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

IMO, you only need 3GBit SATA for video streaming. I ran with 1.5GBit in my Linux server for years with no issues whatsoever.

Hi Mark
Your Fried Enclosure experience is why I asked that question

Another issue to ponder is what you might have done if the Enclosure had failed 12-18 months after you bought it........the TS509 would likely have been replaced by an "TS510".........would your Disks have worked in that Enclosure??

These are Rhetorical Questions that Users need to ponder before embarking on a NAS Purchase

As we all know, Ripping e.g. 5,000 CD's in a huge Time Investment.........and Ripping DVD's or Blurays takes much longer again...........that Time Investment should be properly protected

Single Points of Failure should be avoided as much as possible........hence the multiples of Disks to protect against Disk Failure

However, the NAS Enclosure remains a Single Point of failure that people tend to forget about..........and then to complicate matters, most people think that the Disks will simply work inside another NAS Enclosure...........or in a PC

When in reality, the Disks may only be "read" by the specific model of NAS......NAS's higher up the range may have a different protocol and may not read the Disks

Many times it's best to buy the same Enclosure as a Backup........and then use that Enclosure as a once every Two or Four Week Backup to the Main Online NAS

Hence cost considerations begin to Double up..........e.g. Two Desktop NAS's or Two Rack Mounted NAS's???

Hi Manus
Assuming your Ripped DVD's are in the MP4 Format, then you can use the Program below to convert the Video Files from MP4 to MKV (recommended)

MKV is fast becoming the FLAC of the Video world in terms of acceptance and playability across many different devices.......the fact that it's a non-proprietary and royalty free format helps in this respect

MakeMKV

The Programs allows you to build a Queue of Movies or TV Shows that you want to convert...........and then you can go about your business and come back hours later when they've finished

Converting Files from one format to another is a lengthy process........but a little quicker than ripping DVD's again..........especially when one adds the Disc Insert and Eject times etc

Take a look and see what you think..........free to try

A very good question...

I mirror my first TS509 onto my second every day so I always have a redundant copy available should one of them fail.

Maybe a question for the QNAP forums??

Cheers,

Mark

Hi Ian,

best place for the answers will be the Synology forum. Obviously not as good as HH though

I was googling for IP Cams the other day to run with my 411j.
This was a useful page

When I upgraded from the TS410 to the TS459 it was just a matter of swapping the disks over.

Tim

I bought a Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 plus NAS with a view to building a video server solution for my existing DVD and BR disc collection - still a work in progress. The unit has 4 bays each loaded with 2TB Western Digital (WD RE4) enterprise drives. The ReadyNAS is not rack mountable and limited to 2TB capacity drives although the WD RE4 drives do have a 3gb/s SATA interface.

The ReadyNAS has some nice features (e.g. media/Sonos/Squeezbox/iTunes servers built-in or as an add-on, TimeMachine compatibility) . The other feature/service that Netgear offers is the ReadyNAS Vault - a "hybrid cloud" based offsite backup service which they provide free on a promotional basis for the first 2 years for a limited amount of storage (i.e. 2GB free for 2 years). I looked quickly at their site in the longer term - it appears 5GB storage currently costs $5.95/month with each additional 1GB costing $0.40/month.

No doubt there are other cloud based services that would allow you to achieve the same redundancy but having it offsite (i.e. house fire/flooding not an issue) and not having to buy and maintain 2 NAS set-ups - it may be worth exploring? Any issue with the online NAS could then be fixed/hardware replaced and data restored from the Vault...

OT: I am still stuck pondering to what format I should rip my DVD/BDs? Just copy file structures, make an ISO or convert to, say, a MKV format?

Agreed, but to protect against the single point failure of a RAID enclosure you don't need another RAID enclosure. My RAID NAS supports USB expansion so the RAID array gets backed up to a cheapo USB drive nightly, plus I have a second USB drive for a monthly backup that gets stored off site. So if the array controller dies I have two separate backups.

And that's all fine. Except, what happens if the Enclosure does fail? Sure, you have your USB Drives with the Data etc.

But even after attaching these onto a PC, switching your various Media Servers to read the USB Drives, rather than the NAS is hardly a seamless or easy switchover.

Likewise, many people here are talking about Large NAS Storage.

Take for example a soon to be typical 4 bay by 3Tb NAS (even 5Tb Drives soon enough) allowing for Raid overheads, that's about 9Tb (or 15Tb) of Data. Say 3Tb of Music and 6Tb or more of Movies.

In that scenario, how do you EASILY back up that amount of Data; multiples of USB Drives hardly qualifies.

IMHO and experience, Back to Back NAS Enclosures offer the best combination of Protection, Backups and Seamless Transition in the case of enclosure failure .

Well if your enclosure fails you replace it, reformat your drives if they can't be read by the new enclosure and restore from the USB drives.

I agree that if you are running a NAS with more than 2TB data my solution is not viable. But for those of us with less than 3000 CDs (say 1.5TB) and no interest in video streaming it is surely viable and cost effective. Plus if you have back to back NAS you still need on an off-site backup to protect against fire, flood, lightning strikes, and theft.

But I am 100% with you that you cannot rely on a single RAID NAS.

So it seems that we are heading towards a Sooloos-type 'TwinStore' solution of multiple backups. That makes it much more expensive but I think Ronnie's right, who wants to do all that ripping only to be let down by a component?

The Synology NAS I referred to earlier has a partner unit that takes storage levels to 100Tb which should be enough to cover the largest of music/movie collections. Even before factoring in drives, thats quite expensive.

M

Hi Manus,
All I was trying to do with the various posts is to highlight to people that they cannot rely on a Single Point of Failure.

Similarly, I wanted to highlight that in many cases, NAS's are used to back up Local Hard Drives of Computers; in which case, the NAS is the Secondary or Backup to the "Main" files on the local computers; in many cases that is how NAS's came to the market, i.e. as Secondary Backup Devices.

However, due to their flexibility and the fact that Media Libraries are expanding exponentially, many people have started to use NAS's as their PRIMARY Storage Devices i.e. the ONLY Place where their Media Libraries are stored!

As such, it's necessary to have a Backup Plan in place; as who wants to Rip 4,000 CD's and 500 Movies again

A solution which works well for me (as well as my piece of mind) is as follows:

** Have a decent performing NAS at home with enough Drives and expansion for the next 18 months or so. Dedicate that NAS to Music, Movies and TV SHows only.

** Convince a good friend or relative that he should have the exact same NAS and Drives; also dedicated to Media.

** The Music Libraries can be kept in Separate Folders to distinguish between his music library and mine but generally the Movie and TV Show Libraries can be indentical.

** Use the NAS Tools to Sync the Libraries over the Internet or on a fortnightly / monthly visit to his house.

** He is now my "Offsite" Backup........and I am his.

I choose to insert another NAS (Number 2) at home for a number of the "seamless changeover" reasons outlined above; but some may consider that to be overkill.

The main thing is that the NAS files have to be Backed Up and the knock on implications of single points of failure need to be thought through especially as Libraries go beyond the capacity of USB Drives.