Recommended number of LAN ports and drives for NAS

[pldelisle]

Is WD HD better than Seagate IronWolf and Ironwolf with Data Recovery?

In the past Seagate had important failure rates. That's why I went with WD. Now, with their IronWolf line, I don't know. You should be able to find reports of reliability of these drives pretty easily on the web.

How about Linux, Androi and iOS?

Few years ago, Synology NAS was considered to be the best. How about the QNAP?

I don't understand your question about OSes...

QNAP and Synology are on-par. QNAP has a little advantage when comes direct attach storage. They have a small line up with built-in thunderbolt 3 connection. This line also have NVME caching SSD built-in. This is a top performer for live editing big files on them. Other than that, both have the same features hardware and software. I think QNAP has more models with 10gbps thought, not sure.

 

[pldelisle]

You have to watch out for Red these days too. Some are SMR which are not good for RAID/NAS (despite being labelled as NAS drives). Red Plus are not (WD really messed up on this): https://www.anandtech.com/show/15878/western-digital-cleans-up-the-red-smr-nas-hdd-mess

Interesting. Thanks a lot. Would definitively take Red Pro.

 

[hajime]

Is it a good idea to get one with 10gbps?

Some of you mentioned about dockers, vm. How are they related to NAS?

 

[hajime]

Yes, I would connect the NAS to the router using a wired connection. I would try and use wired connections where possible for speed/stability as you bulk-copy to the NAS.

For 2TB, yes a 2 drive NAS with a couple of drives will be fine. Try and get a Synology that supports btrfs to prevent bit rot. The 220j does not seem to. The 218 or 220+ do

Thanks. So even getting 2 drives for RAID0, it is still better to get the 220+ with Btrfs support?

 

[hobowankenobi]

How about Linux, Androi and iOS?

Few years ago, Synology NAS was considered to be the best. How about the QNAP?

iOS, Ubuntu, and Android. I have only tested iOS.

QNAP is well-liked. Some say they have some better hardware options, such as TB connections to use as direct storage.
I have not used one for years, so I can't speak to their software/packages/features on current models. Most users seem to agree that Synology excels on the software/interface/feature side.

I have used Synology NAS and routers at home and have supported them at work and other businesses, and while not perfect (nothing is), Synology is the best low-to-mid range cost NAS for Mac users that I have found. Others I have used, such as Drobo, were inferior IMHO.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Thanks. So even getting 2 drives for RAID0, it is still better to get the 220+ with Btrfs support?

I would not recommend any of the J series, without BTRFS support.

 

[pldelisle]

Is it a good idea to get one with 10gbps?

Some of you mentioned about dockers, vm. How are they related to NAS?

It’s always a good idea to go faster.

X86 NAS can have Docker to run containers on them. You can then host containerized services on your NAS.
For VMs, some offers VMware or Hyper-V features for faster VM snapshots or deployment. The VHD is stored on the NAS.

Thanks. So even getting 2 drives for RAID0, it is still better to get the 220+ with Btrfs support?

Don’t do RAID 0. Never. One drive fails, you lose everything.

 

[pldelisle]

iOS, Ubuntu, and Android. I have only tested iOS.

QNAP is well-liked. Some say they have some better hardware options, such as TB connections to use as direct storage.
I have not used one for years, so I can't speak to their software/packages/features on current models. Most users seem to agree that Synology excels on the software/interface/feature side.

I have used Synology NAS and routers at home and have supported them at work and other businesses, and while not perfect (nothing is), Synology is the best low-to-mid range cost NAS for Mac users that I have found. Others I have used, such as Drobo, were inferior IMHO.

I agree.
A friend has a QNap. Rock solid. It has mostly the same features than my Synology.

You need to read reviews, explore the interfaces and pick the one that most fits you and your usage. If you want direct attached storage, pick QNap which has Thunderbolt 3. Put in it NVME SSDs for caching. You will then get the ultimate speed for massive storage. But price will be massive too. One usually do this for editing videos directly on the NAS. The editing files are dynamically pushed to the NVME caching SSDs, so the project is always cached in fast storage, and the Thunderbolt connection is the fastest connection you can get.

Product List | Synology Inc.

