs that are not tied together other than being in the same NAS box and controlled by the NAS. The latter would run slower than RAID 10 and limit the size of a greatest volume per RAID.

Back to drives - RAID 5, just personal taste and experience, no larger than 4 tb drives as reconstituting larger will take far longer and is potentially (statistics only) prone to errors. RAID 10, drives as large as you want as long as they are sound drives and your NAS OS handles that type of RAID and drive size properly.

Last - Always* check with the maker of the NAS as to which drives they advocate. Back when, a lot of people went with Western Digital "Green" drives when they came out and much to their chagrin had major issues. Later, the maker of the NAS didn't include it in its usable drives page and in fact discouraged those particular drives. The W.D. Red drives on the other hand get praise in general. Incidentally, the single longest "make" of drives I used in a NAS got very mixed reviews years ago. What makes it strange is that they are to this day, ALL still in use in another NAS of a friend (I gave him the drives to start him but also the warning). Those were Samsung 2tb drives that are 5900 rpm. - So, one never knows but can only try to be as cautious as possible when getting drives and checking their track record with a given NAS of choice.
[doublepost=1453687763][/doublepost]I'll throw you a curve ball here for fun -

If you made a RAID 10 set up on your NAS with 4tb drives, you could add one Seagate 8tb drive externally in a case to back up your NAS data to a single drive.

***Just know that with any volume created, don't count on using all of it up. Depending on who you talk to, they will tell you that if your NAS is 80 percent "full," don't add more data to it. Many NAS setups allow for a notification to occur once you reach a certain level of data on the NAS. I tend to figure 75-80 percent myself, others may offer a different percentage.

 

[cincygolfgrrl]

I know nothing about the OPs question. I've always figured a RAID array was having cans of insecticide scattered around the house, just in case.

What I do know is that whenever someone says something is a, "no brainer," you should probably take a step (or ten steps) back. I'm not impugning the integrity of the person who said that. Even the best advice comes with caveats.

 

[loekf]

You say you need 4-6 TB. Just go for 4 x 4 TB in RAID5, which gives you 12 TB. You can go for smaller drives (e.g. 4 x 2 TB), but after some time you'll regret it.

A reason to go for a smaller size could be backups via e.g. an external USB drive (AFAIK max. 6 or 8 TB). One thing I still hate about NAS drives is backing up or putting stuff back via the network. Both QNAP and Synology use rsync and it's painfully slow.

Most modern NAS drives offer read/write speeds of 100 MB/s or higher, so maxing out a Gbps link.

QNAP or Synology really doesn't matter. Usually QNAP gives you a little more performance/features. On the other hand, I find Synology better with regular firmware updates (every month ?). QNAP goes for more stability (every 2-3 month). Expect 4-5 years of support.

I wouldn't go for other NAS vendors, because for the others (WDC, Netgear) it's not their core business.

About drives. I'm still very suspicious of Seagate drives. WD Red is a good choice. When you buy a NAS with new drives, buy a few extra, so if one fails you can immediately plug in a new one. Usually you can mix different types, as long as the capacity is the same. But it could have performance impact.

Be prepared to having to write some Applescript file for mounting NAS' shared folders. You can do this via start-up items in OS X, but Finder will open the folders on the desktop (in a window) at start-up. Can't be hidden items.

There were (still are ?) issues with SMB in 10.10 (still in 10.11 ?). I switched to AFP. Issue with SMB was e.g. when copied files to a NAS folder, you would get access violations. AFP works fine. That was with a QNAP NAS. Maybe Synology works fine, but both are using Linux as their internal OS and (I guess) the SMB / SAMBA implementation is very very similar.

 

[bogg]

Personally I'm very happy with my Netgear RN214 12TB, had an Ultra 4 before and was so happy with it that I upgraded to a RN214 when it was released.

 

[truckmount]

You say you need 4-6 TB. Just go for 4 x 4 TB in RAID5, which gives you 12 TB. You can go for smaller drives (e.g. 4 x 2 TB), but after some time you'll regret it.

A reason to go for a smaller size could be backups via e.g. an external USB drive (AFAIK max. 6 or 8 TB). One thing I still hate about NAS drives is backing up or putting stuff back via the network. Both QNAP and Synology use rsync and it's painfully slow.

Most modern NAS drives offer read/write speeds of 100 MB/s or higher, so maxing out a Gbps link.

QNAP or Synology really doesn't matter. Usually QNAP gives you a little more performance/features. On the other hand, I find Synology better with regular firmware updates (every month ?). QNAP goes for more stability (every 2-3 month). Expect 4-5 years of support.

