NAS brands ... NAS hard drives ... NAS raids

[Copenhagen69]

My main wants for the NAS
Data security
Least amount of risk for losing data
Connections to clouds
A lot of options for sharing folders
Easy access and movement around the NAS UI



Ok at the moment I have a top 3:
Qnap
Synology
Asustor

I tried the live demos on each site. Qnap and Asustor were the best from what I saw. The synology I had issues with. I don't know if it was the limitations setup on the demo NAS or what but it started to anger me after about 10 mins of messing with it.

My plan is to go with 4 drives ... Not sure on size but either 3-4TB drives. As for drives I am looking between:
WD Red Pro
HGST Ultrstar
Possibly something else??

As for raid I am stuck on raid 6 or raid 10. Do I need the performance 10 would give? Is it actually that noticeable?
I do want the highest data safety so I'm leaning to raid 6.


Thoughts?

 

[XavierMace]

Do you just want a 4 bay NAS or do you want room for future growth?

Also, RAID is not a replacement for backups.

 

[Copenhagen69]

I'm gonna go with me 4 cause that's about all I can afford at the moment.

True but I want it as safe as it can be while in use.

 

[nk215]

Synology has a high-availability mode which uses 2-NAS setup (one is the active, the other is passive, the passive will take over when the active fails for any reason). Most people don’t need this feature.

Other than that, on the low-mid range NAS, the main different between QNAP and Synology is in the app (mobile app). I like them both and have no reason to pick one over the other. My Synology happens to be a higher end model than my 3 QNAP units.

Transcoding (especially multi stream) is the main reason to pick the higher end (intel CPU) vs mid range unit. The very low end units can’t saturate 1GB network.

I don’t have any experience with Asustor so I can’t comment on it.

 

[aigomorla]

correct me if im wrong...

but with 4 disks your only allowed raid 5 at most.
Raid 6 would require 5 disks.

Also im fairly sure raid 10 is the most redundant... because you have mirror backups of each drive, meaning you would need 2 disks to fail out of the 4, unless you went with RAID 6 and had 5 drives, where again, you would need 2 disks out of the 5 to fail.

Also heard raid 10 is SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.... there is no performance gains on Raid 10.


Have you also considered building your own NAS?
There are a lot of threads where users have built there own NAS, and use a ZFS file system which is probably more stable / faster for a NAS type device.

 

[XavierMace]

correct me if im wrong...

You are.

RAID5 requires at least 3 drives, RAID6 requires at least 4, RAID10 requires at least 4. RAID10 is the fastest of the RAID levels however, technically only allows for a single drive failure, depending on which drives fail. RAID6 can handle 2 failures. But RAID10 is roughly twice as fast on read and write as RAID6.

Also, performance is going to vary greatly depending on controller. If you want actual RAID, you should be buying a RAID controller. Not that onboard crap.

I like ZFS, but if you want decent performance it comes with much higher system requirements. Usually people shopping 4 bay NAS units aren't cross-shopping custom built ZFS setups. There's also a much steeper learning curve.

 

[Copenhagen69]

You are.



RAID5 requires at least 3 drives, RAID6 requires at least 4, RAID10 requires at least 4. RAID10 is the fastest of the RAID levels however, technically only allows for a single drive failure, depending on which drives fail. RAID6 can handle 2 failures. But RAID10 is roughly twice as fast on read and write as RAID6.



Also, performance is going to vary greatly depending on controller. If you want actual RAID, you should be buying a RAID controller. Not that onboard crap.



I like ZFS, but if you want decent performance it comes with much higher system requirements. Usually people shopping 4 bay NAS units aren't cross-shopping custom built ZFS setups. There's also a much steeper learning curve.

Thanks. I was about to say every website I've ever read must of been wrong haha.

True the raid controller would be nice over what a onboard NAS will be. Just don't have that much $$ to be building my own setup.

 

[nk215]

Talking about RAID speed for a NAS is not practical. Unless you have a 10Gb NAS and LAN, the bottle neck is always the 1Gb speed unless you buy the very bottom of the line NAS boxes, those can't even saturate 1Gb.

BTW, my Synology is setup as RAID6 using 5-4TB black enterprise HDDs. The max capacity of the unit is 12 HDDs. I just have no need - at the moment - to install the other HDDs (and subject them to wear and tear) when I don't need the space.

 

[Copenhagen69]

Speed is not a huge thing to. Mostly it will be a quick phone video or some pics. Important files and things like that.

I am still deciding on raid. 6 needs two drives to fail which seems very rare before I can get it replaced. Raid 10 seems a solid choice but not sure about the failing drive being dependent??

 

[XavierMace]

Speed is not a huge thing to. Mostly it will be a quick phone video or some pics. Important files and things like that

Is it unlikely? Yes. Have I seen it happen? Yes. Not many things are more frustrating than replacing a drive in an array and having a second drive fail while the array is rebuilding.

 

[abekl]

I recently researched and bought a 4 bay NAS unit. Ended up going with the Asustor AS-5104T, which I then upgraded to 8GB RAM. Really a beautiful unit. I populated it with 4 NAS HDDs. HG Ultrastar 4 GB.

It is a great file storage devce as well as a pretty good media server. The one piece of advice I can gve you is to look carefully at the file management software supplied with the NAS you choose. You'll be using it alot, and if you don't like it, you'll have a negative experience even though the NAS is perfectly fine.

The asustor suite of apps is pretty good, but not stellar.

 

[Copenhagen69]

I recently researched and bought a 4 bay NAS unit. Ended up going with the Asustor AS-5104T, which I then upgraded to 8GB RAM. Really a beautiful unit. I populated it with 4 NAS HDDs. HG Ultrastar 4 GB.

It is a great file storage devce as well as a pretty good media server. The one piece of advice I can gve you is to look carefully at the file management software supplied with the NAS you choose. You'll be using it alot, and if you don't like it, you'll have a negative experience even though the NAS is perfectly fine.

The asustor suite of apps is pretty good, but not stellar.

Have you used any other NAS systems? Just curious how the app suite compares to others like qnap and synology ....

 

[abekl]

No, I have not had the opportunity to try other NAS OS's hands on. You can view screen shots though at the various manufacturers sites.

Also, I looked at the qnap TS-653 Pro. It's a solid unit perfect for an advanced home user to grow into.