Whether for work or play, Synology offers a wide range of network-attached storage (NAS) choices for every occasion. Compare specifications below and find the right model for you.

www.synology.com

Models don't have a lot of differences.

 

[HDFan]

Is WD HD better than Seagate IronWolf and Ironwolf with Data Recovery?

Backblaze has just released their latest drive reliability report:

A Look at the Current 2020 Hard Drive Failure Rates

Hard drive failure rates on an annualized and quarterly basis for 139,867 hard drives by make and manufacturer.

www.backblaze.com

The annualized failure rate is the lowest since they started keeping statistics 7 years ago. They used to use WD, which had the highest failure rates of all their vendors at the time. Seagate was 2nd worst. They don't use WD drives anymore, not sure why. I assume that WD has improved reliability considerably since then.

I use Seagate Ironwolf since QNAP supports Seagate Ironwolf Health Management. Don't see the need for data recovery as:

1. If a single disk fails in RAID 5 I just replace the disk and the NAS rebuilds the RAID.
2. With data recovery you would have to send the disk in. This means that your NAS would be running for some time without disk failure protection before they send the disk back to you if you have RAID disk protection. If you run in RAID 0 your NAS would be unusable until it was returned.
2. I have multiple backups on other devices to do a restore if needed. As stated in posts above, RAID is not a backup. You still need a 3-2-3 backup strategy.
3. One thing that might be worth it is the 5 year, vs 3 year, warranty.

The more disks in the NAS that you choose the more protection options become available (RAID 5 one disk failure, RAID 6 2 disk failures). Read/Write MB/s values will also increase, but these are meaningless if your network bandwidth is limited.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Data recovery is...last-ditch, because everything else failed.

With mirrored drives, HD failure causing data loss/downtime is mostly prevented. Good backups cover nearly all other events.

Data recovery would be about the last thing I would prioritize when selecting HDs. Overall reliability and performance would be highest, followed by heat and noise (depending on device), as well as job-specific specs such as 24/7 use for NAS, etc.

 

[hajime]

I use Seagate Ironwolf since QNAP supports Seagate Ironwolf Health Management. Don't see the need for data recovery as:

1. If a single disk fails in RAID 5 I just replace the disk and the NAS rebuilds the RAID.

Thanks. Some users suggested buying all the hard drives at the same time in order for RAID to work. If a single disk fails, say 1+ years later. What will happen because the drive that I will buy two years later is likely to be different from those I buy now. Is the requirement of all drives to be the same applies only when we set up RAID initially? After that, if we change a disk, they can be slightly different as long as the capacity is the same?

 

[pldelisle]

Thanks. Some users suggested buying all the hard drives at the same time in order for RAID to work. If a single disk fails, say 1+ years later. What will happen because the drive that I will buy two years later is likely to be different from those I buy now. Is the requirement of all drives to be the same applies only when we set up RAID initially? After that, if we change a disk, they can be slightly different as long as the capacity is the same?

If the drives run the same firmware it should be ok. They need to be from same line up, same spec, ideally same capacity, and firmware version is important. Sometimes it's impossible to get the same drive because manufacturer changes the line up, make a revision of the drive, etc...

You can start with two in RAID 1, but if you add drives to the array, you will just increase the fault tolerance. To change the RAID array type you won't have choice to redo the RAID array, which implies destroying the partitions and data on the drives. Well the last time I've done this it was like this.

Minimum number of drives for RAID 1 is 2. For RAID 5 is 3.

I'd personally say that this philosophy is way too much. Seriously, the probabilities of a drive two drives to fail because they are issued from the same batch are very, very small, not to say non-existent. You are better to buy all the drives you'll need right now than worrying about potential failure to which RAID will counter.

 

[hajime]

Thanks. If I invest on, say 2 x 3TB HD now and few years later I need more storage, what could be done and how do I copy the data to the newer pair of drives?

 

[pldelisle]

Thanks. If I invest on, say 2 x 3TB HD now and few years later I need more storage, what could be done and how do I copy the data to the newer pair of drives?

Well, simplest way to do it is to have a single HDD, say 4 TB, copy everything on this one, put the new HDDs into the NAS and recreate the RAID 5 or RAID 6 array. That’s what I would do.

