To NAS or not to NAS, that is the question

As it's only for back-up I'd suggest something like a WD MyBookLive or Duo (which has twin-disk Raid arrangement for added reassurance.)

They are small, black, quiet and available at around £120 for 2TB of storage which would fit your needs.

I'd definitely recommend a NAS for back-up as you just know something will fail eventually.

Seconded.

I use a MBL and it is 'silent' i.e. quieter than ambient background noise from outside the house (I live in a very quiet spot.) The drive itself actually goes to sleep after about an hour, must be a default setting for power-saving. I can just hear the slightest click when I first access the drive thru my Qute. After that there is a slight 'frictiony breeze' that is no louder than the sound of Naim's own toroids. It looks like a book so you can acoustically 'hide' it between some thick cork but to be honest it doesn't matter much. I listened to Boards Of Canada's new release in 24bit last night with the labrador chomping a hide 'dentastick' near my feet and the music transported me effectively away from all secondary issues 

Thanks, that sounds attractive. Are these compatible with the Serve's automatic timed backup? I looked up a review, which suggested that the little Synology 212j is miles better. Does anyone know if that's the case?

The WD is compatible with the timed back-up - in fact any NAS should be.

The Synology is very good too.

In the end, they are both doing the same job - which is to take a back-up copy of the UnitiServe.

Synology would have the advantage of being an enclosure - meaning you can swap discs in and out whereas the WDM is fixed.

However, the WDM has the advantage of being cheaper.

Both will work just as well. All you need to decide is how much you want to pay and what storage siez you want. I'd suggest minimum 2TB which means you are starting at a price of around £120 for a WDM and going up from them for larger sizes or a different make.

Hope that helps.

If it's for backup it would be for short term use until the Serve comes back on line. Just buy a reliable additional hard drive for your computer. WD, Samsung etc.  Solid State would be the choice for the terminally paranoid, or critical listener (guilty on both counts) but that would be pricey if you need 2TB.

Having a third hard drive backup (i.e. RAID format) is frankly overkill. If an accident is so bad it wipes out both the Serve and the computer then you have bigger things to worry about.

Andy 

Readynas Duo v2 and it must be v2 is very quiet and one of the cheap alternatives if you want a 2 bay nas.

I bought mine for backup and  a place to store my downloaded music for my 1 tb ns01.

Use a 3TB WD My Book Live and have found it very straightforward with a clear user interface.  Auto or manual back-up. G

One thing I read about the WD is that it's more tricky to turn off, as it has no on/off switch. Is there any special process at the PC end, or can you simply unplug it? The modest price and simplicity are very appealing. 

QNAP were IMO the best but are dreadful now. Software so poor.

I tried a Synology between QNAPs and thought it was both poor and noisy. It then corrupted the HDD. Sent it back.

At the risk of being a bore, the main thing is maintaining an off-site back-up. Realistically most of us do not have either the interest or discipline to organise that regularly. This is why I suggest looking at automating a back up to a cloud back-up service.

Personally I would be very careful with some of the cheap rubbish NAS solutions. The more they try to add services to make it like a computer the worse they get due to shoddy software. The most important thing is a rock-steady file server.

Think about whether it has a fan and where you will site it. Lots of these things are noisy. Some designs are fanless including I believe one by WD.

Next time will be looking at HP Microserver or Asustor.

I own a Synology nas, but it certainly is overkill for use just as a backup.  And the 212j is white, not black!

For simple backup only I'd probably go with one of the WD's recommended by trusted folks here. 

PS I backup the uServe to the nas, and then backup that backup to an external usb drive. Belt and braces.

This is definitely the right advice if AndyPat has described your planned usage correctly. Don't bother with NAS.

It goes into a sleep mode by itself after about an hour.

If you want to turn it off completely you can unplug it - or do it via your PC/Mac with the downloaded software.

It really is very simple and easy to use. Mine has worked flawlessly and I am streaming from it.

Obviously your use would be just for back-up but same applies.

WD hard drives do not exactly have the best reliability record which is why I would not go WD just personally speaking. The appealing thing about the little WD NAS is the lack of fan. Any NAS with a permanently fixed and irreplaceable HDD is probably a no-no for me personally.

The HP is a bit big but the appeal is it is made by a proper computer company and runs on proper server software. Lots of the NAS companies have, I suspect, a few underpaid kids writing the software in a cottage-style operation.

I've been looking at the WD reviews on Amazon and many are really bad, with software issues and failures. All very confusing!!

I forgot to include in my prior post a note to check out Amazon reviews.  I've not done that for these, but in general user reviews on Amazon can be informative, especially when reading them you can tell that the author knows what he/she is writing about.

Not tricky at all, with the free WD SmartWare installed, there is a shut-down option, although it is not required to do this, you can simply unplug it when you come to paint the corner of your room.

As for the reviews, I think many people expect everything to work as they want it within 60 seconds or they give up. I have an old PC (12 years) running XP, it took a little updating of my software to get things running, and half an hour on the WD forums to get the right answers to my problems, since I got it running it's been great. I still want a UnitiServe for my Birthday though, and have left a space for it on my home-made Naim (unendorsed) half-width furniture stack!!

I submit!! I've ordered a WD my book 2Tb for £106.77. Much better than spending £400 on NAS capabilities I clearly don't need. I can always get my son to help me set it up.

Now I just need the UnitiServe, which may well take another six weeks. Aargh.

Believe me, if I managed it then anyone can! Good luck 'out there'. G

I have a WD Mybook which I bought to experiment with the SU in my second system. While it works OK with J river/PC/&wireless arcam RDac in my main system, while I decide whether to go for NDS, it was quite a problem with the SU with Twonky and Nstream. I thus bought a Synology single drive with WD Red and this works fine. It will also work direct to RDac with Squeezebpx, without having to have PC connected. I would thus say, in my limited experience, that Synology is a better fit with Naim and is more flexible. This is of course less relevant if just using for back up, but it might be worth bearing in mind.

Both units are pretty quiet.

this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/430446-p...campaign=b2c_weekend

Plus two drives (it can take five) at 60 quid each and you have yourself a very powerful home server for less than 250 quid. Install OpenMediaVault on the spare drive it comes with and as a file server running xfs its pretty much bomb proof.

Don't think you'll regret it. Six weeks for a US though! That's some waiting list.

If HH needed a nas and a UPnP server, I'd have recommended Synology too.  But simplicity has its virtues and I think he made a good choice  

Why Open Media Vault and why XFS? Just interested. Are these good for non-Linux gurus and how do they shape up versus say Windows server?

I dont have a terrific amount of windows server experIence, however openmediavault because of the price.

xfs apparently is proven more reliable, more robust, only time will tell i guess.

its taken a bit of getting used to, you have to format and set uo the drives, create shares etc. never the less once up and running is very very quick. I also run plex media server from it, it can also run minidnla etc.

throughput speeds are impressive, 90MB/s down 35MB/s up.

all for around 250 quid. The proliant specs should be compared to what 250 gets you with a bare bones nas. For instance my qnap ts410 had a 900mhz chip and 256m ram, the proloant 2.2ghz chip and 2gigs of ram, at 120 quid cheaper.