NASLite Network Attached Storage

Brass monkeys here!

How about you spend the raid card money on some extra HD's and when the next verison of naslite comes out use the mirror option? or use a second box?

Yes, I see it's around freezing in Reading - it was 18 degrees in Belgrade today

But I've decided just to go for a 250GB regular NAS box for the moment - cheap as chips at less than £50 for a Hitachi HDD which can be set to spin down when not in use. And I still reckon that a TeraStation best fits my needs for a home server that I can access from wherever I am and can offer some reasonable degree of security/redundancy. Let's not let the best be the enemy of the good, eh?

this is something i actually considered... just buying a couple of drives for an offline backup but as soon as you get a couple of TB it becomes very expensive.

Software RAID is fine when it works, but then it usually works when the drives work. When you need it most, software RAID tends to cut and run, dropping you flat on your behind.

Here is just one account of what happens when you rely on software to manage your RAID. This also happens to be your favorite Buffalo TerraStation: http://cs.grossmann.com/blogs/fg/archiv ... 18/19.aspx

What about down time? With a DIY NAS i can go to the corner store and get my parts. With a TerraStation you get to talk to some dude in India.

Just my few pesos

I see they recommend a second box just in case the first one screws you over "never rely on one data storage, just delete the RAID array and rebuild it"

Gone are the days when you could just back up your data to a few DVDR's
With the size of hd and the low prices its tempting to stick all your data on the drive, after the Christmas holiday I will commision another box to back up the other,

amazon,


http://www.amazon.com/HD-H1-OTGL-R5-Ter ... lectronics

just got this off the "terra"station guys

Dear Sir

I’m afraid we use software RAID in all off our NAS devices. Unfortunately it is not possible to add a hardware RAID card to our NAS devices as there is no expansion slot.

Regards

You can maybe do that in Texas, but you won't find a hardware RAID card at my corner store!

That's good advice - it's the principle behind that old hoary concept of backup - don't confuse RAID and backup, they are not the same thing, and having RAID does not eliminate the need for backup.

With a RAID array, you're protected from downtime in cases of disk failure, however, there is no protection against data loss caused by file deletions (accidental or otherwise) data corruption or viruses - in case of a disaster that takes out your main site, an offsite backup could be the only thing that keeps you in business, and if the nature of your business warrants it, a backup site would actually allow for uninterrupted processing.

For the record, I've had instances with hardware RAID where a single failed disk manifested itself as multiple failed disks requiring the array to be deleted and recreated - this is known as "punch through" and is not unique to software RAID.

I think this is the nub of the issue, and one I've probably not given enough thought to. But that's the good thing about these discussions - one can test out one's ideas and get a variety of advice and then make a more informed decision about what to do.

So I'll go with my upgrade NASLite box for now and address the back up issue before deciding whether in fact I really need RAID. But some of the other features on the TeraStation would be nice to have on the NASLite, wouldn't they?

Being literal can be fun, so in that case I think you should get a proprietary piece of hardware and reduce the possible sources for spare parts to a bare minimum. That's a sure bet to get you up and running in the shortest time possible in the event of a problem.

Does that make perfect sense in Belgrade?

It's obviously possible for hardware RAID to also destroy data (per fordem's post), but the frequency of such events is far lower than with software RAID. It all amounts to risk and your willingness to take it.

Probably yes, but then the box itself will actually be installed back in Ireland which simply adds to the complexities of fixing anything that goes wrong!!!

I agree its good advise, but now sjdigital has to buy two buff box's to safe guard his data. The original post was referming to to the costs of using naslite with hardware raid cards. now his costs have doubled.

i'd save my cash and buy two cheap old pc's 4 300 gb hard's for each box and i'd still have money to add futher pci hd cards.

Data loss is really bad when it happens I know I have been there!
I havent gone the Raid route yet, the very thought of lossing the array and not being able to get it working doesnt bare thinking about.

the two nas box option is the one i am going to go with.

As I said above, the value of these sorts of discussions is that you can learn a lot from others' experience and their own suggestions and I'm inclined to agree that two NASLite boxes may well be the answer. It's certainly less expensive that the RAID route!

Whoa sjdigital,

For a moment there I thought you went off the road on us. Excellent recovery man. I would have to agree fully with your last statement. Well put!

Off the road? Moi? Shurely not!!!!

But the whole thread does rather make me wonder who would really benefit from the RAID option with NASLite which has its origins in extremely cost effective storage. RAID controllers and 2 MHz processors is getting a long way away from that.

The old adage of BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP may still be as true today as it was 10 years ago but not in all cases.

Not that long ago when hard disks were small virtually everything you had was of some importance so you backed up everything.

But now there is lots of data that whilst is important is not critical. A good example is multimedia.

Backup technologies haven't kept economical pace with HD prices... i mean its totally impractical you backup 1TB of multimedia content.

CD and DVDs are too small, tapes are too expensive and slow.. incremental backups whilst useful would represent a significant portion of my lacking social life to keep up with.

Im not proposing a solution to this dilema but look at the economic math...


500GB HD = <$200

no matter what is on that disk its worth more than $200 to replace. RAID as a means of multimedia backup is about all most of us can afford.