That’s why I bought a 5 bay NAS. I currently have 3x 4 TB WD SE + 1 SSD for caching. One bay isn’t used but 4 bays weren’t as powerful as this NAS back in the days.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Historically....traditional RAID controllers were very particular about drives, and to prevent any issues, the manufacturers required exactly the same model/firmware for drives.

Those days are mostly gone. But always pay attention to the OEM recommendations.

And yes, you can grow Hybrid RAID by replacing one drive at a time with larger drives, and rebuilding. Traditional RAID controllers don't allow this. Some others do, such as Drobo.

Hybrid RAID is very flexible, but has guidelines to follow for mixing and matching drives:

SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID)
Because SHR storage pools optimize storage capacity based on the number and size of installed drives, please follow the following guidelines in order to properly expand capacity:

• If the capacity of all existing drives is equal, you must replace at least two drives with larger ones in order to expand storage capacity. For example, if your SHR storage pool consists of three 2 TB drives, then you must replace at least two drives in order to expand storage pool capacity.
• If the capacity of existing drives is different, then the new, replacement drives must be equal to or larger than the largest existing drive. In addition, you must replace smaller drives first in order to optimize capacity usage. For example, if your SHR storage pool consists of three drives that are 4 TB, 3 TB, and 2 TB, respectively, then your new, replacement drives must be at least 4 TB. In addition, you should replace the 3 TB or 2 TB drives first.

 

[HDFan]

Some users suggested buying all the hard drives at the same time in order for RAID to work. If a single disk fails, say 1+ years later. What will happen because the drive that I will buy two years later is likely to be different from those I buy now. Is the requirement of all drives to be the same applies only when we set up RAID initially? After that, if we change a disk, they can be slightly different as long as the capacity is the same?

f the drives run the same firmware it should be ok. They need to be from same line up, same spec, ideally same capacity, and firmware version is important.

The requirements that the drives all be the same have been greatly relaxed, as long as they are on the vendors compatibility list and they have the same or greater capacity.

The cost of the NAS can be less than the cost of the drives that you use to populate it. You might consider purchasing one with more bays that you need that you can use to for expansion in later years. I just replaced my maxed out QNAP with one with more bays that I can use for expansion later.

Another thing approach you might consider is to purchase say, a 4 bay NAS, and populate it with 1 or 2 TB drives that are cheap. When you need to increase capacity you can replace them with higher capacity drives, that will be cheaper by then. This way you will get the maximum transfer rates allowable with a 4 drive setup. But again not really useful if your network is slow.

If I invest on, say 2 x 3TB HD now and few years later I need more storage, what could be done and how do I copy the data to the newer pair of drives?

Assuming they are setup as RAID 0 replacing a drive means you will lose all of your data which will have to be restored from backup. If you have 4 drives or more in a RAID 5 or 6 configuration you just remove a disk and replace with a larger one, since RAID can repopulate the new larger drive.

QNAP now offers a WiFi 6 card for some of their devices, which would mean that you wouldn't have to connect it to your router. It could stand by itself in a central location.

 

[hajime]

The requirements that the drives all be the same have been greatly relaxed, as long as they are on the vendors compatibility list and they have the same or greater capacity.

The cost of the NAS can be less than the cost of the drives that you use to populate it. You might consider purchasing one with more bays that you need that you can use to for expansion in later years. I just replaced my maxed out QNAP with one with more bays that I can use for expansion later.

Another thing approach you might consider is to purchase say, a 4 bay NAS, and populate it with 1 or 2 TB drives that are cheap. When you need to increase capacity you can replace them with higher capacity drives, that will be cheaper by then. This way you will get the maximum transfer rates allowable with a 4 drive setup. But again not really useful if your network is slow.



Assuming they are setup as RAID 0 replacing a drive means you will lose all of your data which will have to be restored from backup. If you have 4 drives or more in a RAID 5 or 6 configuration you just remove a disk and replace with a larger one, since RAID can repopulate the new larger drive.

QNAP now offers a WiFi 6 card for some of their devices, which would mean that you wouldn't have to connect it to your router. It could stand by itself in a central location.

