NAS setup?

Posted by: Renzo on 01 November 2011

Following the excellent thread :Idiots' guide to setting up a NAS as music server:

https://forums.naimaudio.com/di...ent/1566878604242466

I was just wondering about NAS hard-drives:

I assume that bigger is better.

How important is the speed of the drive?

Finally, assuming the use of 4 drives and knowing nothing about RAID, what's the best RAID setup and does it come pre-configured or is it something you have to do yourself?

Thanks

 

Posted on: 01 November 2011 by intothevoid

Hi Renzo,

In general terms, bigger is better, but there are a number of factors to consider when choosing a disk:

  • Spin speed
  • Latency and Seek time
  • Buffer RAM
  • Transfer Rate

These factors determine the performance of the disk, getting more expensive as performance increases (remind you of anything ). The one other factor is MTBF, i.e. how long can you expect the disk to last.

 

As far as a RAID config goes, using four disks I chose RAID5 to give me optimum redundancy compared to available storage at my chosen price-point, i.e. one disk can fail without me having a crisis!

 

RAID can come pre-configured if you choose to buy a NAS with disks already installed, or you can buy NAS and disks separately and do it yourself. It's easy on modern NAS's.

 

HTH,

Steve

Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Peter_RN

Hi Renzo

 

Try and fit Enterprise quality disc's in any NAS you may purchase. These are designed to run day and night so will be more robust.

Manufacturers may also have a list of compatable drives for their NAS units, best to pick from this when such a list is available.

 

Peter

Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Mr Underhill

Renzo,

 

Before you buy the HDDs check what the largest physical disk is that they can address.

 

M

Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Renzo

Thanks for the advice guys I've noted your remarks. In fact I really should get my act together and sort an NAS out. I have an old external HDD that has all my Flac music on already so it would be easy just to transfer it.

Just to get back to RAID, if I was for example to use 1TB drives in as Steve suggested a RAID5 configuration  how much effective storage space would that give me and does RAID5 include an inherent backup?

Thanks

Posted on: 01 November 2011 by intothevoid
Using RAID5 you lose one disk to parity check, so you only get 75% of the storage you bought. And, no, RAID (of any kind) should not be considered as backup. This is the trouble with buying, and filling, a lot of disk space as you have to have the same amount for backup.

You could consider compression for the backups, or even using a cloud service. I've not looked into either so can't comment.

Cheers, Steve
Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Jack

4 * 1B drives in a RAID5 configuration gives you approx. 3TB of storage space.

 

RAID isn't really back up it's more about fault tolerance, so the theory is if you loose one of the drives you do not loose any data. However, if your RAID array goes faulty completely then you have potentially lost your data without a true backup. Large RAID arrays need some thought of in terms of backup. Personally I backup to external drives and store off-site.

Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Renzo

Thanks Steve and Jack, you've cleared that up nicely for me.

Posted on: 01 November 2011 by rhr
Hi Renzo,

The wikipedia entry on RAID is worth a read. Also, Jack's comment on RAID is not backup, is very true. Devise some sort of backup strategy.

I personally use RAID 6 as it means I can continue to use my NAS should a disk fail. Probability dictates that as the number of Disks you have increases, the chances of a failure occuring also goes up.

Rich
Posted on: 01 November 2011 by pcstockton

funny.....  my buddy who is in IT insists that I get a Raid array rolling (mirrored pair).  I do have my main drives backed up onto other drives and I think both the main and the back-up failing simultaneously is unlikely.  He of course has actually seen it happen once when doing a back-up.

 

When I retort that a RAID is not actually back-up and that any "mistakes" or accidental deletions are copied to all drives, he responded with, "right...you still need back-up."

 

Puzzled, I asked how I should do that, and of course he answered with "another RAID array".  Too f-ing funny.

 

As an aside.... a friend who does use a RAID, somehow managed to change the "Artist" tag on ALL of his music to "Grateful Dead".  Suffice it to say it took him a LONG time to fix everything.  This was about 6-7 years ago though so not many fancy options for auto-tagging.

 

RAID has little pace in the consumer market.  Most people think they are backing up their data when in fact they are only backing up the drives.  RAID2 at least gives you a simple mirrored pair but not true backup of the data, as the Grateful Dead method shows.

 

I do a manual "RAID", by syncing my drives to their corresponding backups (with Synctoy) about once a month.  I keep the back-ups at work.

 

I feel pretty safe.

 

-Patrick