A few questions about drives in home NAS

klf

Hello,

First of all, I'm sorry for my English, because it's actually Google English
I am before buying my first NAS and I have questions. I will add that it will be used for home use - storing and sharing movies, photos, torrent, maybe someday cameras. Of course, I'm planning play films on external player. I wonder between QNAP TS-251   and Synology DS218   (the question is whether it will be too rich for my needs )
1. If I use the WD 2TB 2.5" drive as the only one for now, will the migration later to WD Red 4 TB be painless?

2. Is adding a second drive (RAID 0) associated with the complete reorganization of the NAS and re-transfer of data?

3. Can I have 2 4TB drives in RAID 0 and 1 via USB to make it a RAID 5 (what capacity of 3 drive should be?)?

4. What does the possibility of creating something like a private Dropbox look like, for example on Nexcloud with access via WAN of course?

best regards.

mickevh

I suggest not using RAID 0 unless you have a good reason to do so. For domestic use, it adds very little benefit (it is mostly a performance option that offers no redundancy) and causes more issue than it solves - particularly with expansion, though some newer NAS systems have RAID controllers that might ease the pain. (In olden days with "classic" RAID, one could not expand a RAID 0 stripe without breaking it down (destroying all data) and starting over.) If any disc in a RAID 0 stripe dies, you loose all the data on the other discs too.

I would suggest not using a RAID 5 array on different interfaces (onboard   USB) as the speed differences could effect the performance adversely. It may be that the RAID controller will not allow it anyway.

I wonder if you may like to research RAID a little more as I am a little concerned you may be new to all of this and do not have a good understanding of it yet. Wikipedia's articles on RAID are quite good and being Wikipedia you may even find a translation into your first language.

For example, the RAID "numbers" are simple "labels" (or "names" if you like) for different organisations of discs and data, the number do not represent an ordered "ranking" where 0 is "lowest" and higher numbered RAID versions are all "better" than those with lower numbers. Different RAID numbers are just "different" and thereby describe different ways to organise the data on the discs.

There are plenty in this forum who will help you out if you have any questions. Do not be afraid to post back - you will generally be welcomed at AVF.

klf

Thanks for the quick reply!
I came to the conclusion that I will rather not play in creating RAID, only data sensitive to me (photos and private files) will be backed up to an external disk via USB, and memory-type movie files may fly into space

bubblegum57

I have my DS414 set up with individual volumes (4) then back up photos to the cloud. & movies backed up to usb drives.

klf

Yes, that will be the best solution