Network Attached Systems (NAS)

I've had an HP Media Vault 2120 for five years. (500gb Hard drive no RAID) returning from a trip, I powered up the vault and the system drive has crashed. I am looking to replace the vault with a more modern NAS. However there are so many variations that I'm not certain where to go.

I'm running a home network with both XP and Vista (Hopefully soon Win 7). I'd like to set up back up systems for the computers on the network as well as RAID 1.

I'm also interested in:
file sharing over the internet with other family members,
FTP for other family members to store files.

I'd like it to be 1 TB with the RAID 1 but I can adjust. I'm trying to keep the cost down so price is an issue.

In researching this, I got more information than I could process.

Any recommendations or simplistic guidance would be great.

 

First, stay away from units that have the hard drives pre-installed. In addition to (at best) average quality of the drives, many of the cheaper units are sealed up: If a drive crashes in RAID, you can't replace the drive and rebuild the array yourself.

For the price, this D-Link is one of the best deals around:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822155020

As for the hard drives to install in it, I would recommend these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152238

These are RAID/Enterprise server-grade drives -- better resistance to heat. I've used about 20 in builds over the past two years, not one failure yet (knock on wood :-D ).

Hope this helps.

 

Ill second the Dlink. I am running the 323 at home and it is really good. Also acts as a print server too! You can buy the d-links with drives preinstalled and they arent sealed but I cant guarentee the quality of the drives. I think you can also set up FTP direct on the NAS but Im not sure I would want to do that for security reasons.

Also why do you want RAID in a home system? A good backup system like cobian is better that RAID from the point of view if you accidentally delete something you can recover it from backup. You wont get any performance boost as you will be running it over ethernet. The only benefit is the system keeps on rocking if your drive dies. Personally I have one 1TB drive in my NAS which I backup onto my desktop. If the NAS drive fails Ill replace the disk and restore from backup.

If you cant afford for your system to be down then get two drives but dont run them in RAID. Map them independently as separate drives and use one for backups

 

I am interested in the RAID 1 since I had my hard drive crash on me. Most of what I had was recoverable from other sources but now without the media vault, I've no back ups. I did loose some things that were uploaded by my son in another state. I'd like to set up one that I can have some redundancy so hopefully this won't happen again. The concept of running them as independent drives still leave me backing up to the first drive and then backing that up to the second drive. Since RAID 1 does this automatically, what's the benefits of doing it independently?

 

I have all my document libraries stored on my NAS (which has 1HD) and I then Back up my data to my desktop. Basically you will need two disks whether you are running RAID or a backup routine. Cobian is an automatic backup so I set it to run an incremental backup once a week. This basically means that once a week I have a snapshot taken of my data. I can access any backup from the last 8 weeks and because it is incremental it only takes slightly more disk space that the original source data because it only backs up what has changed.

This means if I accidently delete something or change something I can go into any one of the backups from the last 8 weeks to restore it.

With RAID if you change or delete something the change is mirrored on both locations and you cant revert.

Cobian runs automatically so I dont even have to think about running the backup... It just does it.

edit:
It actually takes less space because Cobian compresses data where possible.

 

Having only recently set up this backup routine I have discovered that Cobian (and potentially other incremental backup software) doesnt work on NAS drives. It appears to be to do with the partition format and cobian cannot read the modified dates so cannot establish any changed files. You therefore need to use full backups every time which is not so good.

 

I worked in retail up until about two years ago and sold dozens of the older D-Link models. I think the D-Links still come with an incremental backup software package that works with Win 98/Me/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS 10.x and even certain versions of Linux (definitely check D-Link's web site and detailed specs on this model to be sure).

Tueur does bring up a good point, though, about RAID 1: The redundancy between the two HDDs cuts both ways: In the event of corrupted files or a malware/virus attack, the data on each is equally FUBAR.

For what it's worth, here's how I currently do it:

• Made USB restore drive (Windows, Office, Paint Shop Pro and other expensive license codes activated. In the event of a crash, re-activating the same code without purchasing a new license can sometimes be tricky).
  
• Set up notebook PC to backup to main desktop PC (2.5TB storage).
  
• Have online backup with Carbonite: $59 USD for unlimited backup of one PC or $229 USD/year to back up an unlimited # of PCs at one location (notebook backup to main PC in turn backs up on line thru Carbonite) .

Carbonite offers the best yearly price - no billing surprises if you exceed a pre-set data storage cap. Most importantly, it protects your data from fire, flood, theft, etc. My house was broken into two years ago; the b*starts stole both desktop PCs and my backup drives! Had it not been for Carbonite, 10+ years of my writing and advertising design portfolio would have been gone forever. :eek

 

Thank you. I did see that mine came with backup software but in ignorance asumed that because it was called one touch backup that it would take data from a PC and back it up to NAS which is the oposite way to which I wanted to go. I will check it out!

 

Thanks to all who helped here. I did buy the Dlink-325 and set it up using my Vista laptop. I couldn't get the applications to work; could download but not upload. Can't get the Back up to recognize the Vista maching.

So, I called Dlink support and they said the system works on XP and 7 but they don't work on the Vista system. Their recommendation was to upgrade to 7.

Also tried to install their Total Recovery Pro and it didn't see the drives so, I went to Farstones sight. It suggested to upgrade the software. In the upgrade process it says to uninstall the original application. I did then the upgrade wouldn't install until I provided a serial number. I added the serial number as before and it said it was invalid. Reinstalling the old version yielded the same results. So I submitted a ticket. It asked for the serial number and got the same result so I wasn't one of their priorities. I got an email which said, I'd get an answer in 2 days. 8 days later, I've resubmitted the ticket.

Just so you're aware, Vista and Dlink don't play nice together.