A DS420+ is about US$150 more than a DS200+. Is the extra cost worth it?

In case of getting a 2-bay NAS, when I need to increase the capacity, can I just get one large temporary HD, copy the contents of one drive in the NAS to it, put in two larger capacity drives in the NAS and then copy back the contents from that one-large temporary HD to the new drives in the NAS?

As for the QNAP NAS with WiFi 6 card, does that mean I can connect it to my computer via TB3 to the fastest transfer but the slowness only happens when other computers are accessing it wirelessly or when I access it outside home?

 

[pldelisle]

Historically....traditional RAID controllers were very particular about drives, and to prevent any issues, the manufacturers required exactly the same model/firmware for drives.

Those days are mostly gone. But always pay attention to the OEM recommendations.

And yes, you can grow Hybrid RAID by replacing one drive at a time with larger drives, and rebuilding. Traditional RAID controllers don't allow this. Some others do, such as Drobo.

Hybrid RAID is very flexible, but has guidelines to follow for mixing and matching drives:

Didn't know that ! Thanks ! But I find it just adds complexity to the setup. I prefer the old school I think.

 

[pldelisle]

In case of getting a 2-bay NAS, when I need to increase the capacity, can I just get one large temporary HD, copy the contents of one drive in the NAS to it, put in two larger capacity drives in the NAS and then copy back the contents from that one-large temporary HD to the new drives in the NAS?

Yes

As for the QNAP NAS with WiFi 6 card, does that mean I can connect it to my computer via TB3 to the fastest transfer but the slowness only happens when other computers are accessing it wirelessly or when I access it outside home?

If you take a Thunderbolt 3 model like TVS-472XT, yes. But it is never recommended to run such a server on wireless network. A good old Ethernet cable is always safer, more reliable and faster.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Didn't know that ! Thanks ! But I find it just adds complexity to the setup. I prefer the old school I think.

Matching drives will likely always be the safe, optimized way to go.

The flexibility to upgrade storage space on the fly, with the server live...is very compelling though. Having done it a couple of times, it would be hard to ever NOT have this option moving forward.

Mixing and matching drives is great for low budget, less critical boxes (as I imagine it could inhibit optimized R/W performance), like a dedicated backup or archive.

 

[hajime]

For the current 2020 NAS, are they at the beginning, middle or end of generation? When the next generation NAS will be out? I am trying to decide if I should invest on a 4-bay or 2-bay NAS. For similar price and perhaps better features, what are the recommended 2-bay and 4-bay QNAP NAS? I guess for Synology, it will be either DS420+ or a DS220+. For Synology, I know it is better to stay away from those white color j models. What about the QNAP? Is it better to also stay away from those white ones?

 

[pldelisle]

For the current 2020 NAS, are they at the beginning, middle or end of generation?

NAS’ year is very relative. You don’t have to worry about this. Evolution for this kind of hardware is very very slow. Uses low end low powered CPUs.

I am trying to decide if I should invest on a 4-bay or 2-bay NAS.

Go 4-bay. Better in long term if you have a lot of data.

I guess for Synology, it will be either DS420+ or a DS220+

I’d take a DS720+ over the 220+.I don’t know QNAP models.

In all cases look for Intel x86 CPU in them. If you have Intel CPU with iGPU in it you’ll be fine. It has everything up to 4K transcoding.

 

[HDFan]

For the current 2020 NAS, are they at the beginning, middle or end of generation?

Depends on the model. As with Apple, model updates are spaced out so only some are updated each year.

A good resource for NAS issues, including the latest models, is:

NASCompares

Welcome to NASCompares - Free Advice on everything NAS and DAS to Thunderbolt and the Right Network Accessories. Choosing the right data storage solution for...

www.youtube.com

I am trying to decide if I should invest on a 4-bay or 2-bay NAS. For similar price and perhaps better features, what are the recommended 2-bay and 4-bay QNAP NAS?

You have to state your priorities.

1. How important is the cost? You need to consider the NAS as well as the disk costs. A 4 bay QNAP can run from $279 to $1000 for a 4 bay, depending on features, not including disks.

