Adding space in NAS

[Bosconermal]

This is a really basic question...

I'm considering the purchase of a NAS to store music and video, so I need a lot of space. I also don't want to spend exorbitant amounts of money.

I could get a 2 bay 6Tb NAS configured in RAID 1, so 3 TB mirrored.

If I got a 4 bay NAS, could I start with two 3 TB drives (mirrored), then at some later date add two more 3 TB drives to get double the space?

I'm guessing not, but I need to ask the question.

 

[FireWire2]

Get a Five bay Home Server RAID5 NAS/iSCSI with GbE

It allows you to expand up to 20x drives as 5 drives per volume

so with 3TB HDD you would end up 60TB, or 80TB if you use 4TB HDD

 

[Bosconermal]

Thanks FireWire2:

My first concern is data protection rather than size, so I was thinking about some kind of mirror. With a 5-bay NAS, could I put in two 3TB drives and mirror them, then at some later date put in another pair of 3Tb drives and mirror them. Now I'd be up to 6Tb in two mirrors. I'm not sure what I'd do with the 5th.

Is that possible?

 

[RealBeast]

First, be clear that a storage array should not be considered back up. If the controller dies in a bad way data on all drives attached could be lost.

Consider RAID 5 if you want fault tolerant storage. It gives you more space that simple mirroring, while also providing insurance against a single drive loss. Really depends how much data you will accumulate. Personally, I like RAID controllers in large tower machines to have complete ability to customize.

Consider a 4 bay QNAP; you could start with a three disk RAID 5 set up and then add another disk that would be added to the array when you need more space.

 

[FireWire2]

Thanks FireWire2:

My first concern is data protection rather than size, so I was thinking about some kind of mirror. With a 5-bay NAS, could I put in two 3TB drives and mirror them, then at some later date put in another pair of 3Tb drives and mirror them. Now I'd be up to 6Tb in two mirrors. I'm not sure what I'd do with the 5th.

Is that possible?

For the backup, here is what I would do:
I would not have the back up in the same raid system, cuz what if the raid controller fail? 🙂

I would get a simple USB2.0 with SPAN (LARGE) capable and just dump the data to it (backup data), since this is not a daily use data so the speed is not an issue