Looking to add a NAS for media content - Looking for oponions

[liberty610]

Hey everyone!

I recently started searching for options in storage, and with the help of the fine folk here, I was shown the NAS option.

I'm learning as I go on all of this, so please bare with me.

I have a pretty good sized media collection of personal videos and photos. With adding tapeless HD video cameras to my arsenal, I'm starting to run out of space as new recordings pile up.

I currently have a Cooler Master HAF X tower with 6 HDD in it for storage and editing video/audio. Intel SSD boot drive.

I have 2 Western digital black drives at 2tb each. They are not raided, but one backs up the other; I just do a manual drag and drop to copy the files. I have had great results with WD drives. So I was looking at nas options.

Here is the current one I am looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236636

It comes with the new WD red drives which are apparently best for cloud type storage.

Honestly, I know very little about cloud features in these units. I am not super interested in having access to the files from other devices outside my compter. I really am just looking at options to expland my storage capacity with good back up options so I have as little chance of loosing my files as possible. I know nothing is full proof, but im looking for the best stable options. I currently have a 3tb external for backing up the 2tb internal, but I'm close to running out of room.

The media I am backing up is mostly family videos and what not, and I dont wanna loose any of it, of course.

Are the red drives that come with the unit I posted good? Has anyone used them? When buying new drives, are there things I should do to 'stress test' them? For the most part, I have always just put my drives to use out of the box because I have backup options on place from the get go.

Would raid with this nas unit be good to use? I hear raid isn't really a backup option, and I should use external drives for back up that are not in constant use to avoid wear and tear on them.

This is all new to me, so any feedback would be appreciated. If anyone else has any suggestions on a different NAS, please let me know as well. I would like a 4 bay setup of a minimum of 8TB total. I was thinking 4 drives at 2tb each, with raid 1 on them in pairs. So the first 2 drives would be raid 1 for 2tb and the second pair would be a second raid 1 pair for another 2 tb. This way I have 4tb total of usable space but both drives are mirrored on the other 2 in case one fails.

Is this a good outlook to try? Thanks for any replies in advance.

 

[pm4]

Took me while to find what was actually question .
WD Red drives should be good and tailored for use in NAS with 24/7 on. My guess is that for basic home use you would not see much difference between any of WD series, but price difference is not big and if WD market them as HDD for NAS why not?
Actually I personally have 4x 3TB WD red in my NAS, but instead of raid 1 (mirror) I'm using them in raid 5. Each got it's + and -. From From total of 12TB space after formatting and raid 5 usage I got 8TB left to use. If i would use raid 1 i would have 2x 3tb minus space needed for formatting of drive giving me only something around 5.5tb +-. So with 4 drives this may be one of things you can consider if NAS which you plan to use support raid 5.
Both options are viable, both have it's + and -.

You don't neeed to stress test driver, just when you put them into NAS and format them you can try to run Smart test on them (NAS may do it itself), to see if you do not have any faulty piece. If it won't show any error just use it normally.

 

[liberty610]

Thanks for the reply! Did you look at the link I posted in which nas unit I was looking at? Just wondering if it was a solid choice.

Right now, like I stated, I'm copy files manually from one black drive to another as a back up, and then I have a 3rd external 3tb drive as a second back up that isn't really on only to update the files.

A lot of the data taking up the majority of my internal 2tb black drive is a lot of larger video files. Some of the standard definition footage in mpeg2 format is a couple hours each file, several gigs in size.. A lot of the HD footage is also large files.

Does an nas speed up transfer times? Because when I copy all the videos from one internal drive to another, it can take several hours to copy them.

 

[pm4]

One you posted looks like classic 4 bay solution it already got HDD included.
But can't tell how it will work I got so far only 2 NAS, one 2 bay Dlink DNS-320 and now 4 bay Lenovo IX4. Each had it's + and -, but those you will find only after you buy it and start using it.

To matter of speed it's still classic HDD solution so you can expect speeds like when you use HDD. Remember to set it on gigabit network and not 100mbit. 100mbit is max 12.5 MB/s which is lot lower than what should HDD run at. My 4x wd red had top read speed about 90-100MB/s and top write was about 35-50 i think. Ofc it depends on size of files you transfer, status of disks and lot of other stuff.

 

[popatim]

HDD's in raid5 are slow, since parity calculations have to be made and also written to disk for every byte sent peaking at about 45MB/s. Unfortunately reads are also slow in this unit peaking at about 65MB/s.

 

[pm4]

HDD's in raid5 are slow, since parity calculations have to be made and also written to disk for every byte sent peaking at about 45MB/s. Unfortunately reads are also slow in this unit peaking at about 65MB/s.

Raid 1 and raid 5 should have +- same read speeds using same disks. Write speed may be lower at raid 5 but it depends heavily on cpu and raid controller of NAS you will use, I doubt you will see big difference using some of better NAS. Numbers you posted aren't really so slow for HDD. 60-70MB may be average for depending on how are data written, what size is file, what NAS and HDD you use also to what device you read that data to. Remember max you can get is what gigabit network offer you that is in theory 125 MB/s in reality something closer to 100-110 depending on your network. My peak speed as I wrote was 90-100MB/s getting close to saturate gigabit network, since than as I filled my disks on both sides (my pc and nas) it degraded to those 60-70 at large files (16gb video file for example). Write speed on same 16gb file tested right now was 50MB/s ofc it will go much lower for lot of small files but that is normal.

Both raid 1 and raid 5 offer you some protection against data loss. But I took raid 5 as it give me 50% more space. 8,19TB with raid 5 vs 5,64 with raid 1 at 4 disk solution (3TB per disk)