I wouldn't go for other NAS vendors, because for the others (WDC, Netgear) it's not their core business.

About drives. I'm still very suspicious of Seagate drives. WD Red is a good choice. When you buy a NAS with new drives, buy a few extra, so if one fails you can immediately plug in a new one. Usually you can mix different types, as long as the capacity is the same. But it could have performance impact.

Be prepared to having to write some Applescript file for mounting NAS' shared folders. You can do this via start-up items in OS X, but Finder will open the folders on the desktop (in a window) at start-up. Can't be hidden items.

There were (still are ?) issues with SMB in 10.10 (still in 10.11 ?). I switched to AFP. Issue with SMB was e.g. when copied files to a NAS folder, you would get access violations. AFP works fine. That was with a QNAP NAS. Maybe Synology works fine, but both are using Linux as their internal OS and (I guess) the SMB / SAMBA implementation is very very similar.

Everyone keeps saying if a drive fails, &' guessing it's pretty common? If that 1 drive fails won't I lose all my data I've ever had on that 1 drive? That's what I'm trying to prevent... So having 4x4TB and 1 drive fails and had content I need I'm out of luck? How can I prevent that other than having to backup the drive daily?

 

[Gav2k]

Everyone keeps saying if a drive fails, &' guessing it's pretty common? If that 1 drive fails won't I lose all my data I've ever had on that 1 drive? That's what I'm trying to prevent... So having 4x4TB and 1 drive fails and had content I need I'm out of luck? How can I prevent that other than having to backup the drive daily?

Really depends on the raid mode you have set. Drive failures are common but more so during a rebuild that's why double redundancy like raid 5(6) with a hot spare.

 

[truckmount]

Really depends on the raid mode you have set. Drive failures are common but more so during a rebuild that's why double redundancy like raid 5(6) with a hot spare.

Just so I understand correctly.....cause some of this is confusing hah but if I have a raid 5, a hot spare would be my external hd is constantly backs up to daily or a internal drive that's linked up somehow and replaces the failed drive?

Just want the best setup a team of 4 of us can use to backup our videos+photos and raw projects onto but have a safe backup just incase any drives fail in the NAS of if needs to be mirrored?

 

[Gav2k]

Just so I understand correctly.....cause some of this is confusing hah but if I have a raid 5, a hot spare would be my external hd is constantly backs up to daily or a internal drive that's linked up somehow and replaces the failed drive?

Just want the best setup a team of 4 of us can use to backup our videos+photos and raw projects onto but have a safe backup just incase any drives fail in the NAS of if needs to be mirrored?

Raid 5 + spare is near as damn it raid 6. It's a lot better than raid 5 as you can have a drive fail then during the rebuild another may fail but you can still recover from it. Standard raid 5 during a rebuild your at risk. And to be clear the chance of a drive failure during a rebuild is very high as your hammering the drives!

 

[phrehdd]

Just so I understand correctly.....cause some of this is confusing hah but if I have a raid 5, a hot spare would be my external hd is constantly backs up to daily or a internal drive that's linked up somehow and replaces the failed drive?

Just want the best setup a team of 4 of us can use to backup our videos+photos and raw projects onto but have a safe backup just incase any drives fail in the NAS of if needs to be mirrored?

"Hot Spare" refers (nearly always or usually - pick which word you want) a drive that is inside of your NAS that is on "standby" in case a drive fails. - Thus the term "hot."

When one drive fails in RAID 5, the other drives continue to operate but at a degraded level which translates to slower. When you use a "hot spare" in a 4 drive NAS, you are only using 3 of the 4 drives for the RAID 5 and the 4th remains as the standby drive. An alternative is to use all 4 drives in RAID 5 but have waiting outside of the NAS an extra identical drive ready to swap out with the failed drive. That outside drive might be referred to as simply a replacement drive or cold standby drive.

RAID 6 - This is similar to RAID 5 but allows for two drives to fail. If you had 4 drives using RAID 5, you would get a volume that is usable of 3 of the 4 drives (actually slightly smaller) and if you used RAID 6, you would get a volume of 2 of the 4 drives. If they were 4tb drives that means RAID 5 would yield approx 3x4tb = 12 tb of storage. RAID 6 would be 2x4tb = 8tb of storage.

You can look up RAID on the Internet and there are several easy to understand diagrams show the most typical RAID types. - 0,1,3,5,6, 1+0 (10) etc.

Assuming you had a RAID 5 from 4x4tb drives and created 12tb of storage. Remember, you don't want to think you will actually use up the 12tb but rather 80 percent of it. At some threshold, the NAS will start to slow down, be more prone to write errors.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

[bogg]

"Hot Spare" refers (nearly always or usually - pick which word you want) a drive that is inside of your NAS that is on "standby" in case a drive fails. - Thus the term "hot."

