How do I NAS?

[el01]

Hello all!

So I've been wanting to help my dad get a NAS (or some sort of backup device) up and running at my parents' house. However, I've been reading through the internet and some things aren't quite clear:

• Do I need a fixed IP address for a NAS?
• Will it cost money in my region (Boulder, Colorado, USA) to run a NAS (other than fee for buying) (as in an ISP fee)?
• Should I forgo RAID altogether and just back up somewhere else? I've heard that RAID isn't really a backup, and it's always good to have backups of backups.
• Are there any good, private, relatively cheap online alternatives to buying a NAS and drives? As in, my dad and I have qualms about Google Drive and AWS security...

Thanks all!

(please provide sources for the questions above: my dad isn't one to trust random people on the interwebs )

 

[Kandirma]

First things first, Some of your comments make me want to ensure we are talking about the same thing. A 'NAS' is just a second computer that is only - or primarily - used for storage and is attached somehow to your network. It does not need to be accessible outside of the building it is located in to be a NAS.

Do I need a fixed IP address for a NAS?

In general - no, but it may make setup easier if you are doing it manually.

Will it cost money in my region (Boulder, Colorado, USA) to run a NAS (other than fee for buying) (as in an ISP fee)?

You will need to pay for electricity to run it + hardware. If you want it to be accessible outside of your house you will need internet service to it. To use it within the house you do not, but you would need a router.

Should I forgo RAID altogether and just back up somewhere else? I've heard that RAID isn't really a backup, and it's always good to have backups of backups.

I'm not sure what you're asking about here. You're already talking about setting up a NAS, are you talking about the NAS using raid or your [dad's] PC? RAID on both ends will HELP, but by itself you are correct is not a backup solution. It is a mitigation solution - preventing 1 drive from failing killing everything, it takes 2. If the computer fries though, RAID goes with it - that's where a NAS or other bakup solution comes in.

Are there any good, private, relatively cheap online alternatives to buying a NAS and drives? As in, my dad and I have qualms about Google Drive and AWS security...

If he does not trust google drive or AWS it's going to be difficult - they are legitimately very good solutions. Many many enterprise backup solutions use AWS or Google's services as the actual storage for what they backup using their software. BackBlaze is another cloud backup solution, but IDK why he would trust them more than AWS or Google. These all come with a monthly fee.


---

All that said, if you are not comfortable setting it up yourself there are a lot of pre-built nas devices that make this whole process a lot easier for someone not as networking/tech savvy. Look up the Synology DS* line, QNAP TS* line, and to a lesser extend the Western Digital "My Cloud"* line. There are other brands as well, such as buffalo and apollo, but I don't have any personal experience with them. QNAP and Synology are very capable devices both for a pro, and super easy to setup for someone that has no knowledge at all.


*my cloud line DOES require an internet connection to use all features

What news sources does your dad trust? TheWireCutter is generally pretty good for tech reviews - and are owned/operated as a New York Times company, they did a review of NAS for home users, as well as external hard drives (also good for backups) an article on HOW to backup.

 

[el01]

First things first, Some of your comments make me want to ensure we are talking about the same thing. A 'NAS' is just a second computer that is only - or primarily - used for storage and is attached somehow to your network. It does not need to be accessible outside of the building it is located in to be a NAS.


In general - no, but it may make setup easier if you are doing it manually.

You will need to pay for electricity to run it + hardware. If you want it to be accessible outside of your house you will need internet service to it. To use it within the house you do not, but you would need a router.

I'm not sure what you're asking about here. You're already talking about setting up a NAS, are you talking about the NAS using raid or your [dad's] PC? RAID on both ends will HELP, but by itself you are correct is not a backup solution. It is a mitigation solution - preventing 1 drive from failing killing everything, it takes 2. If the computer fries though, RAID goes with it - that's where a NAS or other bakup solution comes in.


If he does not trust google drive or AWS it's going to be difficult - they are legitimately very good solutions. Many many enterprise backup solutions use AWS or Google's services as the actual storage for what they backup using their software. BackBlaze is another cloud backup solution, but IDK why he would trust them more than AWS or Google. These all come with a monthly fee.


---

All that said, if you are not comfortable setting it up yourself there are a lot of pre-built nas devices that make this whole process a lot easier for someone not as networking/tech savvy. Look up the Synology DS* line, QNAP TS* line, and to a lesser extend the Western Digital "My Cloud"* line. There are other brands as well, such as buffalo and apollo, but I don't have any personal experience with them. QNAP and Synology are very capable devices both for a pro, and super easy to setup for someone that has no knowledge at all.


*my cloud line DOES require an internet connection to use all features

NAS using RAID. Thanks for the help!

Yes, the intent is to have a backup at his house for his stuff and maybe my stuff if I come over.

I'll start using an old Phenom system to try and maybe get FreeNAS working, and see if I can use that with an old SAS backplane I found to make a janky "NAS".

EDIT: Looked at the Synology and QNAP lines, I find the QNAPs more appealing considering the price of Synology. The TS-231P looks most appealing to me (less than 2 bays is pointless, IMO)

Essentially, my dad trusts most news except for Fox talk shows, so I'll show him that later. It's just that he wants to keep important documents (taxes, etc.) under wraps in case there's a hack.