2. Do you want RAID? How many bays?

3. Do you want media streaming via Plex or Infuse? This requires a beefier cpu and hardware decoding

4. What kind of connectivity do you want? Thunderbolt, WiFi, 1 GbE, 10 Gbe (or others)

The more features you want, the greater the cost. Can't compare models until you decide which features you want.

 

[hajime]

Depends on the model. As with Apple, model updates are spaced out so only some are updated each year.

A good resource for NAS issues, including the latest models, is:

NASCompares

Welcome to NASCompares - Free Advice on everything NAS and DAS to Thunderbolt and the Right Network Accessories. Choosing the right data storage solution for...

www.youtube.com

You have to state your priorities.

1. How important is the cost? You need to consider the NAS as well as the disk costs. A 4 bay QNAP can run from $279 to $1000 for a 4 bay, depending on features, not including disks.

2. Do you want RAID? How many bays?

3. Do you want media streaming via Plex or Infuse? This requires a beefier cpu and hardware decoding

4. What kind of connectivity do you want? Thunderbolt, WiFi, 1 GbE, 10 Gbe (or others)

The more features you want, the greater the cost. Can't compare models until you decide which features you want.

Thanks. These are great questions.

1. I guess I would not want to spend more than US$600 on NAS+disks. Even if I buy a 4 bay NAS, I will just get 2 hd to see how it goes first before investing more hd perhaps 2-3 years later. Will that be OK?
2. I think somebody said RAID 1 is better than 0 as it offers some redundancy in case one drive dies suddenly. If RAID 1 with 2 bays are OK and I can upgrade later, then that would be fine for the initial purchase.
3. No plan for media streaming.
4. So far there is no special preference.

I guess it is more difficult to decide when choosing the first NAS. So far, it seems that some users bought a 2-bay NAS and then later regret and end up getting a 4-bay NAS.

Few years ago, I moved between countries and just copied data from many old internal drives from different old computers into smaller external ones. Also got a few external drives. There were some duplicates I believe. I bought three new computers the past two years and want to be able to access the data stored in these older drives from these new computers. That is the main purpose of buying a NAS to centralize the data from about 10-15 different old drives used over the past 30 years. Is NAS a good way to do it? An alternative is to just buy a large drive and connect it to a spare SBC.

The second reason for considering to buy a NAS is that there have been some inconvenience in sharing files among different computers and my phone because dropbox only allows free access of three machines. My iCloud account has also been full for about a year and my iPhone has not been backup since then.

 

[nicho]

Thanks. These are great questions.

1. I guess I would not want to spend more than US$600 on NAS+disks. Even if I buy a 4 bay NAS, I will just get 2 hd to see how it goes first before investing more hd perhaps 2-3 years later. Will that be OK?
2. I think somebody said RAID 1 is better than 0 as it offers some redundancy in case one drive dies suddenly. If RAID 1 with 2 bays are OK and I can upgrade later, then that would be fine for the initial purchase.
3. No plan for media streaming.
4. So far there is no special preference.

I guess it is more difficult to decide when choosing the first NAS. So far, it seems that some users bought a 2-bay NAS and then later regret and end up getting a 4-bay NAS.

Few years ago, I moved between countries and just copied data from many old internal drives from different old computers into smaller external ones. Also got a few external drives. There were some duplicates I believe. I bought three new computers the past two years and want to be able to access the data stored in these older drives from these new computers. That is the main purpose of buying a NAS to centralize the data from about 10-15 different old drives used over the past 30 years. Is NAS a good way to do it? An alternative is to just buy a large drive and connect it to a spare SBC.

The second reason for considering to buy a NAS is that there have been some inconvenience in sharing files among different computers and my phone because dropbox only allows free access of three machines. My iCloud account has also been full for about a year and my iPhone has not been backup since then.

Someone touched on it on the last page but I think it was missed. What older computers do you have access to?

I found buying a 2nd-hand mac mini 2014 a better prospect for me than a nas (due to prices in my country). Space/power supplies aren't a concern for me, and external HDs are cheaper than internal ones for some reason here (may not be true everywhere) before you add on the cost of the nas hardware. It allows me the same granular control of data backups as I have on my main mac in another room and I don't have to learn yet another system to control the NAS properly...