pred02

I know there have been multiple threads regarding backup and NAS solutions, but I am torn as to what direction I should be heading.

I need to build/determine the most reliable and easy-to-maintain NAS solution at my parents place. Currently they have an old (Athlon XP 1800) computer running two RAID1 drives on a cheap PCI SATA controller on our wired gigabit network. It's a fake raid (proprietary controller) on XP with some network shares. I configured their computer (workstation) so they save all their documents and pictures to this drive. I also have an external USB2 hard drive attached to that machine that I use for sporadic backups.

The setup today is running fine, however I am afraid of the effort required to maintain this with my being away. Given the file server is an XP machine every so often it has to be rebooted, for auto-updates, or whatever. Also, the fan on the motherboard is starting to die out provided the machine is old.

I see going down the path of one or two options

1) DLink DS-323 NAS device - where I would take the drives, reformat them, and use the DLink device to do its thing. I know RAID1 is not a backup, so what I would do is attach the external USB to one of the workstations (computers run 24x7 in our house) and do a backup of the shared location.

2) Retain the home grown NAS and install FreeNAS - or other Linux based software, repair the broken fan or put in another motherboard in the computer, attach the external RAID1 directly to the file server and set up rsync and backups. This would provide a more robust and faster solution, plus given it’s a Linux based kernel I presume it would be stable and not require intervention like XP (i.e. auto-updates)

The following are the requirements:
1) Easy to maintain - as I am not available and my parents are not computer I would like to limit the amount of interaction that may be required with the set up.
2) Redundancy - to keep the data available in event a single disk fails
3) Data Safety / Backup - this I will accomplish with the 3rd disk doing the backups.
4) Ease of replacement - in a case on disk dies, I would like a simple interface so I can guide them how to rebuild the array.
5) Scalability - in case we add more drives or need to increase the size of the shared platform.

Most of the data will be pictures, videos, and Word documents.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks!

magiciansampras

My solution? mozy.com.

JClishe

Windows Home Server. This is the exact set of problems that WHS was designed to address.

WHS:

- Provides data redundancy by duplicating specific shares that you set to be duplicated. It's a simple checkbox: If you configure a share to be duplicated, then WHS duplicates the data on the share to another physical disk
- Scales up as you add drives. Run out of space? Simply go buy another disk (internal or external), install it, and reboot. WHS will see that you've added another disk and it will ask you if you want WHS to use the disk for data duplication. Say yes and you're done.
- Installs a client on all of your PC's that will automatically back up your PC's to your WHS
- Allows you to remotely access your WHS administration screen via the Internet for troubleshooting / configuration
- Has a fair amount of 3rd party partners working on add-ons. For example, on mine I have a router control add-on that shows me a graph of my historical data usage of my Linksys router. I also have a bit torrent add-on that will automatically start downloading as soon as I drop a torrent onto a specific share
- Allows you to publish and share photos, videos, etc to the Internet

In my opinion, WHS is an awesome device. As I mentioned earlier, your problems were it's exact design goals. It was designed to address families with multiple PC's that need to be backed up, easy to add storage, and easy enough for an average user to administer.

star_world

I would strongly recommend one of the Synology NAS devices. I use a DS-207+ (http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS207+/index.php) with 2 x 500Gb drives in a RAID 1 configuration, it has been 100% reliable. Virtually silent device, very easy to configure (they just brought out a big upgrade to the web management interface) and configurable to do all the things you need to here.

You could re-use your existing hard drives (or just get 2 new ones, since they are so cheap now) and have the whole thing set up in a couple of hours. Far neater than dealing with a Windows-based system that needs regular maintenance, patches, etc. The only time I've rebooted the Synology device is when I've upgraded it for new functionality, which is an important difference. It regularly runs 3-4 months at a time without being touched.

mre5765

My solution is to use a NAS server for backup, and backup up the My Documents folder of each user and computer in the house to the NAS server dally, weekly, and monthly. It has worked well for the last two PCs that have died; I've recovered everything I needed on the replacements.

Karen's Replicator is a simple and free way to back up data. It just copies from source to destination, and either can be a local drive, a mapped network drive, or a a UNC folder.

