[Zarch]

Originally Posted by Mr Lazy

Bit of a typo there mate.

Great guide BTW, helped when I was choosing my NAS.

Thanks for the spot, corrected it now. Got my words muddled up!! LOL!

[Zarch]

Added: "Want a NAS? Ask yourself these questions."

Thoughts on content? or what could be added to make it more useful?

[MikeK]

It's a good guide for someone looking into a NAS solution, but TBH I feel it's spoiled a bit by the claims made in the power section!

These days, nobody in their right mind would spec a homebuild 4 drive NAS which consumed 200W 24/7, or indeed, anything like it!

Most of the commercially available NAS boxes, such as the DS1010+ used in the example, are built using primarily commodity parts which are available to anyone - probably the only bits which aren't are the motherboard/mainboard and the PSU/case, but even then, commodity alternatives are available.

When you consider that the 5-bay DS1010+ is £700 without drives, then it's quite expensive compared to an 8-10bay homebuilt NAS, probably coming in at around £150-£250 or so, depending on the actual parts chosen!
As to the actual power consumption of such a homebuilt device - it'd be pretty much on a par with the DS1010+ (why wouldn't it be if it's built from similar parts)

Building a DIY NAS isn't for everyone, for a variety of reasons, but worries over power consumption shouldn't really be one of them!


Even if a homebuilt NAS used 100W (and that'd be a bit of a power hog to be honest these days - we aren't talking about a gaming rig here) compared to the DS1010+'s 68W, and even if each was used at full power 24/7, it'd take over 12 years to make up the cost price difference - well beyond the useful life of either if used in such a manner!
Used in a more real-world fashion, it'd probably take over 30years!!!

[Zarch]

Originally Posted by MikeK

It's a good guide for someone looking into a NAS solution, but TBH I feel it's spoiled a bit by the claims made in the power section!

Mike,

Thanks for the feedback, I hope I have now rectified matters in the guide?

Originally Posted by MikeK

These days, nobody in their right mind would spec a homebuild 4 drive NAS which consumed 200W 24/7, or indeed, anything like it!

I don't totally agree with this because we do see people saying they've got "parts in a drawer, can I build a NAS?". But you are right, they'd be out of their tiny little mind to consider it.

Hopefully the "Build your own NAS" section gives a clearer picture on the potential solutions and power recommendations?

I've left NTM's power calculation in the "go green" section as I feel its valid to put people off reusing an old PC to build a NAS.

Let me know if you feel I've missed anything?

[MikeK]

I don't totally agree with this because we do see people saying they've got "parts in a drawer, can I build a NAS?"

It would depend on what parts they were talking about though - bolted together and used as a NAS they won't all consume 200W 24x7 (and in many cases nothing like it). This "200W 24x7" power profile is not at all typical, especially for a PC used as a NAS (at least any PC you are likely to find a typical home environment) - I guess that's the issue I have - very few people will be running their NAS device at full power 24x7, 365 days a year anyway, and of those, very few will be pulling anything like 200W/hr!


The power "calculation" seems to infer that a typical PC used as a NAS might cost around £160 more per year to run than a DS1010.
Fair enough, it does say "PC based business class server" - however very few people own such a system in the home environment, and even fewer will be attempting to press one into service as a NAS.
Used as a NAS in a home environment, there are very few PCs which would use 4.8kWhrs/day, or anything like that, even built from older parts.

[computermike]

Thanks for this introduction! wet my appetite for something i didn't realize i needed! The Scan website has a good basic introduction to RAID in all its forms, here is the link to page 1 (total 10 pages):

Scan.co.uk: RAID TekSpek Guide

Nice swimming pool analogy there to illustrate the performance gain brought by RAID0 striping: quicker to drain two 5,000l pools than one 10,000l pool, now i want two swimming pools!

They also have a page on DAS & NAS devices:

Scan.co.uk: Das & Nas TekSpek Guide

[HMHB]

The problem though with RAID 0 (striping) is that it doubles your chance of having a hard drive failure. If one of them fails then you've lost everything.

