NAS Advice

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copiman

Member
I want to build my own NAS to get a little hands on as well as having it. I have been on the Google highway the past couple of days and there is a lot of NAS devices out there. I thought it best to come here and ask for real guidance.

I would like to buy the 4 bay case and use my own drives. Thought I would start small with two 2T (RAID1) and maybe expand later. Any input on what brand of NAS case and drives?

Also, I want to to do backups (pics, docs, music, video) as well as Images. Actually I want these to run on a schedule. I have done manual backups and images in the past. Should I use Windows's utilities for this or should I use a third-party software? If third-party, is there a free version that will accomplish this?

Being a student of computers and networks I try to do as much hands on as I can. I have a network now with 4 computers and would like to try this on it. Needing to learn from those who have gone before me.
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Howdy!

Hardware selection depends a lot on your goals and at what depth you want to manage the platform. It sounds like you were looking at managing the entire system, including IO controller selection, physical data scheme selection (raid), operating system selection and similar. Usually if you want the 'all in' approach you'll be managing every single component of the server/nas.

A lot of NAS type of products on the market will choose these for you, run their own sharing services like samba, and you're only really managing the data aspect and what drives you throw in there.

Were there any specific models you were considering?

A lot of people here have dedicated NAS appliances, and also there are also a few with the fileserver approach of rolling your own gear and services. Either way we can help you make the appropriate decision :)
 
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spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Synology NAS.

WD Red drives.

I love my Synology! DSM is amazing! DSM has an app that allows you to back the NAS up to the cloud (DropBox, OneDrive for Business, Google Drive or Box) or an external HDD or another Synology NAS. I use this to back my files up to an external HDD I have plugged into my NAS.

I use my NAS to back my photography up, so I use Iperius on Windows to copy the files at 11.40pm each night from my PC to my Synology NAS and then after the backup is completed it shuts my PC down. Iperius is free (and can also do compressed backups): http://www.iperiusbackup.co.uk/
 
C

copiman

Member
WOW, thanks everyone. My friend used a Lenovo ix4-300D (diskless) and added disks. He said he paid about $150.00 on Newegg for the case and whatever for the drives. It has 4 bays up to 16G. Although I am not familiar with Synology, it seems to be a popular brand based on the posts as well as my searches. My plan is to have 4 bays for expansion in the future. Have Raid 1 for redundancy. I want to ensure that I am covered if a system crashes and is not recoverable. Don't want to have to reload everything (apps and stuff) from scratch which is why I was thinking of automatic periodic images as well as data backups. I was thinking of having a couple of images per PC (just in case one is bad) and maybe a couple of data backups per PC as well. I think it can be set up this way so when the third one happens the first drops off? Also I understand that if a hard drives used space is 50G, you would need a partition of 25G on storage device to place the image? Your thoughts on my project would be very helpful.
 
spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
I like Synology. I think with their 4-bay NAS enclosures you can populate them with just 2 disks if you want and use RAID-0 or RAID-1.

How do you plan to create images of your PCs?
 
spirit

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah the cheapest 4-bay Synology I can find (just looking around very quickly) is the DS416j which is currently £228 on Amazon. Most of the 4-bay Synologys are about £300-500 (the likes of the DS416, DS415PLAY, DS415+ and DS416PLAY).

Mine's a DS214se which was about £110 or so if I remember correctly. It was one of the cheapest multiple-bay NASes Synology does/did (apart from a single-bay NAS which was about £80). It's only got 256MB RAM and a weak CPU and USB 2.0, but honestly for just backing up files (which is all I use it for, I don't have multiple users accessing it or any apps/programs running on/off it) it's absolutely fine. So if you just need a 4-bay Synology NAS to store files on then you don't need the higher-end 'PLAY' NASes (which are optimised for media streaming, I believe), the DS416j would probably be fine.

The Synology mobile apps are quite cool too. I can browse to my NAS from the DS File app on my (Windows) phone and even download files from the NAS onto my phone and check disk health status and storage space etc. It's quite nice. I live in the UK and managed to get it to work when I went to Seattle too, so it can be like a 'private cloud' I guess. The apps are available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone I believe. Just a nice little extra!
 
C

copiman

Member
The Synology DS416j looks good to me. To create images I was thinking about using Macrium Reflect Free version if possible.I have Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 PCs. I do have a Vista 32 bit PC but I think I will retire it.
 
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