OT: NAS For the home

[Rusty Mike]

I've had a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo in my house for the past 10 years, and it's time for a replacement. I was hoping I could get a few impressions from those of you who have network storage in your home systems.

 

I originally bought the Netgear mostly because it was the only device that supported the old Logitech SqueezeCenter service, and I was using Squeezeboxes at the time for home audio. Logitech discontinued those several years back, so that's moot now. The system had never been fast, and my Windows PCs always had big performance issues with access. I'm not sure if they've improved. Lately it's been disappearing from the network at random times, and doesn't always play nice when it is visible.

 

I use the NAS mostly to store photos, videos and my music library. I do some file sharing between computers with it, as well as a little bit of backup (my main Mac and my music laptop each have dedicated USB drives for their own backup). We're a Mac/iOS family, so iTunes support is important. My music computer is Windows 10, and I also have an Oppo Bluray drive, Playstation 3 and Samsung Smart TV in my home audio system, so standard network and file protocols are also essential.

 

The NAS sits in my network equipment closet (yea, I have one of those) along with the router, switches, coax, punch downs, etc. I strongly prefer a two-drive system running RAID over a single disk system.

 

I know WD and Synlogic seems to be among the more prominent brands, but don't have any impression other than the online reviews.

 

I have some credit with the Apple Store, and looked at their AirPort device with storage. The 3TB unit is $400, but it's not exactly ideal. It's only a single drive, and is marketed more as a router than a NAS, although my research shows it will work that way. But I feel like I'd be paying for features I won't use.

 

Any experiences about what has worked for you, or what to stay away from?

 

I'll keep researching as well.

[johnchop]

Agreed about RAID. I loved my (single-disk) LaCie cloudbox until it spontaneously died, along with some files for which I didn't have a good backup (my bad). Assuming the drive isn't totally borked, I might be able to mount it via Linux, but I digress...

 

I like appliances as much as the next person who doesn't want to bring their IT job home with them, but have you considered something like Plex for media sharing, and perhaps a different box for backups? This assumes you have a spare PC or Mac for running Plex (required if you want to share protected iTunes files).

 

 

 

[Rusty Mike]

My entire iTunes library is made from CD rips or non-protected purchases.

 

I used to use an old PC as a media server. I moved over to NAS because it was fewer headaches and a much smaller power draw. The appliance also takes up much less space.

 

I have an old Windows 7 PC that I could blow the dust off of, but I don't want to be more of an admin than I am already. The NAS is nice because it just runs. I look at it about twice each year.

[Rod S]

I use a WD MyCloud Mirror. So far so good. Dual drivers set up to mirror mode (RAID 1). Can access the contents from PCs and Macs in the house and from IPads. It is compatible to time machine but I haven't used this way since I don't know how the PCs will behave.

 

Since I'm cautious I still backup to another drive about 4x a year.

[dongna]

Synlogic NAS has done right by me for home use. I forget the model number, but if you want it let me know and I'll dig it up.

[MoodyBluesKeys]

I'm using a Seagate NAS Pro 4-Bay (after getting one for a client for commercial use). It works with PCs, Apple including TimeMachine, and Linux. Have four 2TB NAS drives in it in a RAID configuration that gives me 6TB max on mine. Seagate's operating system (Linux based) seems pretty reliable (note: it has a USB connection for backup and another for a UPS to help it shut down gracefully with a power interruption).

 

I do have a 5TB Seagate external hard drive connected to it for a daily backup of the NAS. In order to do incremental backups, the drive had to be formatted with Linux EXT4. The backup drive makes a directory for each backup - which has come in handy once when I really needed to get a not corrupted data file where the most recent copy was corrupted.

 

It is roughly a cube about 7.5" on a side, with external power inline brick.

 

It is also accessible through my firewall from the Internet. Seagate tracks the IP address of the unit so I can use a URL to find it even when my (residential) IP changes.

 

Only 2 things I don't like are (1)if something breaks in it (other than a drive failure), I'd have to send it to them for repair - but this is true for just about all of the multi-drive RAID capable systems, unless I build one myself from a PC. (2) I'd like for the power plug to be something that couldn't be pulled out accidentally. Not a problem in my home, but my client has it in a copy room sitting next to firewall, cable modem, etc. where people can jiggle it around.

