Can a NAS have two separate independent hard drives

[infobleep]

Hi there

Is it possible on a NAS to have two separate 2TB hard drives running independently? Or is that going to drastically reduce network performance, assuming it's even possible?

I have a cat 6 network and I wish to host al my files via a NAS. However I also wish to run a backup to a separate hard drive. Do I need 2 NAS devices to do this?

I am also querying whether I should go for RAID0 or RAID 1, baring in mind I'm only considering using 1 hard drive per set up. Or should I go for 2 hard drives per set up, which would be 4 in total? I'm using Time Machine to backup, so if a hard drive fails, I can recover using Time Machine. As I intend to make sure both hard drives are by different manufactures, it would require both to fail at once for this set up to fail. Clearly if I went for a RAID1 set up, using 4 drives, it would require all 4 to fail at once.

Thanks for reading

 

[DustinT]

What your talking about would be best handled with a 2 disk, raid 1 setup for for your main disk. Then, purchase a external drive of sufficient quantity to back up your nas too.

 

[nelek]

RAID0 is for speed. When 1 disk dies, all of your data goes.

RAID1 mirrors, so when one disk dies, nothing goes. RAID1 does this on the fly, no need to sync or backup manually.

Depending on the NAS solution you end up getting, you can also hook up an external USB or eSATA drive to the NAS, and do an additional synchronization to that. Or buy a second NAS, host it on another location, and synchronize your production NAS to the backup NAS.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

RAID is not a backup.

RAID-1 will protect you against hard drive failure. But it will not protect you against malicious software deleting your files, or accidentally over-writing a file.

RAID is for when you cannot have downtime. For a home computer, RAID is unnecessary. (If you need speed, go for an SSD, not a RAID.)

For a backup drive, a single drive is fine. The idea is that it's a backup. If the backup drive fails, just get a new one and do a full backup again.

 

[Andrew*Debbie]

Hi there

Is it possible on a NAS to have two separate 2TB hard drives running independently?

Generally yes, although it depends on the NAS.

Or is that going to drastically reduce network performance, assuming it's even possible?

Generally no. Depends on your usage.

I have a cat 6 network and I wish to host al my files via a NAS. However I also wish to run a backup to a separate hard drive. Do I need 2 NAS devices to do this?

It depends on the NAS.

Be sure that the NAS you select really does work with Time Machine. Check user forums, not just what the Manufacture Claims. Check that it supports 10.7. Do you plan to back up your start up disk to the NAS using Time Machine? If you are, find out if the NAS you pick supports this.

Backups are worthless if you can't use them to perform a restore.

I am also querying whether I should go for RAID0 or RAID 1, baring in mind I'm only considering using 1 hard drive per set up.

No.

 

[dampfdruck]

Hello,

you need to think of it in layers:

- The physical drives in your storage device are combined into a single logical drive using some sort of RAID. RAID 6 might be a good choice for home use.

- On this logical drive, you create volumes. These volumes contain the data.

- Each volume can be made available to clients on the network via one or multiple protocols, e.g. NFS or iSCSI.