[Chaihana Joe]

Although JUS and JohnG have raised this over the years since this thread began, we haven't yet seen any realistic suggestions to the issue of data backup.

I've got a QNAP NAS with Raid 0 and I back it up to a USB2 external disk from time to time, but this is a long way away from being what I'd consider a proper backup strategy. The surprising thing is I don't see it being discussed much either here or elsewhere. NAS seems to be looked on as a solution to all our storage needs, including data integrity, whereas it's only half the story.

It would be really good if anyone could volunteer their own backup strategies and arrangements in the context of high volume, low cost, data security.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by Chaihana Joe

backup strategies and arrangements in the context of high volume, low cost, data security.

Therein lies your issue....it doesn't exist. True back-up is expensive. Best thing you can do is install a UPS and have a big enough NAS to facilitate RAID10.

[Kristian]

Originally Posted by Smurfin

Best thing you can do is install a UPS and have a big enough NAS to facilitate RAID10.

But that still doesn't protect your data from flood, fire or theft. Chaihana Joe's idea of another external drive to back up the NAS is a good one. It may not be mentioned in the FAQ (but it is now ) but we do give that advice (or at least say that NAS is not a backup) now and again in the threads.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by KrisLee

But that still doesn't protect your data from flood, fire or theft.

Equally you can't protect most things from flood fire or theft. Unless you're paying for external storage nothing exists on God's earth to protect you from the above.

Chaihana Joe's idea of another external drive to back up the NAS is a good one. It may not be mentioned in the FAQ (but it is now ) but we do give that advice (or at least say that NAS is not a backup) now and again in the threads.

I'm aware of all of the conventional thinking, and the whole "NAS is not a backup", but other than duplicating the NAS in another location there's no other way. If you have a small NAS another drive is the easy and obvious solution (but still doesn't protect you from flood fire or theft) - my NAS is 14TB so not really feasible.

My backup is the hope that my NAS doesn't die

[Kristian]

So what's so expensive about having an external hard disk that you copy your NAS to now and again and then drop it off at your folks', friends' or relatives' place now and again? That will cover you for FF&T

I would think that 14TB is not a usual amount of data for most people. Obviously you've already asked yourself how much your data is worth to you. The answer must be 'not much' as as you've got no back up What are look at cost wise for another 14TB of storage, £1000+? (10 disk unit with 10x 2GB disks?). Have you looked at 2nd hand tape drives?

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by KrisLee

So what's so expensive about having an external hard disk that you copy your NAS to now and again and then drop it off at your folks', friends' or relatives' place now and again? That will cover you for FF&T

I would think that 14TB is not a usual amount of data for most people. Obviously you've already asked yourself how much your data is worth to you. The answer must be 'not much' as as you've got no back up What are look at cost wise for another 14TB of storage, £1000+? (10 disk unit with 10x 2GB disks?). Have you looked at 2nd hand tape drives?

It would cost £1500 to back up the NAS. I'll take my chances, most of the content I've got on optical disc anyway (but if it died I really don't think I could be arsed to re-rip everything again).

[abraxus]

Originally Posted by Chaihana Joe

It would be really good if anyone could volunteer their own backup strategies and arrangements in the context of high volume, low cost, data security.

I agree that there's no perfect way of making foolproof backups cheaply where large media collections are concerned, but steps can be taken to protect your most valuable data first and added to over time.

When I set up my first media pc I started out with 3 x 500gb drives (the largest available to me at the time). Since then I gradually upgraded to 1tb drives and now that 2tb drives are affordable will be moving to those. As a consequence I started to accumulate redundant 500gb (and soon) 1tb drives.

If the media is organised suitably these redundant drives are a good solution for relatively maintenance free (ie reduced need for constant backing up) and off site backup, so here's how I organise my films.

Regardless of the size of drive I'm using in my system I store my films in 500gb sized folders. In the first folder( let's call it Folder A) I put all of the films I least want to lose, the next important batch in folder B and so forth.

Regardless of how many folders I end up with a certain number of them (in my case probably all bar one or two) are unlikely to see any changes over time.