 

[Markay]

I use a Synology NAS in a RAID 1 configuration. Works seamlessly with macOS within Finder. Win 10 is an ongoing PITA to use inside Windows Explorer, works fine from the web interface inside a browser. I put that down to endless Win 10 update restarts and changes.

 

All current NAS's come with sophisticated browser software interfaces to enable streamimg, remote access etc. I use the NAS for file backup only. Streaming and media is done using Win 10's built in casting tool, Chromecast or Plex from files stored on other PC's.

 

 

[OB Dave]

Markay - in your Synology setup, how are the drives formatted? In the event the raid controller itself fails, can you pop out a drive and read it directly from any computer?

[RABid]

I thought I was in great shape using a 6 disk RAID, 5 active and 1 hot reserve. Then the controller card went out and I lost everything. Now I just use 2TB drives and back them up to secondary drives.

[J. Dan]

Years ago I bought a NAS and could never get the damn thing to show up on my network. I eventually just pulled the drive, put in in one of my computers, and shared it as a network drive.

[Markay]

Markay - in your Synology setup, how are the drives formatted? In the event the raid controller itself fails, can you pop out a drive and read it directly from any computer?

 

RABid discussed this while ago. As I understand it if the controller fails I would have to get another Synology case to mount the drives in. I am sure there are techs out there that have a work around.

 

I budget to upgrade the NAS every 5 years. If Synology went out of business I would switch to another NAS manufacturer pronto.

 

In addition you can mount a USB external drive to the NAS and also back the NAS drives to it, giving you a copy readable on any PC or Mac in the event the NAS controller failed. Depends how far you want to go with multiple redundancy and the value of the stored data.

[OB Dave]

Ok, thanks for your reply.

 

This, in a nutshell, is why I will never use a RAID array. I have heard too many stories of RAID controller failures rendering the drives unreadable, or the specific controller that created the drives no longer being available, rendering the drives unreadable. Back when my main machine was a PC, I was using backup software that stored in some sort if magic compressed format, and when crisis struck the software was unable to read back its own magic format.

 

So I'm never going down that road again. No magic. I will only use a backup regime that mounts ordinary drives that are formatted in an ordinary scheme, so that the drives can be plugged into and read by any computer.

 

Currently I have a Time Machine drive connected via USB, and another USB drive that gets a cloned copy of my entire system at 4am every day via Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

I would like to move this to the network, but only if I can do it using a standard Mac-formatted USB drive that's presented to the network, and have that drive mirrored to a backup drive. Thought about getting an old Mac Mini for this purpose but it occurs to me that I might be able to accomplish this with a Raspberry Pi.

 

 

[MoodyBluesKeys]

The Seagate NAS I mentioned can backup to a standard drive, which can be formatted as FAT32 so it is readable by Windows (or Mac).

However, it can only make full backups when formatted that way. I don't want the drive running most of the time, so I scheduled the nightly backup in incremental mode, which also meant formatting the backup drive with EXT4.

 

In my case, everything that is on the NAS also lives somewhere on one of the computers, so there really isn't a lot of risk losing stuff. I do understand completely the RAID issue.

 

(This is guesswork): There are lots of low priced RAID controllers available now, and the one used in the Seagate (probably most other non-enterprise priced NAS) operates with SATA drives. There is a very good chance that a different brand could read the drives, if they were mounted in the proper slide in housings for a different NAS.

 

My main computer backups are done using TimeMachine on the Macs and Acronis on the PCs. I've never had any problems reading them on other computers with the same or newer versions of Acronis (or even the Acronis boot CDs, which run under Linux).

 

[Markay]

Ok, thanks for your reply.

 

This, in a nutshell, is why I will never use a RAID array.

 

Well in my day job the drive's in our HP servers and their predecessors back to about 1995 have been exclusively RAID. Plenty of drive failures but zero controller failures. Plus we have several NAS's running 24/7 at remote locations for off site storage. Again no controller failures but some drive failures.

 

Given this experience I am entirely comfortable with RAID storage.

[MAJUSCULE]

Wait, this thread isn't about hip-hop in the home?

[Rusty Mike]

Ok, thanks for your reply.

 

This, in a nutshell, is why I will never use a RAID array. I have heard too many stories of RAID controller failures rendering the drives unreadable, or the specific controller that created the drives no longer being available, rendering the drives unreadable. Back when my main machine was a PC, I was using backup software that stored in some sort if magic compressed format, and when crisis struck the software was unable to read back its own magic format.

