Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic NAS enclosure buying advice

You will end out paying 3 to 4 times for an equivalent Rack Mounted version.....and for many Business Features which you will never use....

E.g. the Rack mounted equivalent of the NAS I mentioned above is about �1,150.......versus about �250 for the Desktop version......both without Drives

Simply buy a Rack Shelf and put the NAS on top of that inside the Rack

Another important question to ask about any NAS:

What happens if the NAS Enclosure itself gets fried?

Can I put the Disks inside another Manufacturer's NAS
OR
Should I buy another NAS Enclosure as a Backup?

This is your biggest, albeit low, risk. You're not too concerned about the unit frying as the data on the disks is still there. There are some components like the RAID controller that are subject to common mode failure. Extremely unlikely, but possible.

You need to back up your NAS, most people would use a large external storage drive. The NAS software from the big players has a backup function in it.

Well I agree that they are expensive, if your going to add a bunch of other items to your server rack, you need to be sensitive to thermal issues. One thing that rack systems do is keep your hard drives nice a cool. They also fit correctly, next to your switch, UPS, etc. Which brings me to another issue. I believe that getting a NAS should go hand in hand with a UPS (uninterrupted power supply). Sudden power outages are not great for hard drives, especially hot ones running in a server. Here in NY area, power outages have become a bit of an annual event. At the very least, they allow time for your server to shut itself down, at its leisure.

Makes sense to have things side by side for wired/wireless serving. The expense and capacity is worth it to allow for expandability in the medium to long term IMO. Just imagine all the space saved if all your CDs/DVDs/BDs and their cases could disappear?



~M~

I had a quick look at the spec and it reads like it only supports 3Gbps SATA interfaces; as all the new drives are capable of 6 Gbps is this not a significant limitation?

Regards,
Carl

Running the QNAP 259. Bought specifically because of the fast CPU (for a NAS) which makes up to 100MB/s tranfers possible.

Also because a lot of good QKPG packages ('apps') and standard options such as MyCloudNAS are available.

I don't think HDDs get anywhere near 3Gbps so in practice it makes no difference, and the 6Gbps-interface drives are backwards compatible.

Might come into play for very high end SSDs - am I right in thinking that this equates to 750MBps?

S

That happened to me.

My QNAP TS509 died within the first few months of use. I sent it back for replacement and was able to simply stick the drives from the failed model into the new one and they worked as though nothing had changed.

I now keep a spare TS509 box available for such issues.


That's probably less likely to work as it's likely there are proprietary settings on the drives...

Couple of Q's about the Synology units.

Whats the difference between the Synology 411j and the 212j? Is it just the number of drives or are there feature and hardware differences that may affect performance?

Can either the 411j or the 212j be run in single disc mode then subsequent discs added later?

If yes to above, can subsequent discs be run in RAID or JBOD mode?

If yes to above, can extra disc be added without reformatting.

Are discs hot swappable? If yes, can you 'rotate' discs through a hot swap bay to maintain backup checkpoints or keep a copy offline?

Other than using default Windows backup, is any Windows Server backup supplied with the units that will run on 2008 R2?

Whats the difference between a Synology 411j and say a business orientated DS411?

RAM, Processor, Warranty and Product Lifetimes on the Market

The other questions are best dealt with in the Synology FAQ's, as simple Yes / No are not adequate responses

The Synology units are very flexible.......but one needs to understand the full knock-on consequences of each of your questions

3Gbit SATA is not that bad for regular spinning disks. For SSD it matters greatly though as one channels get capped with an SSD on 3Gbit. Recently bought an Corsair Force GT 240GB for a laptop and it R/W over 500MB/s so 6Gbit was necessary so that it would not get capped. But the fastest spinning discs put out about 150MB/s so they are not even close.