Ultra reliable hard drives??

[Virus]

I'm about to invest in a NAS setup after a drive went down and lost a load of stuff. Network Attached Storage. Synology 2 Bay with a pair of Seagate NAS 2TB HDD's using Raid 1. Works out to about £300.

 

I'd go for this chris, it'd be the cheapest but most successfull setup. Once you're all set up, you can let windows make an automatic back up.

 

Cheers

[Digsy]

I don't store ANY data on my local machine anymore. I have everything on a 2-bay Netgear NAS with 2x 2TB drives.

 

This NAS is configured to backup files that I may want to "rewind" if I accidentally mess up, to a backup share on the same drive, so I have two "live" copies of the (very few) files that are really important.

 

I also have this NAS set up to back up everything to a second NAS once a week, but that's only because I upgraded and had an old one laying around not doing anything.

[Wez]

I highly recommend QNAP NAS, been using them for a while and always been great.

 

You want a min of two bays so you can at least run a mirror, if your feeling flush go for a 4 bay or higher for other raid options.

 

If the QNAP looks a little over kill you could look at Buffallo, we have an old TeraStation 4TB here that has been online 24/7 since 2012 with its original four 1TB disks in RAID5, it gets hammered too as its a log backup server for lots of other boxes so constantly being written too

 

My mistake, its been online longer than I thought

 

Running Time : 2541 days, 00:48:28

[MaveriK]

Chris, i just bought the following and am very happy.

 

Netgear 102 NAS, if you buy it from Dabs, £119.98, they throw in a free 1tb hard drive which you can sell for £40ish to bring the price down.

 

I bought 2 3TB wdc wd30efrx which were around £90 each, you maybe ok with 2 2TB drives which are £80 each. Run them as a mirror set so you will either get 3TB or 2TB of available storage, depending on what size disk you go for.

 

Very easy to setup and has loads of bolt on applications.

 

As stated, I now run with all my files loaded on the NAS

[MaveriK]

I don't store ANY data on my local machine anymore. I have everything on a 2-bay Netgear NAS with 2x 2TB drives.

 

This NAS is configured to backup files that I may want to "rewind" if I accidentally mess up, to a backup share on the same drive, so I have two "live" copies of the (very few) files that are really important.

 

Just found this feature thanks to you.

[Pete]

Hard drives are luck of the draw, whether their SATA, SCSI or SAS.

 

It does seem odd you have a few die on you.

 

Often it comes down quality of PSU, clean power supply (UPS?), power cycles (permanently on?), usage.

 

I'd follow the advice above and get a decent 2Bay NAS to put two drives in. Chance of them both failing at once is slim.

[Ian C]

Use the motherboard RAID controller for a mirrored pair (if it supports it, which a lot do), and back that up to a NAS hosting a mirrored pair as well. Also consider an offsite periodic backup in case of a fire or theft.

 

Mirroring doesn't lower performance. RAID5 is overkill, as are most of the willy-waving solutions being thrown around. RAID 6 and 10 are proprietary and are therefore at risk of manufacturer interpretations of standards.

 

Also, KISS principle applies - a single disk from a mirrored pair is highly portable across systems and contains all the data in readable form. Every other RAID configuration turns each disk into a brick with random one and zeros on it should anything really bad happen.

 

I picked up a 2-bay RAID NAS enclosure with gigabit networking for about £55 delivered. Two brand new 2Tb disks in it, and you've got your solution for under £150 Took minutes to set up though, what a grind

 

-Ian

[BOB B]

Write it down on some napkins Chris, it will be a lot safer, I've just looked at a few of the posts and to me it looks like someone just randomly put down a load of numbers and letters in no particular order.

[Digsy]

Just found this feature thanks to you.

 

If you want extra robustness you can plug a USB drive into the 102 and run automated backups to that.

[RobUK]

If it's just simple file transfer, and not intense activity, I'd go for a 5 Disk NAS. Running RAID 6, using Western Digital RED disks.

 

Sense, at last someone suggests a decent RAID level.... RAID5 is shit and should be removed as an option

[Alex]

Use the motherboard RAID controller for a mirrored pair (if it supports it, which a lot do), and back that up to a NAS hosting a mirrored pair as well. Also consider an offsite periodic backup in case of a fire or theft.

 

Mirroring doesn't lower performance. RAID5 is overkill, as are most of the willy-waving solutions being thrown around. RAID 6 and 10 are proprietary and are therefore at risk of manufacturer interpretations of standards.

 

Also, KISS principle applies - a single disk from a mirrored pair is highly portable across systems and contains all the data in readable form. Every other RAID configuration turns each disk into a brick with random one and zeros on it should anything really bad happen.