 

[Kandirma]

'll start using an old Phenom system to try and maybe get FreeNAS working, and see if I can use that with an old SAS backplane I found to make a janky "NAS".

This may help you out. He built a new NAS yearly for awhile, so there is a lot there on how to get one setup and running. He started using backblaze this year, though. Also be sure to check out the 'backups' category on the blog as he has a 3 part (+conclusion) series on backing up windows to his nas, which is I assume what your father is using.*

edit: Accidentally linked last years POWER nas, not the BUDGET NAS

*if your dad is on Mac the easiest solution would be a timecapsule or just using iCloud to backup the desktop/documents folder...

 

[el01]

This may help you out. He built a new NAS yearly for awhile, so there is a lot there on how to get one setup and running. He started using backblaze this year, though. Also be sure to check out the 'backups' category on the blog as he has a 3 part (+conclusion) series on backing up windows to his nas, which is I assume what your father is using.*

edit: Accidentally linked last years POWER nas, not the BUDGET NAS

*if your dad is on Mac the easiest solution would be a timecapsule or just using iCloud to backup the desktop/documents folder...

no mac for him ._.

 

[Choidebu]

edit: Accidentally linked last years POWER nas, not the BUDGET NAS

1. On the first screen of the Initial Wizard, I hit exit because Initial Wizards aren’t complicated enough to make me feel like I’m accomplishing something.

I like this guy already. Thanks for the link!

 

[nox]

so hmmm, i would disagree with the <2 bays being pointless. I actually bought 2 single bay synology NAS for almost the same price as a dual bay. They are in different areas of the house and sync with each other. I used to have a dual bay was, and when the nas died on a firmware update, getting my data back was a bit of a nightmare, and i did not have access to it until it was sorted.

I guess it depends what you think will die first...

 

[loader963]

@el01

If you don’t need an actual nas I use a simple stupid probox with usb 3.0 for my backups. With Windows 10 you can span them to make them look like one large drive or keep them individual (which I do). I backup each drive in my rig to another same size one in it with macrium reflect.

Link to my probox
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CFLOV4M/?tag=theminutiae-20

Edit: I prefer local backups because I have such slow internet but one drive and google may also be enough for you from what I can gather.

Edit 2: reading above answer, one advantage with probox is if it fails, you can plug the drives straight into either another one or your motherboard and they can still be read since windows treats them “ sorta like” internal drives but removable.

 

[el01]

@el01

If you don’t need an actual nas I use a simple stupid probox with usb 3.0 for my backups. With Windows 10 you can span them to make them look like one large drive or keep them individual (which I do). I backup each drive in my rig to another same size one in it with macrium reflect.

Link to my probox
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CFLOV4M/?tag=theminutiae-20

Edit: I prefer local backups because I have such slow internet but one drive and google may also be enough for you from what I can gather.

Edit 2: reading above answer, one advantage with probox is if it fails, you can plug the drives straight into either another one or your motherboard and they can still be read since windows treats them “ sorta like” internal drives but removable.

My dad is a bit lazy... We do have a 500GB mechanical unit, but automatic backup across WiFi (one less thing to forget about) and redundancy (more than 1 drive) would be nice for him.

Internet is decent in his area, so transfer speeds will be just OK.

We don't have any desktops in our house (technically I own some but that's me), so I guess 3.5 inches are out of the formula (and those are cheap!)

so hmmm, i would disagree with the <2 bays being pointless. I actually bought 2 single bay synology NAS for almost the same price as a dual bay. They are in different areas of the house and sync with each other. I used to have a dual bay was, and when the nas died on a firmware update, getting my data back was a bit of a nightmare, and i did not have access to it until it was sorted.

I guess it depends what you think will die first...

You do have a point. I would (carefully [is that the word?]) say that the HDDs would die first considering that most of the components on a budget, low-power NAS are solid state. I would also try (I'm not sure if this is possible) to get some sort of Linux other than manufacturer supplied stuff running. Maybe I'm confusing myself.

Also, a general question: Say you have a NAS with 2 1TB drives installed. Can you set up software such that computers sync to one drive and then that drive backs up to the other drive?

 

[Kandirma]

Also, a general question: Say you have a NAS with 2 1TB drives installed. Can you set up software such that computers sync to one drive and then that drive backs up to the other drive?

That basically describes what raid 1 is

 

[loader963]

Similar but raid 1 will only cover his dad if it’s a drive failure. God forbid, if he deleted something accidentally or if malware got ahold of it. I’d really suggest macrium or acronis to schedule auto backups to the second drive from the first one.

 

[nox]

Yeah, I think I was pretty unlucky with my NAS dieing before either HDD in it, and the Synology file system was a bit of a git to read.

Have an unraid server too - that is pretty cool software. Think it's great. The two NAS i have are basically just backup devices now. I'm considering putting one in my folks house so they can store data & sync it to our place.