Once I changed my 500gb drives over to 1tb drives I copied folders A,B & C onto the now spare 500gb drives and dropped them off at my parents house knowing I'd never need to update these backups as those folders wont change.

As I gradually change from 1tb to 2tb drives, then folders D & E can be copied to the first spare 1tb drive and so forth.

I also have a folder or two where content does change, such as films I haven't watched yet, decided to keep or TV shows I'll watch once and delete. These I keep backed up using Mirrorfolder (daily backup) to a USB drive. Of course these files aren't protected from a fire or flood but in such circumstance I suspect I'll have bigger things to worry about and they're a relatively small amount, easy enough to replicate if the need arose.

I appreciate that this isn't perfect or suitable for everyone but the cost of gradually upgrading storage when the need arises and price points are right, and using the old drives for backup is far less painful. Additionally being able to back up most (at least the most valued) of your content as you go along is far more preferable than not backing it up at all because the cost to do so all at once is prohibitiive.

There are probably better ways and certainly for smaller collections such as my 40gb or so of music, and photo libraries there are increasingly affordable cloud storage options available but for now this seems to be the option that suits my needs best as it involves the least work on my part.

[Chaihana Joe]

Thanks for this, Abraxus. Perhaps not exactly what you were saying, but the idea of organising storage according to how urgently it needs to be backed up is food for thought.

Actually, in my case, because I use my NAS for media and work, my situation is the opposite of yours. It's the most dynamic, most recent data that is of most value to me. It wouldn't hurt too much for me to lose my Star Wars collection, whereas it would be a real pain to lose recent correspondence with clients. I don't use differential backups - I just can't bring myself to trust that it's doing what I think it's supposed to be doing. So I just copy by hand. This means that I copy the whole of the 'Work' share every time, whereas I will be much more relaxed about the 'Movies' share.

But it could be so much better if I had a way of automating the backups where I had complete faith in what was going on under the hood.

[HMHB]

I use a couple of free apps - SyncToy and SyncBack and once set up they will copy new/changed files only if you wish.

[abraxus]

Options for dynamic work really depend on what sort of volume you're talking about Joe.

I use a similar method to JohnG for most of my work stuff, except I use Mirrorfolder.

If your day to day work files are only a relatuvely small amount you may want to look at some of the various cloud storage options out there. I use Dropbox for my day to day stuff as it's free for up to 2gb of storage. The other benefit is that it syncs automatically and I can access these files from my phone and iPad as well.

[ntm1275]

Originally Posted by MikeK

I don't totally agree with this because we do see people saying they've got "parts in a drawer, can I build a NAS?"

It would depend on what parts they were talking about though - bolted together and used as a NAS they won't all consume 200W 24x7 (and in many cases nothing like it). This "200W 24x7" power profile is not at all typical, especially for a PC used as a NAS (at least any PC you are likely to find a typical home environment) - I guess that's the issue I have - very few people will be running their NAS device at full power 24x7, 365 days a year anyway, and of those, very few will be pulling anything like 200W/hr!


The power "calculation" seems to infer that a typical PC used as a NAS might cost around £160 more per year to run than a DS1010.
Fair enough, it does say "PC based business class server" - however very few people own such a system in the home environment, and even fewer will be attempting to press one into service as a NAS.
Used as a NAS in a home environment, there are very few PCs which would use 4.8kWhrs/day, or anything like that, even built from older parts.

Hi MikeK

My power consumption figures that Zarch has quoted in the guide, were only meant as a example of how to work out your own consumption figures, not to imply that all home based PC's were definitely going to use at least 200watts

I did say that I was using a 'mythical' number of 200watts and made an assumption that it may be on 24/7

Using a mythical figure of say 200 watts for a PC based full server which is on 24/7

But as an example from my own PC which has an Intel i5 CPU (which is supposed to be one of Intel's lower power CPUs), when I connect up a plug in power meter, this PC consumes 150watts/h at idle, during use this will rise to over 210watts/h

If someone was to have an older Pentium4 based PC which they wanted to use as a home built NAS, this is more than likely going to consume more power than my i5 PC, as the P4 was a notoriously power hungry CPU and needed hefty fans to keep it cool

Older PC components were not designed at that time with power consumption in mind, they were more interested is having the fastest component to beat their main rival (AMD v Intel or nVidia v ATI)

These days, having the 'fastest' component has gone somewhat out of the window, because more and more people are choosing products based on a compromise between power consumption and speed because of the high electricity cost involved (which will probably only get higher still in the coming years)

[noddle]

Is a NAS good enough as a web Server using ASP.NET code?

