Win NAS vs external drives? Thoughts pls
#16
CpTHOOK Wrote:so hopefully we can agree to disagree
agreed Wink


@hammerhead69:
If you want to keep your external drives maybe something like this could be useful: link. Just as an example of the product category. I did not check the product itself.
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#17
I've been thinking about the same thing recently, though I have one concen.

What happens if the nas hardware fails, how do you access the data stored in the drives?

Unless one needs all the features a server offers, I think two external hard drives might would work better, could perhaps daisy chain them to save a bit if effort when adding new stuff.
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#18
(2012-08-16, 05:23)Slipstream Wrote: I've been thinking about the same thing recently, though I have one concen.

What happens if the nas hardware fails, how do you access the data stored in the drives?

Unless one needs all the features a server offers, I think two external hard drives might would work better, could perhaps daisy chain them to save a bit if effort when adding new stuff.

This is a question of the hardware failure comes up a lot - and the answer is - it depends.

When you have a hardware raid, if your RAID hardware fails, you are down for the count until you replace the hardware - in most cases with the exact same hardware.

If you run a software raid and your hardware fails, then you just have to replace the hardware with like hardware and you are out of commission until you get the software reinstalled (if necessary)..

I am building my for HTPC right now. I currently run a NAS4Free (formerly FreeNAS before a name issue) box as my home NAS . The box is in it's 4th iteration.

Iteration 1 and 2 utilized a hardware RAID card (a Dell PERC 5i card). Had any hardware but the RAID card died - it wasn't a problem. Ram, MoBo, CPU - simply replace, install the RAID card and away I went. But if the RAID card died - I would have needed to replace the RAID card with the exact same card. Until then, my whole NAS was out of commission.

About a year ago I backed up the data, pulled the RAID card and changed over to a software RAID - RaidZ in ZFS to be exact (NAS4Free run on FreeBSD and natively supports ZFS). At this point dependency on hardware was completely gone. If the MoBo died, replace and keep on chugging. If the system drive died - still no problem, get a new system drive, reinstall and the ZFS support found my RaidZ no problem.

In fact Iteration 4, which saw me move from NAS4Free on the metal to a VM basically was this very thing. As soon as the VM was "given" the drives, the Raid appeared in system again. But basically, I am not bound by the hardware, just replace it and reinstall my software - and I am good to go.

The NAS does offer some features that help a lot. You can offload downloading to the NAS, Raid configurations (to allow for inevitable drive failures) and the like. Are the necessary? No, but they can really help.
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NAS vs external drives? Thoughts pls0