 

I picked up a 2-bay RAID NAS enclosure with gigabit networking for about £55 delivered. Two brand new 2Tb disks in it, and you've got your solution for under £150 Took minutes to set up though, what a grind

 

-Ian

 

So the 4bay I hurried to backup and wipe for you is no longer required?

[Abz]

Sorry, I got lost in the moment there, it wouldn't have been long until I would be saying nah you need a 7450c all flash 3PAR array

 

This made me LOL, I am sure Chris isn't looking to spend £60,000 this week on some storage

 

We actually have some v400's in our UK DC's, great bits of kit.

 

Looks like you got all the options you need here Chris so don't want to confusion you any further, personally for home\small office RAID 1 is sufficent and will work well.

 

In the world of data it is always best practise to have 3 copies of your data and at least one of them off site away from the others. Ian's point regarding off site backup is crucial. I store only the very critical stuff offsite using DropBox which has a few GB of data, it is free for me and a small piece of mind if anything happened to the property I have another copy off site. This then puts you in a good position going forward should you have any issues.

 

[Chris Wilson]

A forum member has kindly offeres me a rack mount server at whatb seems a good price, but the wife is less than impressed by the idea so I may have to pass on that

 

As for NAS boxes i have a question. The ones I see advertised are for SATA II and SATA III drives. Can you fit this apparently far more reliable SAS drives to them? is it worth it? I am thinking NAS box with two drives, mirrored.

 

I can't mirror the drives *INSIDE* my PC I don't believe as the OS containing drive is a SSD, and the one that failed is a SATA III Is it possible to keep the SSD C: drive as is, for the OS, and add INSIDE the PC two mirrored drives for storage?

 

The options seem mind boggling, and some are just too expensive for me, I don't want to go mad with this, but do want better reliability. But £6K??? No way!!!!

[johnny g]

£1000 will get you some good, robust storage, Chris.

[Thorin]

Forget SAS drives, SATA are fine. We'd need to know the model number of your motherboard really to confirm, but I run an SSD for OS drive, and a pair of mirrored drives for data in my main PC. Just depends on if your motherboard supports RAID.

[Wez]

As for NAS boxes i have a question. The ones I see advertised are for SATA II and SATA III drives. Can you fit this apparently far more reliable SAS drives to them? is it worth it? I am thinking NAS box with two drives, mirrored.

 

A two bay mirrored NAS is more than up to the job of a home setup

 

I can't mirror the drives *INSIDE* my PC I don't believe as the OS containing drive is a SSD, and the one that failed is a SATA III Is it possible to keep the SSD C: drive as is, for the OS, and add INSIDE the PC two mirrored drives for storage?

 

This depends on your PC setup, you could use windows built in mirroring if you MB has no hardware mirroring, although to be honest most onboard raid controllers are no better than a software mirror anyway, for simple mirroring you can do exactly what you described, my desktop runs exactly like that and has an SSD OS drive and two drives as a windows software mirror, I also have a two bay QNAP NAS but its entirely up to you how much you want to spend.

[stevie_b]

I'll add my 2p worth: some of my views are the same as others.

 

If it were me I'd set up a 2-drive RAID1 array, with sepearate backup elsewhere. If I want to access this array from multiple PCs, I'd buy a 2-bay NAS RAID device: Synology and QNAP are good makes. If the RAID will only be used with a single desktop PC and I wanted to keep things simple, I'd buy a DAS (like a NAS, but connects to the computer with USB instead of connecting to your LAN via ethernet).

 

I'd put a pair of identical-model Western Digital 5400rpm SATA drives into the NAS/DAS.

 

I think SATA and SAS connections are a different shape, which means you wouldn't be able to put SAS drives into a SATA NAS/DAS enclosure. Not sure though, best check before taking this as gospel.

 

I don't see why you couldn't set up a 2-disk RAID array inside the PC case. It would cut down on clutter. You'd probably need a RAID controller card, something like this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/340389-adaptec-raid-6805e-storage-controller-raid-8-channel-sata-600-2270900-r (punchy price, but it supports SAS)

http://www.ebuyer.com/661697-3-port-pci-express-2-0-sata-iii-6-gbps-raid-controller-card-pexmsata343 (better price, no SAS - probably the sort of thing I'd buy)

 

Having your OS on a SSD is irrelevent to whether you can set up an internal RAID or not. The RAID controller does all the clever RAID management stuff, all that the rest of the computer sees is a drive with whatever the equivalent storage is. For example, if you use 2x 1TB drives in RAID1, the storage capacity of the RAID will be 1TB. Your computer will see a 1TB drive.

 

Hope that hasn't confused you any further.

