NAS or Network Harddrive for backup

The Coffee Shop
1

Hi all,
Looking at getting a network drive to back up all the computers to and possibly file share. No need for outside internet access. Would prefer if it worked on Windows 7 backup.

Any suggestions as to what to buy?

2

Hi all,
Looking at getting a network drive to back up all the computers to and possibly file share. No need for outside internet access. Would prefer if it worked on Windows 7 backup.

Any suggestions as to what to buy?

Get a Synology NAS.

Best system out there hands down.

3

Hi all,
Looking at getting a network drive to back up all the computers to and possibly file share. No need for outside internet access. Would prefer if it worked on Windows 7 backup.

Any suggestions as to what to buy?

Have you considered if your network is fast enough for the amount of data you want to backup? Hopefully the backup software does compression so you may only backup 1/10th of the actual data. But say you are on a 54g network, backing up 2TB, becomes 200gb compressed and would take 10 hours. If on a 150N network it would take only 3 hours to backup 200gb. If if a wired 1000MB nework, only 30 minutes

In the past, I would just share my book drive to other systems and let them back up. But now that drives are so big that just does not work so well so I have a WD book on each computer.

It looks like the enclosures Chainpin describes, may be low enough cost to reconsider a NAS. Though for me, I would first have to upgrade my 100mb/54g routers.

4

First time running the backup might take time, but since the rest would be incremental I think I’m ok.

5

Any model of Synology you recommend?

6

First time running the backup might take time, but since the rest would be incremental I think I’m ok.

True, but I usually do a monthly full, with daily incrementals. And keep 3 generations. So once a month you would have longish backup.

7

Any model of Synology you recommend?

I have a dual bay and I’m running it in raid using two 1.5TB Barricuda drives.

It depends on how much data you have to backup, but a quad bay would be nice.

DS212 or DS411.

8

Thanks my Synology DS212 NAS and 2 Seagate Barracude 1TB drives just showed up… Looks like i will be busy the next few nights.

9

That was a good choice.

The OS is sick.

They also have iphone apps for the music server and surveillance component.

Let me know if you have any questions–I know the system well.

10

So how do you like your Synology DS212 NAS and 2 Seagate Barracude 1TB drives?
What do you use your NAS for?

Thanks,
Fred.
.

11

Have almost the same setup as chainpin, Synology, 2 drives in a Raid 1 array. Works well. The only thing I’d say is if you want a bit more flexibility or want to run more of a versioning system, then you might be happier with a small Linux box running some kind of specific server. Just have more options, but sounds like the Synology will do the trick for you.

12

So how do you like your Synology DS212 NAS and 2 Seagate Barracude 1TB drives?
What do you use your NAS for?

Thanks,
Fred.

Hey guys, just got a note from someone telling me about this, (I have left ST, but figured I could return to update).

For me its been a complete fail. It basically sits unused. wanted to use as a network backup for the main PC and all the secondary ones. Windows backup on the main pc does not work. Also thought about setting it up as our main photo server, but never really got to that.

Seems like it did not always connect, but honestly I can not remember what all the issues were. I have not done anything with it in a long time. Maybe this winter I will try to figure something out. Personally I have not only left this site, but have started moving away from tech, it seems to use more time than it saves. But the wife and kids are still doing it which means I have to be there IT debt. A good safe backup system would be nice to have running, especially for the pics. But this setup does not seem to be it. Probably need a good software package for multiple computers (one with multiple users in windows).

Thought about online backup but for mulitlple pc;'s it gets expensive.

set up to get email if replies, so I will check back in.

13

just remember, no matter what hardware vendors tell you, no piece of hardware or software truly “just works”. It all takes some measure of configuration and troubleshooting to make it bend to your will…the more complicated the task, the more tuning is involved. I also find that most auto-configuration tools and wizards just add more complexity which winds up fighting you in the end. If you ever do look into something else, I highly recommend QNAP NAS’s. They are embedded linux running a software RAID and give you root access to the OS, so there is virtually no limit to the tweaking that you can do to make them do what you want.