Can’t pull the trigger - been looking for a home NAS for a while, looking to us to do time machine backups from two macs as well as store my photos (hobby photographer) as well as keep my image catalog on to point to with lightroom and photoshop (ie edit over the network)… will this do the trick?
Waiting from the geek squad (those much brighter than me) to say something… Same thing here, need a NAS for photography too.
Something to keep in mind is that this doesn’t come with any storage – its BYOD (Bring Your Own Drives)
I’d like to pull the trigger but all the research I’ve seen talks about these things dropping like flies once you get em. Seems completely like a crapshoot on reliabilty. I mean you get the 2 year warranty, but who wants to be replacing the device all the time? I mean at least the box dying likely won’t kill the drives but that seems like a huge hassle.
Can’t speak to this specific model, but QNAP’s in general have been 100% rock solid for me. I love them and would be all over this deal if I didn’t already have a TS-473. I’d go with a QNAP over a WD/Synology/Buffalo/Netgear device. This NAS is a no-brainer for anyone looking for one who plans on using it as a media center or for general storage/backups. I wouldn’t run VM’s off it.
Also; FYI - Amazon Warehouse has this in “Like New” condition for $171…if you prefer buying directly on Amazon.
Unless you’re using this as a 3-way mirror, it’s an expensive false sense of security. With modern drive capacities you need to have TWO drives’ worth of redundancy. Otherwise, when one drive fails and you’re waiting for the replacement drive to re-silver, you’re almost guaranteed a read-error at some point in the process, except now you have ZERO redundancy and so poof goes your data.
RAID w/ 3 drives implies RAID3 which has been “dead” for a few years now, basically since drives >1TB became common based upon normal MTBF. Investing in an expensive shiny fire extinguisher is pointless if when you actually NEED it and go to use it, it only sprays for 1 second before being empty.
If you’re foolish to buy any off-the-shelf consumer NAS appliance and still use RAID5, I hope you’re keeping good backups of all your data elsewhere. Because that thing is likely not going to save your data when a drive fails.
I’ve run a Zycel NAS for years… humming along 24/7 with no issues. It’s 2 drives on RAID5, but RAID only protects you against hardware failure of a drive. If something writes to it and corrupts… it corrupts in both places. The 2 drives are mirror images of each other - not “backups”.
That said… I also back up my NAS using a USB dock to a HD I keep in a firebox. NAS is just storage. Maybe a backup device for your computers as well. but the NAS itself should still be backed up elsewhere.
QNAP was 4x more expensive when I bought my Zycel… which, although operating fine, is no longer being updated.
It’s 2 drives on RAID5
That’s not RAID5. Two drives would be RAID1 (mirroring).
The RAID# has nothing to do with number of drives. Its a version/protocol number with diffences in how data gets stored. https://blog.open-e.com/raid-2-raid-3-raid-4-what-it-is-how-it-works-the-history-lesson/
The RAID# has nothing to do with number of drives.
I’m an IT admin and have been for over 20 years. I manage servers and have built many a rack. RAID absolutely does depend on the number of drives. You cannot do RAID5 with 2 drives… RAID5 requires a minimum of 3 drives.
Don’t try to school me on basic IT stuff by referring to some random blog. This is fundamental 101 stuff I was quizzed on for certifications back in the 1990s. Even that blog punts and points you to Wikipedia regarding RAID5 and it says there even “RAID 5 requires at least three disks.”
You are exactly correct. Raid 5 needs a minimum of 3 drives. Raid 1 is drive mirroring. Remember that if you plan on using anything as backup in your home and your home goes up in flames - so goes your backups. It’s always best to also store a backup in the Cloud.
Thanks for clarifying this for people.
Everyone has different needs…
Personally I have a server running in the basement with mirrored (not RAID5) drives. I use this as a target for backups for all of the computers in the house. In addition to that, the server and all of the computers run iDrive to backup to the “cloud”. Previously I was using Crashplan but they killed their home service.
If I had this device, I’d probably simply mirror the drives and wouldn’t bother with the RAID5 - disks are too big these days and simply take too long to rebuild using RAID5. They are also cheap enough that added complexity doesn’t make much sense. I can shuck an 8TB drive from an enclosure for around $100… why bother?
With RAID5 and RAID 1 (mirrored) you can lose 1 drive in each configuration. However, one main advantage of going RAID5 is that you can normally buy 3 smaller drives for cheaper than what it would cost to get the same storage with 2 drives in RAID 1. Say you want 8TB, RAID 1 you have to buy 2 8TB drives, RAID 5 you can use 3 4TB drives and you can buy the 3 smaller drives for cheaper than the 2 larger drives. Yes, there is always schucking drives but that is hit or miss.