Raid Synology and drives for Mac OS

[sarine]

I am in the process of purchasing a raid, so I can consolidate all my HD's and have redundancy of course - raid 4 I think, which is 2 drives I believe? Would also like to use for small business and backup my laptop. I have had a few friends recommend the Synology and have it. They are network boys, so i trust them and the system is expandable - Ram and Disks. Sounds great until you read a few problems.

This is not my area of expertise and am a little worried about the reviews, especially at the cost.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/SingleProductReview.aspx?reviewid=4308971

Not sure what HD's the person had, which is the next issue - do I get the RE4's? Can I get 2TB or should they be less for this application? I saw a review on this site that said WD RE4 isn't great for Mac OS - but it seems this drive as its own technology to help with errors
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1745651/re4-caviar-black.html
What to get?

The point - this is a lot of money and I want to feel I have some piece of mind. I really can't afford 2 raids, which seems ridiculous. More importantly, can't afford to lose years of data. I want to be SURE I don't. Any suggestions on my purchase…. I beg?

 

[kanewolf]

I have had Synology NAS for many years (in a home setting) and have been happy enough that I have bought replacement Synology units as the they got old.

First, with the review -- remember that RAID is NOT backup. If it is critical then you better have multiple physical copies.

Lets start with the basics, how much usable space do you need? How many users will this be supporting? Do you have a windows domain that you want to join this to for user authentication, etc?
The DS1515+ might not be the right unit for you. Try to answer the above questions and see if that give you any insight.

I use the HGST disks for my NAS or the WD Red Pro.

 

[sarine]

Hi Kanewolf… Thank u - I thought it was a system where I could consolidate all my files (more organized) with redundancy? I probably have a few TB's of data (at least 4) - plus data continues to grow, especially with video (raw files take up space). I have so many HD's - they all run out of space. That is the main need, plus I like the fact you can swap as u run out of space. As for the other features - they looked like something I could use… just in the process of starting a business and would be great to set up a domain or access material, stream. Do you suggest something else?

 

[kanewolf]

The lifespan of a NAS like this should be expected to be 5 years. So, is 12TB enough space? That would let you use a DS415+ with 4x4TB disks. Memory upgradeability on a NAS is not really important in most situations. Look at your space needs for 5 years and purchase hardware that will meet those requirements.

I would recommend getting a 4TB USB3 disk as the backup for the NAS. They have USB3 ports for just such use.

 

[sarine]

The lifespan of a NAS like this should be expected to be 5 years. So, is 12TB enough space? That would let you use a DS415+ with 4x4TB disks. Memory upgradeability on a NAS is not really important in most situations. Look at your space needs for 5 years and purchase hardware that will meet those requirements.

I would recommend getting a 4TB USB3 disk as the backup for the NAS. They have USB3 ports for just such use.

Ok - so that would be 4 drives with one dive failure or 8TB for 2 drive failure. And then I guess I would need to purchase cloud storage if I wanted to be sure.

 

[kanewolf]

The lifespan of a NAS like this should be expected to be 5 years. So, is 12TB enough space? That would let you use a DS415+ with 4x4TB disks. Memory upgradeability on a NAS is not really important in most situations. Look at your space needs for 5 years and purchase hardware that will meet those requirements.

I would recommend getting a 4TB USB3 disk as the backup for the NAS. They have USB3 ports for just such use.

Ok - so that would be 4 drives with one dive failure or 8TB for 2 drive failure. And then I guess I would need to purchase cloud storage if I wanted to be sure.

Yes, you could create a RAID5 with 4 disks. It would tolerate 1 drive failure without a problem. You can always buy a 5th disk when you buy the 4 so that you have a shelf spare. A RAID10 would allow two drives to fail without loss of data. But disk failure is not real likely if you buy quality hardware and don't abuse it. Also have a realistic expectation of when to replace it. Disk reliability declines after about 5 years. Consider replacement.

The Synology unit will send you a disk health report every month via e-mail. It shows how many bad sectors the disks have. If you see those numbers climbing then it is time to replace disks.

I use Amazon Glacier for my cloud backup. Synology has a client which will automatically upload to Amazon. I use it in manual mode. Even with just a 5Mbit upload bandwidth, I was able to store 100GB archives of pictures.

Synology isn't the only player. Their competitors are Qnap and Thecus. You should look at the models each of them provide. It maybe that one of them has a key feature that you desire.

 

[sarine]

The lifespan of a NAS like this should be expected to be 5 years. So, is 12TB enough space? That would let you use a DS415+ with 4x4TB disks. Memory upgradeability on a NAS is not really important in most situations. Look at your space needs for 5 years and purchase hardware that will meet those requirements.

I would recommend getting a 4TB USB3 disk as the backup for the NAS. They have USB3 ports for just such use.

Ok - so that would be 4 drives with one dive failure or 8TB for 2 drive failure. And then I guess I would need to purchase cloud storage if I wanted to be sure.

Yes, you could create a RAID5 with 4 disks. It would tolerate 1 drive failure without a problem. You can always buy a 5th disk when you buy the 4 so that you have a shelf spare. A RAID10 would allow two drives to fail without loss of data. But disk failure is not real likely if you buy quality hardware and don't abuse it. Also have a realistic expectation of when to replace it. Disk reliability declines after about 5 years. Consider replacement.

The Synology unit will send you a disk health report every month via e-mail. It shows how many bad sectors the disks have. If you see those numbers climbing then it is time to replace disks.

I use Amazon Glacier for my cloud backup. Synology has a client which will automatically upload to Amazon. I use it in manual mode. Even with just a 5Mbit upload bandwidth, I was able to store 100GB archives of pictures.

Synology isn't the only player. Their competitors are Qnap and Thecus. You should look at the models each of them provide. It maybe that one of them has a key feature that you desire.

Thank you very much for your generous time and help!!! 🙂

 

[kanewolf]

Use the Synology website to take a "test drive" of the user interface -- https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/5.2/live_demo
It will give you an idea of what you can and can't easily do.