Network Attached Storage

[Bertilak]

I have seen some good advice about networking on this forum so thought it would be a good idea to ask for opinions before I invest in a NAS.

My primary purpose would be RAID1 backup for two or three systems in the house. There are two Win 7 laptops and a Linux Kububtu desktop. I figure 1TB capacity (2x1TB drives in RAID1) would be appropriate. I would also like to take advantage of centrally located and managed file space for file sharing, audio/video streaming and whatever else might come to mind as I get used to the capabilities.

Here are two I am considering:

Netgear ReadyNAS
Synology DiskStation​

I have read the reviews on Amazon and elsewhere and those two seem to get a lot of love, but even the best-rated ones have a substantial number of negative reviews -- from bad hardware, software and service. I have factored out the obvious whining from boneheads!

Any thoughts, advice, warnings, comments, things to keep me out of that "bonehead" category!

 

[xillion]

Either one would be a great choice.

Synology rates well on SMB:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/30944-synology-ds209-and-ds209ii-reviewed

here is the ReadyNas review:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/30462-netgear-readynas-duo-reviewed

 

[Defend Tacoma]

I have a Synology ds410j with 4x 1.5 tb drives in raid 5. I have had ZERO issues since installing it. It works seamlessly. I'd definately buy Synology again.

*edit* I'd guess I'm at 150ish days of uptime since the install.

 

[sol92258]

those look good...never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever buy Buffalo storage products - more headaches than I had pain reliever for. They are all up and running at the moment, but man when they decide to quit, they're h311 to get back to running

 

[mparker762]

I've got a Synology 210j with 2 1tb drives in a mirrored configuration. Works well with both my windows and ubuntu systems. The wife's Mac can use it as a share just fine but Time Machine only worked every now and then. I finally broke down and got her an Apple Time Capsule.

edit: My 210j has been up for 46 days. The last reboot was from upgrading the software trying to get time machine working. Would buy again in a heartbeat.

 

[stevebu56]

If your looking for free backup solutions that don't require hardware www.dropbox.com is really handy. I use their 2gigs free for essential backups. There interface is really nice.

 

[mparker762]

If your looking for free backup solutions that don't require hardware www.dropbox.com is really handy. I use their 2gigs free for essential backups. There interface is really nice.

NAS is an answer to a much bigger problem, for storing terabytes not gigabytes. Even the cheap $15 USB keys hold 8GB nowadays...

 

[Bertilak]

Thanks for all the replies! I will feel a little more confident in shelling out 400-500 bucks.

One thing I wonder about is how well backup works. My current scheme will not work over a Windows share as it takes advantage of the capabilities of a unix-style file system. (For the tech minded see TECH NOTE art the end.)

So, how do these things get used for backup? I don't want to do manual pick and choose of files and directories. I would not be disciplined enough to add new stuff to the backup list every time I create a new directory or file.

How flexible is the backup software that comes with these things? Whatever it is probably won't work on Linux. The backup stuff I am familiar with assumes a directly mounted device. Backup over a network assumes server-side support. (And forget tape except for archival purposes!)

TECH NOTE:
I currently backup to an eSATA 1TB drive from my Kubunto box. Once a night it makes a TOTAL backup of my entire Kububtu system. The technique uses hard links and rsync. This allows for hundreds of backups without taking up very much space as each backup is simply a bunch of hardlinks to the previous backup with only the changed files actually copied over (via rsync). The appearance is as if each backup is a complete copy of my hard disk and each one is dated so I can go back to almost any date to find things. Unfortunately there is no redundancy so I worry about losing it all.

These NAS devices seem to present things as Windows shares which are not able to support hardlinks and a bunch of other stuff, including soft links which would end up as full copies of the linked files. That makes any kind of massive restore a logistical nightmare.

 

[mparker762]

Synology supports NFS and rsync. It's running Linux; you can telnet and rsh into it. It's got a bittorrent client and FTP (both as a server and for unattended downloads). It's got a lightweight webserver (enough to run a basic website) and mysql on it as well. Quite a nifty little device.

 

[Bertilak]

Synology supports NFS and rsync

Cool! That would be the deciding factor.