When one drive fails in RAID 5, the other 4 continue to operate but at a degraded level which translates to slower. When you use a "hot spare" in a 4 drive NAS, you are only using 3 of the 4 drives for the RAID 5 and the 4th remains as the standby drive. An alternative is to use all 4 drives in RAID 5 but have waiting outside of the NAS an extra identical drive ready to swap out with the failed drive. That outside drive might be referred to as simply a replacement drive or cold standby drive.

RAID 6 - This is similar to RAID 5 but allows for two drives to fail. If you had 4 drives using RAID 5, you would get a volume that is usable of 3 of the 4 drives (actually slightly smaller) and if you used RAID 6, you would get a volume of 2 of the 4 drives. If they were 4tb drives that means RAID 5 would yield approx 3x4tb = 12 tb of storage. RAID 6 would be 2x4tb = 8tb of storage.

You can look up RAID on the Internet and there are several easy to understand diagrams show the most typical RAID types. - 0,1,3,5,6, 1+0 (10) etc.

Assuming you had a RAID 5 from 4x4tb drives and created 12tb of storage. Remember, you don't want to think you will actually use up the 12tb but rather 80 percent of it. At some threshold, the NAS will start to slow down, be more prone to write errors.

Hope this helps a bit.

a Nas shouldn't be more prone to write errors because you fill up your drives, why should it? its not like the drives will hurt by being being filled up and the drives always have spare blocks in case of one cluster being damaged (the hard drive swaps these out by itself)

(Other than the statistical chance of hitting a faulty cluster increases the more you write to it, but that would also be the case if deleting files and rewriting new data if those blocks aren't cleared and reused)

But filling a NAS shouldn't be a problem, keeping 10-20% free is an old truth from windows(and other oses) so you have room for swap and disk maintenance/defragmentation. Really not an issue with 12Tb arrays as you'd never need 3Tb free for swap and defrag...And yes, I know, inner vs. outer track speed on hard drives differ. But using a Raid 5 solution with 4 drives even the outer tracks would achieve speeds enough to saturate a 1GbE-line which probably is what OP is/will be using.
Heck, most 4TB drives today would more or less saturate a 1GbE-connection by itself even on the outer tracks if data is sequential. (And All major NAS-manufacturers see to it that their NAS-units either defrag the drives automatically or use a FS that doesn't fragment as easily)

Also it's the truth for SSDs which slows down considerably when filled to the brink.

 

[hfg]

What is the advantage of using a 4-disk RAID-6 vs. RAID-10? It seems to have the same capacity with the same drives, but with RAID-10 there would be no "rebuild" other than a simple disk copy. Is it the slight risk of a dual-disk failure in RAID-10 within the same pairing?

 

[pastrychef]

Everyone keeps saying if a drive fails, &' guessing it's pretty common? If that 1 drive fails won't I lose all my data I've ever had on that 1 drive? That's what I'm trying to prevent... So having 4x4TB and 1 drive fails and had content I need I'm out of luck? How can I prevent that other than having to backup the drive daily?

Hard drives will fail. It's not a question of whether or not they will fail, it's a question when.

Having redundancy will help prevent you from losing data WHEN drives fail. Single disk redundancy will protect you again a single disk failure and dual disk redundancy will protect you against two disk failures.

When a drive dies, just replace it and let the system rebuild. If you have single disk redundancy, you will not be protected against another disk failure and if another drive does die during this time, your data will be lost. If you have dual disk redundancy, you will still be protect against a drive failure when one is down. This is important because your array will be in a fragile state during rebuilds.

In your example of 4x4TB, if set up with single or dual disk redundancy and one of the drives die, you will not lose any data. Replace the failed drive and array will rebuild itself back to full health.

How full a drive is has no correlation with how likely they will die.

I highly recommend you consider some of the offerings from Sinology. Their OS, the Sinology DSM, is fantastic and has many feature beyond file serving.

Also do I ever need to hook up a NAS directly to my imac or do I just plug it into the verizon router and its good to go?

NAS = Network Attached Storage. It needs to be connected to your network, not directly to your iMac.
[doublepost=1453843439][/doublepost]

There's no need for ssd unless your hitting it hard. That said if you were to get say a 453 you could put an ssd in bay 4 and set it up as a cache drive. Drives I'd recommend.... Wd 6tb red's and funnily enough the new Seagate 8tb drives seem to be solid I'm actually testing them now and they've not skipped a beat.

I currently have eight Seagate 8TB Archive drives in my array. I have not had any issues at all.