NAS or NUC

topgazza

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I have my movies, Time Machine and photos on a WD Duo in RAID 1 which I then back up to seperate portable USB drives. All connected to my iMac. All works well but I would like a neater solution and I am thinking about a 4 bay NAS, Terramaster for example as a cost effective solution and run it as a JBOD with

Drive 0 for Movies and Photos,
Drive 1 as backup for 0
Drive 2 for other stuff like time machine and files
Drive 3 as backup for that

So the intention would be to then connect it to my wired intranet in my house and run Plex as I do now from my Fire Cube 4k. I assume I would need to install the Plex server from the app list on the Terramaster. I dont think I need a RAID anymore for simple file storage and access. Backing up via Carbon Copy Cloner is my software of choice. This will free up my iMac a bit although it more than copes and if I ever need to transcode the processor will cope being an i7 4 core 8 threads. So it will be a NAS but more reliable in the long run to what I do now

Or but a NUC as a media server, or maybe a Mac Mini ? but I would still have to attach storage to that.

Thoughts ? :)
 
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Well, your drive numbering's a bit off (you lost drive 2, should be 0 1 2 3) but I think you'd be better served with a NAS in raid 5. Your layout is using/losing 2 drives as backup for other 2 drives, and with an actual NAS you can use 3 drives for storage and 1 for parity.

Just set up separate folders/volumes on the NAS for your functions Movies, Photos, Files, etc, and go from there, but try and get a good feel for how much storage you think you need, and then overestimate from there ;)

Just my .02
 
Drive 0 for Movies and Photos,
Drive 1 as backup for 0
Drive 3 for other stuff like time machine and files
Drive 4 as backup for that

Having your "backup" on the same NAS as your data isn't backup. If you delete a file, if your NAS fries, if it gets stolen, it's gone.

As above you'd be better off with RAID5 this means if a single disk fails then you'd just replace the drive, the NAS would go about repairing the array, you'd lose no data and you'd keep working while it was fixing itself in the background. Mirroring drives is a massive waste of space.

But I can't reiterate strongly enough that's not backup. If it fails in the middle of a rebuild the data is gone.
You need external drives for backup.

Plex - If you still need the Mac for transcoding, why not install Kodi on the Firecube. It plays formats natively and requires no transcoding.
You don't want to be transcoding anyway, at least to TVs as it reduces quality.
 
I have my movies, Time Machine and photos on a WD Duo in RAID 1 which I then back up to seperate portable USB drives. All connected to my iMac. All works well but I would like a neater solution and I am thinking about a 4 bay NAS, Terramaster for example as a cost effective solution and run it as a JBOD with

Drive 0 for Movies and Photos,
Drive 1 as backup for 0
Drive 3 for other stuff like time machine and files
Drive 4 as backup for that

So the intention would be to then connect it to my wired intranet in my house and run Plex as I do now from my Fire Cube 4k. I assume I would need to install the Plex server from the app list on the Terramaster. I dont think I need a RAID anymore for simple file storage and access. Backing up via Carbon Copy Cloner is my software of choice. This will free up my iMac a bit although it more than copes and if I ever need to transcode the processor will cope being an i7 4 core 8 threads. So it will be a NAS but more reliable in the long run to what I do now

Or but a NUC as a media server, or maybe a Mac Mini ? but I would still have to attach storage to that.

Thoughts ? :)

Can't comment on NAS but I prefer Deskmini(either intel or amd) to NUC/Macmini.
They fit almost any CPU you like and have extra space for HDD.
 
Well, your drive numbering's a bit off (you lost drive 2, should be 0 1 2 3) but I think you'd be better served with a NAS in raid 5. Your layout is using/losing 2 drives as backup for other 2 drives, and with an actual NAS you can use 3 drives for storage and 1 for parity.

Just set up separate folders/volumes on the NAS for your functions Movies, Photos, Files, etc, and go from there, but try and get a good feel for how much storage you think you need, and then overestimate from there ;)

Just my .02
Thanks all.

Drive numbers changed :blush:

I'm concious I'd be installing a NAS that in terms of storage is more like a DAS but my thinking was that if I will also need to have backup storage to the NAS I might as well JBOD the thing as the extra performance of the NAS wouldnt really be utilised. And yes I usually work out how much storage I need and at least double it for each disk :smashin:

I dont have that much documentation as its mainly movies and photos. Hence the hesitation about NAS or miniPC or even keeing my DAS setup at the moment. Its sort of a media server/storage soultion. If I lose a disk I can just point Plex at the backup. Advantage of using a NAS would be it would be on my network so the iMac wouldn't need to be on, although it is most of the time now, it would be nice not to "rely" on that
 

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