The only thing I don't like about Karen's Replicator is that it is not automated enough ... ideally it would run scheduled back up jobs without prompting. However, as long as I'm logged in, and then switch to another user, the utility reliably backs up.

SJUAMMF

There are many NAS on the market. I have had a few over the past 5-6 years. Here is my requirements:

1. No client SW requirements.
2. Good spin down mode.
3. Gigabit ethernet interface.

Everytime I opened the box and read that a client SW needs to be loaded to work, I would box it back up and return it. There is no need to go thru this trouble.

Spin down mode is very important for home use since accesses in an home environment is actually very small. This prolongs the life of the drive and save power too. This would eliminate all the PC based solutions.

Gigabit ethernet came last and I've only had it in the last NAS box acquired. With a gigabit ethernet switch, 11n access point and GE port on newer PCs, GE port on NAS only make sense.

The first few boxes were Tritton SOHO NAS. This box worked very well but went out of production. An early Maxtor Shared Storage failed. Now I have a Maxtor SS2 with GE. This box has an USB port to connect a backup drive.

sbm12

You can configure Windows to spin down drives as part of the power saver settings.

It still may not be the best option out there based on other issues, but the spin-down option on the drives is available.

zippybxl

We used FreeNas in our small office. Piece of cake to setup, easy -- real easy to maintain. Never had any problems with it -- we used an old PC as the server.

Also pretty good is NasLite (serverelements.com) -- it costs about $25 but also a real treat to work with.

swanscn

Maybe I missed something, but I only see one computer in the mix. If this is the case it could be easy to give you the protestion you are looking for easlily and cheaply. If you are thinking about upgrading the machine anyway consider a MB that has onboard RAID (like the Intel and other boards). You then setup a Raid Mirrored configuration between two drives. How I would do this is actually I would setup two raid pairs with 4 drives. THe 1st 2 drives say 320 to 500GB eSata drives (should be less than $100 each) for the OS and software. The other two drives would then be in there own mirrored pair for their data or shares as you called them. This would give them protection by having the 2nd copy, and availablility if one of the drives fails in either set the machine keeps going. Another added benefit is performance since you are no longer going over the network but through a PCI-Express bridge chip.
Just my two cents.

JClishe

And, Windows Home Server does not require a software client to be installed. The client is only if you want to leverage automated backups.

Your PC's can access shares on WHS just fine without the client being installed.

SJUAMMF

Sure, then that computer must be on. The beauty of a NAS is that it is always on and still consume very little power, until an access is ordered.

Conceivably a laptop can be configured with Wake On LAN acting as a NAS and still draw very little power. But the wake up time will be long. I do set spin down timer on my laptops.

When I access my NAS, I still have to wait a little for it to spin up. But it is acceptable to me. There are situations where a dedicated function is better than a general purpose computer and I feel this is one of those.

pred02

QUOTE]Maybe I missed something, but I only see one computer in the mix. If this is the case it could be easy to give you the protestion you are looking for easlily and cheaply. [/QUOTE]

There are going to be multiple client machines, workstations and laptops who will be sharing this. I would like to also set up external access to the shared files to access photos and other items if needed.

The Linux based DLink DS-323 seems very popular. Do you have any experience with it? The only requirement it does not fulfill is the USB to backup, though I presume it can be hacked (USB is primarily avail to be a printer server).


This seems like a good device but a bit over my budget ($200). (twice as much as the DLink).

Maybe without justification, but I think I will try to stay away from MS products for this one, I know that you cannot group them all in one bucket, but between Windows updates, viruses, etc, I prefer to keep the NAS on Linux or other open-source.

nmenaker

WHS doesn't do RAID IIRC.

nmenaker

What is your primary objective? Is it simply local pc backup and restore capability?

pred02

1) Sharing of files across a number of workstations;
2) Those files to be safe in event of a hardware failure
3) Maintainless process for the system performing 1 and 2 above.

I will set the workstations so documents are all saved to these drives and all pictures, videos, and other media files are available there. Thus the loss of the independent workstation hard drives is less of a concern that the above.

Thanks!