AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I'm looking for somewhere to store all my photos from the last few years - about 80 CDs worth and growing - and rather than trust them all to CD-R I'd like to store them on a properly backed-up hard disc.

I have several 120GB discs sitting on a shelf which it would be nice to re-use if that saves me having to buy new ones.

So, what I'm ideally after is a NAS enclosure with the following features:

- Ethernet
- Takes at least two discs in a fault-tolerant configuration
- Works with both Windows and Linux
- Cheap!

So far the only sensibly priced candidate I've found is the Netgear SC101, which gets poor reviews and requires its own Windows driver, so that's no good. I've also found a few Buffalo models which only take one disc but which the spec sheet claims can back up to a separate USB drive - so perhaps I could buy two and have one back up to the other?

Any other suggestions please guys?

mike1210

Infrant Technologies

would get my vote, but not cheap with RAID5 and XRAID

was a link to reviews on here a while back posted by Mod Chris, if i find it ill paste the link in

not quite as good but

Broadbandbuyer.co.uk | Buffalo TeraStation Pro 1.0 Terabyte NAS

found it

AnandTech: SMB NAS Roundup

reviews above original thread below

https://www.scoobynet.com/computer-r...?highlight=nas

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Thanks - that's really helpful.

Sadly it seems the Netgear is out on its own in cost terms, so I'll have to save a bit. The Infrant and Buffalo models look good.

I'm new to the whole RAID / NAS idea, and I do have one issue which I hope somebody can help with, bearing in mind that the reason I want one is for really long term reliability. I understand how the array can cope with failure of a disc without losing data, but what happens if the controller itself fails? Are the discs formatted in a standard way which can be read by other controllers? What am I supposed to do with the discs the day the controller packs up?

Ta
Andy

LanCat

Why not just build a linux box from a secondhand PC and stick the disks you have in it?

druddle

^^^^^ What he said. Look at Ubuntu, its a great Linux distro, I use it instead of Windows at home for my media centre PC.

Dave

Thunder77

or you can try FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home if you have a spare machine

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Oddly enough, I do run Ubuntu already - though the idea of 'just' setting up a PC as a file server and configuring the discs as a RAID array is a trifle optimistic. My experience with Linux so far is that it seems powerful and reliable, but a total pig to configure unless you're willing to put in a lot of hours learning about how it all works under the hood.

I found it quite telling that Ubuntu comes with dozens of pretty graphical screen savers that no doubt took hours to produce, but no file & print sharing setup wizard. By nerds, for nerds it would seem.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Quick update, and a vote of thanks to mike1210: My Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ arrived on Tuesday morning, and a quality piece of kit it is too. I'm using it in two disc (RAID 1) mode, with a third 'spare' drive that I can periodically swap with one of the two active drives, to give me a safe backup in case lightning destroys the NAS box. That spare drive is apparently readable under Linux, which is ideal.

Not cheap, granted - but it should last me a long time.

cottonfoo

Ditch RAID1 and go straight to RAID5. RAID1 is totally useless for a backup solution.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Go on, I'm listening. Care to elaborate?

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

i think he is talking about the tradeoff between space and redundancy..
but i dont think you can do RAID5 with that amount of disks anyway.

cottonfoo

RAID1 is faster than RAID5, but you lose 50% of the disk space (over having no RAID, not compared to RAID5). RAID1 is the simplest, and can sustain multiple disk failures a lot of the time. RAID5 isn't good for write speed because of all the parity it needs to keep.

However, since this is your backup and not your OS disk, write speed shouldn't be an issue. In fact, I've changed my mind about RAID5 - RAID6 would be better for resilience RAID1 has the highest disk space overhead of all, and most software controllers can't hot swap, something that doesn't affect you I don't think.

RAID6 (5 with two lots of parity) will give you excellent fault tolerance with the lowest overhead, although the initial outlay will be a little higher.

mike1210

I'm 99% sure RAID5 can be done with 3 drives, Infrant brag also about thier X-RAID which can adapt to different raid situations as the need arises

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Yes, the ReadyNAS can do RAID 5 and X-RAID with 3 or more discs - but right now, neither suits my needs as well as simple mirroring.

All my data fits on just one drive, so the capacity loss is a non-issue. Far more important is the fact that, to get an offline backup, all I have to do is pull one drive, lock it away, and replace it. With three or more discs in a RAID 5 configuration, that's no longer possible.

I'll also usually be accessing the drive over a wireless network, which will always be the bottleneck, so I won't get any speed improvement by adding more drives either.

HHxx

Andy, I would test that theory out regarding pulling a drive and storing it. See if you can read the disk!