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Recommend me a cheap 2tb NAS with mirrored drive

edutech4schools

By edutech4schools
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edutech4schools

edutech4schools

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The Servers data drive at a primary school is running out of space, so I want to move all the photos and videos off the server and on to another device. I am thinking some kind of NAS device would do. It does not need to be massive, only 2tb of disk space but I would like it to be mirrored. I would also need it to be mappable so everyone can access the shared folders from the windows domain computers and preferably use FAT or NTFS rather than a linux based drive system as this caused me an issue a few years back.

 

Not looking to spend much as this is a primary school that has just spent most of its money.

seawolf

seawolf

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Cheap and data don't really go well together so I can't recommend a cheap NAS. However, I can recommend a good value, and relatively inexpensive solution using FreeNAS.

 

1. FreeNAS Mini from iXSystems - commercially supported and great quality and lots of storage in a small box http://www.ixsystems.com/storage/freenas/

 

2. BYO FreeNAS box using a decent MicroATX case (Lian Li etc,) an i3 processor, 8GB RAM and 4 x 2-4TB drives. You can install FreeNAS OS on a decent quality 8GB USB drive.

 

Both of these solutions can provide SMB shares as well as FTP, AFP, NFS, and iSCSI. FAT or NTFS are not good file systems to use for data storage as they are not highly resilient. FreeNAS uses ZFS, which is the best filesystem to use for storage in my opinion (and many others).

edutech4schools

edutech4schools

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Thanks for the info.

 

Just had a thought, I would need to backup the NAS drive just in case that went poof.

 

Would it be a good idea to get an external USB drive and plug that into the server and map this as the media drive and then get this to backup to backup to the NAS drive, or would it be better to us the NAS drive as the shared media drive and back that up to an external USB drive.

 

Both options require the same hardware, just not sure which way round would be best.

seawolf

seawolf

Posted
Posted
Thanks for the info.

 

Just had a thought, I would need to backup the NAS drive just in case that went poof.

 

Would it be a good idea to get an external USB drive and plug that into the server and map this as the media drive and then get this to backup to backup to the NAS drive, or would it be better to us the NAS drive as the shared media drive and back that up to an external USB drive.

 

Both options require the same hardware, just not sure which way round would be best.

 

That depends on the speed of your network and if you have USB 3.0 on your server. If you only have a 100Mb network then a USB 2.0 drive would work ok, but I would be more inclined to use a decent NAS with RAID (1, 6, or 10 depending on number of drives) than a USB for primary storage, servers can drop USB devices from time to time and unless you get at least a 2 bay USB drive you are only one drive failure from a restore.

mac_shinobi

mac_shinobi

Posted
Posted (edited)
That depends on the speed of your network and if you have USB 3.0 on your server. If you only have a 100Mb network then a USB 2.0 drive would work ok, but I would be more inclined to use a decent NAS with RAID (1, 6, or 10 depending on number of drives) than a USB for primary storage, servers can drop USB devices from time to time and unless you get at least a 2 bay USB drive you are only one drive failure from a restore.

 

A 2 bay qnap or synology nas plus two 2tb wd red drives ?

 

With it being for the server surely your servers get connected to a gigabit switch ie core switch or a seperate gigabit switch ?

 

If not depends what other connectors are on the nas and server

Edited by mac_shinobi
TheGoodGuy

TheGoodGuy

Posted
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We use a cloud backup simply because it has multiple redundancy and is disaster proof. E.g. What happens if there is a flood in your whole area?

 

Took me ages to find one that had all the assurances for data protection that was a decent price.

edutech4schools

edutech4schools

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We use a cloud backup simply because it has multiple redundancy and is disaster proof

 

We do have cloud backup but,

 

1. It is the server hdd'd that are getting full and I need to get additional space mainly for photos and videos.

2. The cloud backup is expensive so photos and videos get backed up locally on the understanding that if the school burns down they will not get them back. Everything else is backed up offsite.

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