Which RAID for Synology NAS

[Pancho]

I want to move all my stuff from all those separate HDDs on a single NAS. I bought a Synology 213+ sometime ago and as far as I can remeber I set it up as a RAID 1. So I should have the same data on each disk and in case one of them goes down, the other one will still carry all the data.

For a new NAS/RAID I favour the same principle. Have the best safety available there is. I still need to choose the NAS, but I think I'll go for the 2413+ or 1813+. Can anybody tell me which is the best way to go in terms of the RAID? There seems to be also the choice of SHR and SHR-2. The RAID Selector on the Synology site is not a big helper, but I guess it's either SHR-2 or RAID 10, but I'm not really into this stuff.

Anybody an idea? I also wonder whether I can start with four or five disks and then go for more in the future or if this will become a problem with the RAID type.

Thanks for any help!

[mattf06]

Hi,

may be can help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

I'm in RAID 5 (in fact, NetGear RAID5 version) with a NetGear ReadyNAS NV+ with 4 disk of 1To.

The Netgear RAID version add the capability to increase volume dynamically (by adding new HD).

regards,

Matt

Newcomer (<20 posts) alert: please use the URL tags - HB

[Rork]

Whatever RAID you're picking, a separate backup system is preferable.
A power serge can destroy all HD's in an instant....

[Pancho]

Mmmh. I still wonder what's the best way. Have a redundant NAS (e.g. 2413+) at work (RAID 10) and back up every few days/week onto several WD Green and store these in another location OR buy two 1813+ (either Raid 0 or SHR-2?) and back up one to the other every day + external WD Green. Might not be possible to buy everything at once, but I need a plan. Also, can add HDDs to Raid 10 or SHR (-2) during the lifetime of the hardware? Don't want to put in 8 or 12 HDDs in the beginning.

[Pancho]

P.S.: Which UPS did you get?

[Bullit]

What about one of those power surge protectors?

Ideally it should be a NAS in 2 different places, we never know when a fire or thieves arrive.

[Pancho]

I just ordered the 1813+ and for the start 4x WD Red 3TB and 2x WD Green 3TB for back ups. I plan to buy another raid one day and mirror both. For now I thought of using the SHR-2 on the NAS so there is a bit of safety envolved.

I also ordered the APC UPS 700VA. Hope this will do the job. The other ones were much more expensive. Guess for a laptop a simple iver power surfe will do.

Anybody any more tips?

[Rork]

backup... backup.... backup....

And keep the backup disks some place else than the office/serverroom ;)

[Pancho]

Used to have back ups at home, my parents home, girlfriendshome and the office. But always on single hard disks. And in the end this becomes a big mess. Impossible to keep them all up to date with the latest data. But one NAS in each location is impossible in terms of budget I guess and even blu rays are impossible to handle. Even for a 3Tb disk that would be 30-60 disks.

Horrible!


So which raid level are you using?

[Rork]

Well... i didn't say it was easy ;)

To keep things organized, you need some form of scheme.
A simple backup table/calender and numbered disks will go a long way keeping it organized.

Normally it would be a 4 disk rotation for Monday to Thursday, 3 disks for every end of the week on Friday, and 1 disk for the last Friday on the end of the month.
This way it's easy to step back 1 month, up to 3 weeks in a row, and stepping back per day during that week. So 8 disk in total.
Some people also go further back, but I don't see the point in that really, as you lost way too many data on a busy project anyway.
You have to decide if you go into a full backup every time, or go with incremental backups.

Finished projects are cleaned regarding non-used footage, proxies etc., and stored on two separate drives outside the normal flow of things.

Having mixed experiences with HD's and DVD's, it doesn't really matter much imho where data is stored for longer periods.
With digital information, when the carrier is broken in some way, you're in a bad spot anyway.

Oh... And over here everything is RAID5 btw.

Hope this helps a bit.

rob