Setting up a NAS

[Bladactania]

Hello,
I'm looking to setup a modest NAS for my home. My question is to the appropriate hard drive type and RAID setup. The NAs will be used to store mostly media (pictures, music, video) for the home network that will be occasionally streamed to the PS3 or tablets. Also for some general storage of files not needed on the devices all the time (old documents, school work, etc). I'm thinking of getting 2 1TB drives, but with prices as they are, might drop down to 500GB.

For example, Western Digital offers Green, Blue and Black Hard drives. Which one is best for this application? Also, is RAID 1 going to be worth the extra investment to protect me from file losses? I'm a little inexperienced in this area and don't want to spend money unnecessarily, but at the same time, don't want to go cheap and leave myself exposed to massive data loss.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

[RealBeast]

First, I have to say that you need to understand that RAID is NOT to be used in place of good backup. If the array goes you lose it all, period.

RAID is fault tolerant though and will assist in protecting data.

The most important question is how much space you think that you will need by this time next year or so and then plan your NAS accordingly. Depending on your budget, I would lean towards a 2 or 4 bay ReadyNAS for a basic consumer level NAS.

 

[FireWire2]

If you have a door stopper computer laying around the house, you can have you self a NAS.

Upgrade the NIC to Gb NIC if need, install a HaRDWARE raid like SPM394 or SPM393 from DATOptic. Because it's a driver-less hardware raid controller, this will not eat up the CPU resource and you don't have to deal with drivers headache.

Download FreeNAS, burn to CD, boot from this CD, install the OS to USB pen (1GB min)
Install HDD to the SPM39x, create a raid
Boot the system, login with the correct IP
Mount the the raid, Set up the SMB

VOILA! you have a NAS
It may be take you about 10min to set up SAMBA. there are 1000's users in FreeNAS forum or here that can help you!

 

[Bladactania]

I regularly backup critical files online via dropbox. I want to use RAID to protect my other files (music etc) against hard drive failure. I thought that's what RAID was all about.

 

[Benteknik]

I regularly backup critical files online via dropbox. I want to use RAID to protect my other files (music etc) against hard drive failure. I thought that's what RAID was all about.

I didnt mean to open old topic but , i would like to clarify about RAID ... RAID have several options , some are function to speed up the performance of the storage some are to increase redundant of the hard drive ( which this the one you want) with two identical drives with partition will be 1.2.3 1.a 2.a 3. if one fail the other one still working.

but mostly motherboards or systems these days are mean to speed up the storage performancec on their RAID setting.

Answering the op's question : for more reliable there are many updated solutions as we speaks (now 2014) , western digitals offers NAS hard drive which is RED one also seagate.for bay solutions. ....since few years there are so many hard drive faulties from manufactures ...

but i definitely will get Two hard drive and set it to RAID redundant and it is easily be done through disk managemenent if you running windows and dont required high profile hard drive ( you can use with ATA i believe)