Recovery from a dead Synology NAS

[mlody]

Hello,i am considering buying a 2 hdd synology disk station for home use such ds 212 or 213. I currently have 2x 500gb raid 1 mirror on my Windows 7 system which works great and have a very good performnace however, i hate to keep my windows system constantly running just to access my files etc.


My biggest fear going the nas route is data recovery. I am wondering if raid 1 mirror used in synology is somethg that windows system would recognize? I simply want to know if there is an alternative to recover from a dead synology nas without going and buying another one, or waiting for 2-3 weeks for RMA?

Thank you for any information or suggestinons.

 

[sunzt]

I have a 212j and am running 2 2TB drives in it without RAID. I originally ran RAID 1, but it ran too slow and ran into some errors so now i just weekly backup on the other drive which is good enough for me. If I really wanted to plan for dual failures, i can put critical files into a dropbox/skydrive or other free online storage accounts.

How are you backing up data to the NAS from your clients?

 

[cantholdanymore]

I have a 212j and am running 2 2TB drives in it without RAID. I originally ran RAID 1, but it ran too slow and ran into some errors so now i just weekly backup on the other drive which is good enough for me. If I really wanted to plan for dual failures, i can put critical files into a dropbox/skydrive or other free online storage accounts.

How are you backing up data to the NAS from your clients?

Interested on this.
Don't have to use RAID? So basically in win 7 you can map two independent drives? For my backup needs this may be the way to go using Acronis (thinking on a WD personal NAS but reviews seems to be horrible)

 

[Geremia]

synology nas are very reliable, but you are right, you must plan a recovery.

synology offers his hybrid raid, which i don't know exactly what it does really, aside the advertised non tech stuff. Intead, I always do standard raid1 in the synology setup, and i can confirm you can just take one of the raid1 disk and hookup to window without problems, aside the fact that syno uses ext3/ext4, so you need to install an ext3 filesystem driver under windows, there are various freeware apps to do so.

other cheap nas out here (not synology, not qnap) uses XFS filesystem or even UFS, don't know if actually you can find a freeware app to mount them on windws, there were only commercial apps when i searched years ago.

 

[cantholdanymore]

synology nas are very reliable, but you are right, you must plan a recovery.

synology offers his hybrid raid, which i don't know exactly what it does really, aside the advertised non tech stuff. Intead, I always do standard raid1 in the synology setup, and i can confirm you can just take one of the raid1 disk and hookup to window without problems, aside the fact that syno uses ext3/ext4, so you need to install an ext3 filesystem driver under windows, there are various freeware apps to do so.

other cheap nas out here (not synology, not qnap) uses XFS filesystem or even UFS, don't know if actually you can find a freeware app to mount them on windws, there were only commercial apps when i searched years ago.

Great info thanks