 

So I'm never going down that road again. No magic. I will only use a backup regime that mounts ordinary drives that are formatted in an ordinary scheme, so that the drives can be plugged into and read by any computer.

 

Currently I have a Time Machine drive connected via USB, and another USB drive that gets a cloned copy of my entire system at 4am every day via Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

I would like to move this to the network, but only if I can do it using a standard Mac-formatted USB drive that's presented to the network, and have that drive mirrored to a backup drive. Thought about getting an old Mac Mini for this purpose but it occurs to me that I might be able to accomplish this with a Raspberry Pi.

 

 

That exactly the kind of stuff I'm grappling with as well. I went the mini-server route years ago, and I found the administration was more than I care to deal with. I do enough IT support at home. The other downside of the mini server is the energy draw. The NAS appliance consumes a fraction of the electricity compared to even a small computer. (I realize that the appliance itself is a small computer!)

 

I had also given thought to just sharing volumes on my iMac to the network. But I'm an old school IT guy who thinks servers should be servers and clients should be clients.

 

The iMac has a 1TB internal drive, and I have a Seagate 2TB USB drive connected to it. I'm running Time Machine to the Seagate (selected folders - not the entire image), and there are a few other miscellaneous folders on the Seagate as secondary storage. My music laptop has a 1TB drive internal, with an external 500GB USB drive hanging off of it, again for backing up selected folders and some additional content.

 

The NAS is a 2-drive RAID 0 configuration, providing 1TB of storage. It's mostly files, music, pictures and video, but there is also some other stuff there, about 65% full.

 

As I indicated earlier, the performance between the NAS and the PC is painful. Copying a 100MB file takes literally hours (yes, I've examined the active protocols, services, etc.). All other services seem to work ok excepting the file transfer. I currently use Google Drive or USB stick to share files between the PC and the Mac, which I think is absurd. All the tech and storage in this system and I have to go out to the Internet!

 

I want to offload the pictures from my iMac. My wife has a MacBook Pro and she likes to work on picture albums while relaxing in the family room, away from the iMac. Getting the pictures organized on a server would be great, as long as I can automatically duplicate or back them up somewhere else. It would have to be seamless, as my wife would expect to sit down at either Mac and pick up where she left off.

 

Using RAID takes the headache out of this. I don't have experience with any controller failures, but I have had a drive die, and the hot swap was easy peasy. I am, however, tempted by the Apple AirPort Time Capsule, despite being a single disk. Most Apple stuff simply works, and I've got $190 already in store credit to put toward it.

 

The research continues. . .

[MoodyBluesKeys]

Maybe something in the Netgear OS (although I'd expect it to be built on Linux), my NAS Pro Seagate copies files quite rapidly from/to PC or Mac. I normally use File Explorer or a Command Prompt on the PCs, and Finder on the Macs.

It does have two 1Ghz Ethernet Jacks on it, primary must be hooked up, secondary adds bandwidth.

The Seagate control software has a goodly number of protocols that can be selectively supported: SMB, NRB (network recycle bin, works with SMB only), AFP, NFS, FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and TimeMachine. It also supports UPNP/DLNA and iTunes streaming.

 

I have an older AirPort TimeCapsule, given to me by a friend. The router part doesn't work (which is no problem for me), but the storage part does work. It has 1TB, and I use it for occasional backups of both Macs, then power down.

 

[aluk]

Take a look at unRAID if you have a spare PC lying around. It uses standard (linux) drive formats and adds parity protection. You can mix and match drive sizes as time goes on.

 

It does basic network sharing, but can also scale to run applications for backup, media sharing etc. I still use it to run Logitech Media Server for my Squeezeboxes! There is a free trial.

 

https://lime-technology.com/network-attached-storage/

 

No affiliation, other than being a happy customer for about 10 years.

 

[Lady Gaia]

Im running a FreeNAS box and couldnt be happier. The software is 100% open sourced and runs RAID configurations on standard drive controllers. You can easily migrate disk arrays to a different enclosure from a different manufacturer, or build your own. I bought a pre-configured unit and have been extremely happy.

 

Better yet, unlike most NAS devices that Id consider proof against drive failure but dont serve the role of backup, this serves my needs right up to the point where theft or catastrophes like fire make restoring from an off-site backup necessary. Scheduled ZFS snapshots mean that I can always read from a complete image of everything from any day in the prior month, or any month in the prior year. Accidental deletion or overwriting is a complete non-issue the way I have things set up.