 

[Kandirma]

Similar but raid 1 will only cover his dad if it’s a drive failure. God forbid, if he deleted something accidentally or if malware got ahold of it. I’d really suggest macrium or acronis to schedule auto backups to the second drive from the first one.

My impression was he was backing up a PC to drive 1 w/ macrium or something then "backing up" that to drive 2.

 

[loader963]

That would work but imo is excessive because there would be 3 copies if ya think about it. Another thing, i hate trying to get my dad to do anything technical, el01 is your dad technically literate or do you at least live close by?

 

[el01]

That would work but imo is excessive because there would be 3 copies if ya think about it. Another thing, i hate trying to get my dad to do anything technical, el01 is your dad technically literate or do you at least live close by?

My dad studied electrical engineering (PhD), systems architectures, and eats embedded engineering for breakfast, so I'll let you decide

Besides, I live 30 min. away.

 

[loader963]

Meanwhile my dad gets confused when he accidentally changes the input on his tv and calls direct tv to raise hell about how his satellite is out

Seriously though, wasn’t knocking the raid part in a nas idea for home use. I was just trying to suggest a cheap simple option. I already hate buying two drives to get the storage of 1, I’d really complain about buying 3.

 

[Aichon]

If you're doing backups, the suggested strategy is typically a 3-2-1 backup: three copies, two local on different systems, one offsite. The original copy counts as one of those local copies, so that means that you only need one more local copy and one offsite copy after that.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

As for RAID, there's an old truism when it comes to this topic: "RAID is not a backup". RAID provides redundancy (i.e. less downtime), better performance, or some combination thereof, but because it also propagates errors to every copy within the RAID, it's only as good as one copy, so far as backups are concerned.

As for offsite backups and not trusting them, many services allow you to provide your own encryption keys so that your data is encrypted using keys they never have. As a result, they'll never have access to your data. Backblaze is probably the most popular service I'm aware of that offers the option to use your own, private keys.

If you're looking for cheap capacity and aren't picky where your drives are located, I'll second the advice that a DAS (direct attached storage) will cost far less than a NAS and will perform quite a bit better to boot. If you want something that provides RAID, you can even pick up something like this for not that much:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816322004

As for HDDs vs. SSDs, backups are the one use case where HDDs are the hands-down winner. They have a significantly higher MTBF, their worse performance ends up not mattering, and the fact that the cost per GB for SSDs is roughly 10x greater than HDDs makes them poor for mass storage. Backups are where old fashioned spinning rust still shines. You can fill that enclosure I just linked with 20TB of capacity for a few hundred bucks, whereas even half that in SSDs would set you back far more.

And if network storage really is a necessity, there are ways to do it without shelling out for specialized hardware. For instance, a lot of routers these days will let you attach an enclosure like that and use it as network storage without a need for any extra hardware. Or else you could simply attach it to an existing PC in the house and set it up for shared access.

 

[SashaLag]

And if network storage really is a necessity, there are ways to do it without shelling out for specialized hardware. For instance, a lot of routers these days will let you attach an enclosure like that and use it as network storage without a need for any extra hardware. Or else you could simply attach it to an existing PC in the house and set it up for shared access.

I agree with this advice. Before buying a TS-251A from QNAP (excellent NAS, but in these days we got problem with built-in torrent search in download station. Anyway I haven't checked for a solution for more than a week now, so maybe they solved) I used my router (ASUS DSL-N55U) as a centralized storage with freefilesync. You can set up automatized check very easily, as google drive app does and in case of file conflicts you're prompted with a window asking what to do. Never missed a step, used with three different PCs with same important files.

Regarding QNAP… You pay "a lot" for their boxes, but assistance is wonderful. You can open ticket (did twice) and be sure to have a wonderful solution at max in a couple of days (they answer fast, I'm talking about solution to a problem). They are a server, with fairly easy interface. But being a server, they're a more complex solution than a DAS one as they provide a lot more functions. And for some problems, you have to access them via telnet (e.gr configuring emule). Anyway, they have great android/iphone apps and my father pretty much enjoyed how easy is listen to music from that NAS to every device he want, being that a smartphone, a PC or his home theatre.

Just to make your decision harder, have a look also to ASUSTOR. They are the "new boy in a town" but well, they are from ASUS and their interface is similar to those of QNAP and Synology as for functionality. For each of them, you can demo their interfaces before buying on their website

 

[SashaLag]

Before buying a TS-251A from QNAP (excellent NAS, but in these days we got problem with built-in torrent search in download station. Anyway I haven't checked for a solution for more than a week now, so maybe they solved)

Just as update to the story, I updated firmware on my NAS (it's kind of "1-2 times in a month 3 click away business" as they roll updates often) and they solved this matter. Torrent search in Download Station is working again!

 

[Joedarkness]

This may help you out. He built a new NAS yearly for awhile, so there is a lot there on how to get one setup and running. He started using backblaze this year, though. Also be sure to check out the 'backups' category on the blog as he has a 3 part (+conclusion) series on backing up windows to his nas, which is I assume what your father is using.*

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@ Kandirma Thank for the link that was helpful I was looking for a case like the silverstone one .. at the moment I have synology 3615 which is totally overkill but I got a deal on it