I agree with Tim. After researching storage options to a level of detail I never planned, I came to much the same conclusion. If I was going with an off the shelf solution it would be Synology. FreeNAS was really attractive, given the high level of configurability it offered.
Since I had an existing NAS, a DLink NAS-345 running five drives in RAID 5, I have continued to use it. However, realizing that a single volume RAID 5 setup did not provide the redundancy and setup I desired, I wiped it and went to four drives in a Mirrored RAID configuration with two volumes. So I have two separate volumes, each running on two mirrored drives. This gives me the integrity and redundancy desired for my files for now. It also gives me a performance gain over the previous single volume RAID 5 arrangement as well. Not perfect, but it meets my needs. I pull the mirrors once a month and rotate them out with another drive. The current drives go in the fire safe. Dan Sent from my iPad > On Dec 5, 2014, at 9:18 AM, Tim Crone via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> > wrote: > > On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 11:23 PM, OK Don via Mercedes <mercedes@okiebenz.com> > wrote: > >> I copy (via automatic program) all changes to the folders I'm interested in >> (photos, documents, music, etc.) from the primary disk to a second disk in >> the PC, then again to an external disk. and on one of our PCs, to a second >> external disk.. Very cheap and simple, it all happens when I'm asleep, and >> I have three or four copies of everything. when one disk dies, I just >> replace it, and it gets auto brought up to date. I fought with SANs, NASs, >> and RAID at work for years, didn't want to mess with it at home. >> > > I used to do something similar, but recent viruses have taken to destroying > files in all online storage devices (then charging a bitcoin ransom for the > recovery key, which may or may not work). I have thought about investing > in a tape drive (which is ironic given my employer :) but in practice I > just keep a USB disk offline, and bring it up occasionally to do the > replication. The problem with rotating storage is that it needs to be > spinning to keep working, so I can't leave it in a drawer and expect it to > work. There were some good deals on 64G USB sticks last week, but I didn't > buy any since I don't have a good plan for using them. > > Anyway, given the state of viruses, I would definitely recommend keeping a > solid-state backup - flash, or DVD, or an offline disk - rather than > depending on a system that uses Windows shares. > > To the original post, Synology is a good choice for low power, low noise, > high configurability, reasonable cost and reliability. If you roll your > own, I have to agree with Dan that FreeNAS is the way to go. If you are > willing to lose some abilities, many of the 802.11ac routers have USB ports > that will accept a USB drive (or even multiple drives) and expose Windows > and NFS shares. > > Merry Christmas to all, > Tim > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those > individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has > no control over the content of the messages of each contributor. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com All posts are the result of individual contributors and as such, those individuals are responsible for the content of the post. The list owner has no control over the content of the messages of each contributor.