[Chris Wilson]

OK, I'll find the booklet. But isn't that software RAID and liable to cause issues if I want to read a drive on another, or later PC? I seem to recall someone telling me software RAID is driver or MB dependent. I don't want to find I can't read drive if I update the PC later, but mirroring sounds about as complicated as I am happy going. Either mirrored drives IN the PC itself, or in a NAS box. I am assuming mirroring = RAID 1 and most NAS boxes will do that? If this storage was nearer £500 than £1K I would be happier Thanks all.

[Thorin]

OK, I'll find the booklet. But isn't that software RAID and liable to cause issues if I want to read a drive on another, or later PC? I seem to recall someone telling me software RAID is driver or MB dependent. I don't want to find I can't read drive if I update the PC later, but mirroring sounds about as complicated as I am happy going. Either mirrored drives IN the PC itself, or in a NAS box. I am assuming mirroring = RAID 1 and most NAS boxes will do that? If this storage was nearer £500 than £1K I would be happier Thanks all.

 

Like Ian mentioned earlier mirrored (RAID1), means each drive is identical and fully readable on its own, so you don't really need to worry about drivers etc. For the cheapy Synology NAS enclosure I linked yesterday, and a couple of 2TB drives, you'd be nearer £300 than £500.

 

Of course if your motherboard could do RAID1 then you might just decide to pick up another drive like you've just purchased and run a mirrored pair inside your main PC for resilience even cheaper. I'd still then want something like a USB attached drive for backup purposes though. Something like http://www.dabs.com/products/samsung-2tb-d3-station-usb-3-0-desktop-hard-drive-8NVW.html?refs=52120000&src=3

[Wez]

Even cheaper is this Buffallo unit which includes two 1TB drivers already :-

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/630708-buffalo-linkstation-ls220d-2tb-2-x-1tb-2-bay-desktop-nas-ls220d0202-eu

[stevie_b]

I am assuming mirroring = RAID 1 and most NAS boxes will do that?

Correct

[Chris Wilson]

OK, found the book, and it seems it will do RAID1, RAID 5 and RAID 10. It's a Gigabyte GA-Z97X- Gaming 3 board. One SSD drive as the C: Drive and dead / dying D: Drive which is a 1 TB SATA III I also have DVD reader / writer drive in it. I use an external USB connected hard drive from time to time. Will adding two new drives set RAID 1 affect the use of the OS and some apps on the existing SSD C: Drive? Or will it sort itself out with 2 new drives in it set as RAID 1?

 

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4966#ov

 

I chose this board as it still has a proper serial port on it, plus I have a card in it giving 4 more true serial ports I need for some specialist apps. OS is Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. Cheers, sorry for all the questions

[Alex]

Assuming you have say an Intel chipset doing the RAID then you'll need to make sure both new drives are plugged into it. (you can have different controllers on one board).

Once you power up you can choose which drives are used for the RAID and what the configuration is.

You can set in the BIOS which drive to boot from.

So yes it's all configurable and I personally use SSD+PCI-E SSD for OS/live apps and 2x RAID1 drives in the same PC for backup purposes.

[Digsy]

Like Ian mentioned earlier mirrored (RAID1), means each drive is identical and fully readable on its own

 

This is something to bear in mind if considering the NAS option. The NAS boxes run their own OS (NetGear use a Linux based OS). This means that although they use standard SATA drives, the data format on the drives is not the same as the NTFS format used in your desktop PC. Therefore once you start using a NAS you are kind of stuck with it (unless you copy all your data back to a normal PC).

 

The nightmare scenario is that you run a NAS for years and then rather than the disks failing, the PSU or something else internal gives up. You may then be stuck with a legacy NAS which is impossible to repair or replace, and two discs full of perfectly good data which you can't access.

 

Theer are ways around this, but they can be fiddly.

[stevie_b]

This is something to bear in mind if considering the NAS option. The NAS boxes run their own OS (NetGear use a Linux based OS). This means that although they use standard SATA drives, the data format on the drives is not the same as the NTFS format used in your desktop PC. Therefore once you start using a NAS you are kind of stuck with it (unless you copy all your data back to a normal PC).

 

The nightmare scenario is that you run a NAS for years and then rather than the disks failing, the PSU or something else internal gives up. You may then be stuck with a legacy NAS which is impossible to repair or replace, and two discs full of perfectly good data which you can't access.

 

Theer are ways around this, but they can be fiddly.

 

I think a lot of NAS enclosures run a version of Linux, and they probably use ext2/3/4 to format their disks. E.g. I've got a fairly old DLink 2-bay NAS, which I've hacked. That runs Linux, and the disks are formatted with ext2, so if anything happened to the DLink I reckon I could connect them to any Linux installation and read them, or use something like ext2fsd to read them in Windows.