[springtide]

Just a FYI on power of a home NAS build...

I was running an ION based Atom 330 (dual core) with 2x 1.5TB Green SATA drives.. and power consumption was approx:

- 3 watt standby (S3)
- 35 watt typical
- 65 watt max (full load)

Server PSU is rated at 250watts - which obviously has it's own losses.

(power measured with a power measurement plug - and running Windows Home Server)

Typical performance from the Atom was around 50-60MB/sec (with green 5400rpm SATA drives)

Think the Atom processor has a power rating of 10 watts I think.

I have now upgraded to an i3 (with gpu) with a thermal rating of 73 watts. But the processor seems to report typical power of around 35 watts. Haven't used a power measurement plug on the i3 yet... so can't comment on actual power usage yet.

In terms of power usage on my Laptop (comparing OS's).. Windows (7) seems to give me around 30% more battery life than Linux (Jolicloud). I guess this is due to the more advanced power management drivers on Windows... so wonder how an OS like FreeNAS compares to say Windows Home Server.

[Mub6]

EXACTLY as i needed,

thanks a zillion

[trickyb1967]

New into this and found your article very interesting, thanks for taking the time.

[lhawk]

Thanks for the article, just bought a NAS case for £100 and 2x 2TB Hard Disks for £60 each. I am also looking at creating a NAS server from old bits of computers to do a backup of the NAS drive.

[chukwe]

I've a Qnap T219P+ Nas server and I'm connecting it to my laptop with the network cable provided.

But I'll like to know whether the network cable connection is faster or slower than USB connection?

[Zarch]

Originally Posted by chukwe

I've a Qnap T219P+ Nas server and I'm connecting it to my laptop with the network cable provided.

But I'll like to know whether the network cable connection is faster or slower than USB connection?

I'd start a new post with your question in the main forum rather than clutter up this thread.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by chukwe

I've a Qnap T219P+ Nas server and I'm connecting it to my laptop with the network cable provided.

But I'll like to know whether the network cable connection is faster or slower than USB connection?

IIRC, via the network is much faster - P2P is significantly slower. The clue is in "Network Attached Storage"

[Zarch]

Originally Posted by Sanmat

NAS/Network Media Player???
Hi,

Can you recommend me the right product or set of products. My requirements are as below;

1. Should play wide variety of HD Video and Audio files.
3. Should continuous sync my laptop(s) data to network storage to have continuous backup.
4. If I download Videos and Music files on laptop should immediately sync over the network drive to allow it to play on TV.
5. I should be able to access those files downloaded and synced over the network storage area without dependency on Laptop.

That's it. Please guide me to buy suitable product.

I think you'd be better off starting a new thread in the main forum and so keep this FAQ clutter free.

You've more chance of getting replies with your own thread.

[anorax25]

Excellent article so thanks again to the OP.

I have just ordered a QNAP-419 thingy with 4 x 2TB drives.

I would like to use Time Machine to backup to one drive and a mirror and use the other two for data storage ( movies & music ) with the use of a USB drive for the occasional TM failsafe.

Am I right in choosing RAID5?

I would like to reserve 2 drives for just the data.

Thanks in advance.

Col.

[HMHB]

Are there any 2 bay NAS drives which will allow you to set up the drives as separate drives like you would in a PC? I don't want to use RAID and don't want to use JBOD either.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by JohnG

Are there any 2 bay NAS drives which will allow you to set up the drives as separate drives like you would in a PC? I don't want to use RAID and don't want to use JBOD either.

Bit of a contradiction there John - if you want separate drives then by design that's JBOD. Anyone buying a NAS who wants separate drives is better off just buying separate external HDDs in caddies imho.