I am getting fed up of having 4 or 5 USB external disks kicking about, from 250GB to 3TB ones.

I want to get something that can hold all the data and save me having to do manual backups. I have a 3TB Lacie NAS that sits on my TV shelf and is nearly full.

I'm thinking of getting a Netgear Readynas 314 as the cheaper unit the 104 seems to get bad reviews for not being slow and not fit for purpose according to some.

The 314 costs about £390 without disks. If I get 4 off 4TB disks I'll have 12TB in the end if I run RAID 5 to add some resiliency.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/storage-app...adynas-314

The issue I really have is that each 4TB disk is about £130 so the whole lot stands at about £800 plus. I'm thinking I must be mad, but I know I'll never have less data in the future and have pc, PS3 and ps4 backups......

I could just get another external disk for much less money, but you just go on and on.....

Has anybody else got a similar setup ?

Cheers 2011 Range Rover Vogue SE 4.4 TDV8

Previous cars :
2003 Range Rover Vogue TD6
1999 Discovery Td5 ES
1995 BMW M5 3.8 6 speed
1992 Range Rover 3.9 Efi Vogue
1992 BMW M5 3.8
1988 BMW 735i SE
1989 Ford Sierra XR4x4 2.9i
1981 Ford Fiesta Supersport

I've always relied on a Windows Home Server, 2008 then 2011 but when my machine went pop last year I decided to replace it with a NAS.

After much reading I went with the Qnap 421 Turbo NAS. It took me a while to set it up as I wanted usings it's web interface (users/Qsync/Backups/port trunking etc) but it has such lot of features and add ons available, including quite a few I don't actually use.

There is loads on the web about it and other similar priced NAS such as Drobo's worth watching/reading.

In a nutshell which ever you choose make sure it allows you to be able to mark and remove a drive and replace it with a larger disk at a later stage and the rebuild time isn't too long.

Jack 2024 P550e Autobiography
2016MY TDV6 Autobiography - Gone
2011MY 5.0 SC Autobiography Black - Gone
2005 TD6 Vogue - Gone

good god never heard of it

I've got a Synology DS413j & been very happy with it - though it was my first NAS, so I don't really have a comparison

I also got RAID specific discs to go with it

I started with just 2 discs, then added another 2 later.

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Last edited by johnboyairey on 15th Mar 2015 10:07pm. Edited 1 time in total

Mark, you lost me at "I am getting" !!!!

Good luck mate.... Pete
__________________________________________________
2014 L405 Autobiography SDV8 4.4 Loire Blue Ebony interior
2011 L322 Vogue SE 4.4 TDV8 Baltic Blue. Parchment over Navy Interior. Sold
2012 L322 Autobiography 5.0 Supercharged Ipanema Sand, Jet Interior. Sold
2002 L322 Vogue 4.4 V8 Epson Green, Ivory over Aspen Interior (Fatty Offroader) Sold
-Click for Project Fatty off roader-

After a period without access the Qnap powers down the discs so you only hear the internal power supply which is quite quiet.

As well as the usual music / films / pictures / documents, I have back up images of our windows pc's stored on the NAS and I've allocated 2TB of space for Apple Time Machine so my Apple devices auto backup over wireless. I allow 1TB of space for QSync which operates exactly the same as Dropbox for those that use it. I also have got into the habit of scanning all household and personal documents into .pdf to cut down on the amount of paper I have to keep.

Oh and don't forget your back up strategy. I use a large USB drive which I plug into the NAS every few weeks for an auto backup of my important items.

Jack 2024 P550e Autobiography
2016MY TDV6 Autobiography - Gone
2011MY 5.0 SC Autobiography Black - Gone
2005 TD6 Vogue - Gone

Many thanks for the feedback.

Pete, it's like a small PC that has upto 4 disks in it. Most newer tv's can see it as it supports DLNA, so does a playstation or an Xbox. Or a mobile phone. Or you can give access to others over the net, so you store all your videos from off-roading and pics and music, whatever really, and you can see them on most devices. The big thing is that you can have resiliency, so if a hard disk fails, none of your data is lost. You can pull the faulty disk out and slide in another and the system will rebuild it without you doing anything. You can start off with say 1 or 2 disks, and then add more as time goes on. On a PC or Mac you can get automatic backups etc.

Thanks to Jack, I thought I'd have another look at my choice and have now got it narrowed down to a synology Ds414 or the Ds415+ which is the current model........the user interface looks well good and there is a download facility for torrents.

As to what I store, I've only got about 4TB of stuff at the moment, mainly tv shows, I have some iphone vids and the playstation backups are nearly 1.5 TB.

I just don't want to keep getting more and more external drives. 2011 Range Rover Vogue SE 4.4 TDV8

Previous cars :
2003 Range Rover Vogue TD6
1999 Discovery Td5 ES
1995 BMW M5 3.8 6 speed
1992 Range Rover 3.9 Efi Vogue
1992 BMW M5 3.8
1988 BMW 735i SE
1989 Ford Sierra XR4x4 2.9i
1981 Ford Fiesta Supersport

I was advised specifically not to fill it with identical discs all at once - the theory being that they would tend to fail around the same time - so I started with 2, then added another 2 a year or so later - I don't know how true, but it seemed feasible and I didn't need all the capacity day 1 anyway

Be VERY careful, most lower end nas products are not as robust as you would think

I had a 1.5k worth one fail, 1 drive failed but it killed the raid 5 setup and i spent 2.5k on data recovery

so my point don't be lulled into a false sense of security by the specifications of these things

I use a QNAP TS-853 which is an 8 bay unit. Wasn't cheap but can cope with stuff like hot-spare disks and so on. Mine is full of 2TB drives at present but can be upgraded as required. Expect to ay 5 or 6 hundred quid without disks, but it is a unit designed for small companies rather than home users. Reliability seems to be very good.

stcstc31 wrote:

don't be lulled into a false sense of security by the specifications of these things

^ Yep, so my NAS is Linux based (as most of them seem to be now) which means one can load the Linux version of the Crashplan client into the main service console of the NAS. I did mine using SSH and now (having bought the Crashplan Unlimited service) my NAS backs itself up to the CP servers on an ongoing basis.

An alternative would be to use a Windows based storage server with the Windows client for a cloud backup service.

I have Buffalo and Netgear NAS drives. Both are great at storing lots of data, but not what I would call quick, especially when accessed remotely over the net. Had the Buffalo for about 5 years and it's never missed a beat, but the Netgear has a very buggy OS. Synology seem to make good stuff so I am looking at the DS213 air.

KurtVerbose wrote:

Never rely on a single backup, especially at a single location.

Spot on - everything really important to me is also on a USB disc in my desk drawer at work

I transfer stuff on my laptop, so the USB drive never comes home and I always have an off-site backup