Question NAS Question - Mirroring

olds

Elite Member
Mar 3, 2000
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I'd like to buy a pre-configured NAS box that mirrors the data on two different HDDs. Obviously if one goes down the other drive still contains the data. Windows PCs and capacity probably around 8-10 GB

Backing up from an Android phone a plus.

Is that RAID 5?

TIA
 
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Feb 25, 2011
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No. Simple mirroring for pairs of disks is RAID-1. Most simple 2-bay NAS appliances support RAID 1 or RAID 0. (RAID 0 is a simple stripe where files are spanned across both disks. If one drive fails, all your data is shot.)

RAID-5 is 3 or more disks in a stripe + parity situation, and can also tolerate the failure of one (but ONLY 1) disk without going tits up. (RAID-6 uses two parity drives, can tolerate two failures, is otherwise similar.)
 
Feb 25, 2011
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Sounds like depending on the redundancy I want, I need RAID 1 or RAID 6. Is that correct?

You gotta weigh it against the budget and the number of drives your NAS can support, but in principle, those (1 & 6) are the two safest options. (For two drives and four or more drives, respectively.)

I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that, once you start maintaining a farm of HDDs, it can get pricey enough that a Crashplan Small Business plan at $150/yr. may be less painful. Especially since it's offsite and has an Android app backup thing. (Being a belt-and-suspenders kinda guy, I back up my computers to a NAS and back up my NAS to Crashplan.)
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I have some NAS units that I could throw some drives in and configure and ship to you, but I don't know much about any sort of Android backup (I assume that you would use an app?)

A 2-bay unit running RAID-1 (mirroring), or a 4-bay unit running RAID-5 (uses three drives for data, one for parity, can lose any one drive, and keep running), is what most people usually use.

See my thread in Hot Deals about "Lenovo EMC" NAS units @ Newegg. (Search that at Newegg, you'll find them.) There's a 2-bay IX2-DL (diskless), for $59.99 + shipping + tax. That's about the cheapest usable NAS unit around.

Those are EOL, though, and don't have any explicit support for backing up Android.

I *think*, but not entirely sure, that some of WD's CloudBook or Ultra EX2 NAS units have some sort of support for backing up Android phones. Not 100% sure, you'll have to check. I'm not really a fan of those units, though.

Edit: Is it possible to connect an Android phone to a PC, and enable "Developer Mode", and back up somehow that way, onto your PC, and then backup *that* backup file/image/whatever to the NAS, using a PC backup program? Kind of a backup of a backup.
 
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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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Sounds like depending on the redundancy I want, I need RAID 1 or RAID 6. Is that correct?

Raid 6 requires a min of 4 drives...
4 drive NAS's are pricey... at that price, they should offer Raid 5 or even Raid 10.

IMHO, if you have a spare PC laying around that's not being used, or don't mind noise for the nas location, i would either repurpose used enterprise gear from Ebay, and make a FreeNAS box and go on RAID-Z#

Or you can build a box even using cheap Hardware.

RAID-Z is a bunch more resilient, and FreeNAS is free.
There are a bunch of videos on youtube addressing how to build one.
 

olds

Elite Member
Mar 3, 2000
50,054
712
126
I have some NAS units that I could throw some drives in and configure and ship to you, but I don't know much about any sort of Android backup (I assume that you would use an app?)

A 2-bay unit running RAID-1 (mirroring), or a 4-bay unit running RAID-5 (uses three drives for data, one for parity, can lose any one drive, and keep running), is what most people usually use.

See my thread in Hot Deals about "Lenovo EMC" NAS units @ Newegg. (Search that at Newegg, you'll find them.) There's a 2-bay IX2-DL (diskless), for $59.99 + shipping + tax. That's about the cheapest usable NAS unit around.

Those are EOL, though, and don't have any explicit support for backing up Android.

I *think*, but not entirely sure, that some of WD's CloudBook or Ultra EX2 NAS units have some sort of support for backing up Android phones. Not 100% sure, you'll have to check. I'm not really a fan of those units, though.

Edit: Is it possible to connect an Android phone to a PC, and enable "Developer Mode", and back up somehow that way, onto your PC, and then backup *that* backup file/image/whatever to the NAS, using a PC backup program? Kind of a backup of a backup.
I appreciate the offer but I think I'll go with a new off the shelf product.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,327
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Go with a 16TB WD MyCloud Pro (?), maybe it's called "Dual". That will have 2x8TB HDDs (like you asked about in OP), and I believe (check their manual), that it can do Android backups. That will probably set you back $700.

Edit:

My bad, it's only $499. But it doesn't back up the whole phone, just photos and videos from phones, and PCs and Macs.

Edit: Nota Bene: You generally, want to AVOID single-bay/single-drive NAS units, because they have a single point of failure, one OOPS, and your data goes bye-bye, generally-speaking. At least with a 2-bay/2-drive mirroring (RAID-1) arrangement, if one drive dies, you have the other one, and can just swap in another drive and it should re-mirror the contents.

I also want to plug QNAP and Asustor (have no experience with Drobo or Synology). Most of those are sold "diskless", and are not cheap, but have a MULTITUDE of features, with a very easy-to-use web interface. (Some have phone "apps" too, though I haven't used those.)

Asustor's OS is a bit rough around the edges still (they are one of the newest vendors to offer NAS units), but QNAP's is full-featured. Try to get a model with an Intel CPU in it, and not some ARM or Marvell SoC/CPU, because those tend to be slower, and more limited in terms of OS upgrades and updates.

For QNAP, I would recommend a TS-451+. For Asustor, probably one of their newer "Nimbustor" models, with the dual 2.5Gigabit Ethernet jacks, for future-proofing. They also have some "big daddy" units, the "Lockerstor" 8 and 10 models, with 8 and 10 bays respectively, both with DUAL 10GbE-T and DUAL 2.5GbE-T. Talk about connectivity! Intel newer / newest Atom CPU quad-cores in them. Maybe you can also get them with i3 and whatnot. I think that they also include slots for dual NVMe M.2 SSDs, for caching / tiering. (QNAP OS also allows SSD caching / tiering.)

Also, another benefit of using an Intel native CPU, is support for Intel-compatible OSes in Virtual Machines, running on the NAS. That's a fairly advanced subject, so I won't get into it now, but you can have Windows running in a VM, on your NAS, that you remote into, using a web browser, on any PC in your LAN! Pretty neat, but takes a while to set up.

Edit: Also, some of them, have HDMI or HDMI 2.0 output ports on them, you can hook them up to an HD TV / 4K UHD TV, and play back media, movies, photos, audio, etc., over the HDMI port, or run your VM that way (plug a mouse and keyboard into the NAS into the USB ports on the back). Most also let you stream media using DLNA support over the network to a "Smart TV" or "Roku" device. (*Also "Chromecast" maybe?)
 
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