On Sun, 18 Aug 2019 06:26:52 +0000 (UTC), Brian Reay
wrote:
T i m wrote:
On Sat, 17 Aug 2019 20:06:23 +0100, Brian Reay wrote:
snip
'Putting together'?
Yes: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/di...h/put-together
I was trying to get a handle on the level you were going down to.
Ok.
Scratch building from a drive, perhaps a R Pi and some software, or
assembling something from a mix of junk box parts/units and may be new
bits, or something else. All are perfectly good ideas. I’ve tried several
of them myself.
And I am open to any of those, whatever give me the best results. That
said, I have a couple of starting points (for a 'NAS') re the RPi's or
the Shuttles. eg. Once we go to a full PC we might be looking at a
more traditional 'File Server' (although the boundary between NAS and
FS is fairly blurred these days).
I've used a couple of methods to provide a NAS and Timecapsule (for Mac)
services (R Pi, PC based..), tried Western Digital units, and now
Synology. The latter is by far the best.
Because?
Mainly convenience and features. While the Synology has a mass of features
I’m not currently using, there are several I can see myself using at some
point.
Understood.
For home use, I went for dual disks in a RAID config.
Why? Ok, I can see if you needed something available 24/7 RAID1
(presumably) might give you that but what if the system hardware
fails? Also, what are you doing for the backups of the NAS itself?
That is the idea of dual disk RAID. If a drive fails you can recover the
data.
Yeahbut ...
If the actual box fails, who made it doesn’t matter that much. It needs
repairing or replacing.
So what do you do in the meantime or how has the duplex drives helped?
What if that box is no longer available, what are the chances of a new
/ alternative box being able to use that drive (and offer the data)?
Which is why I asked about how you were backing up your NAS?
If I want I can
access it from anywhere but I've not enabled this feature.
That was something that daughter might need and felt might be easier
to sort if some commercial solution came with the DDNS function via a
'My Cloud' sorta solution.
That is also one of the features I can see myself using. I’ve used it in
the past with my other solutions but don’t need it at the moment.
Ok.
I've also got a single drive system I use in the motorhome. It also has
most of the clever facilities although I don't need to use them.
I installed and configured a Synology DS218j for a friend and once we
had sorted the DOA WD 4TB Red drive ... it sorta went Ok but the UI
was a bit confusing and non intuitive. And this was with someone who
knew what he wanted and what to expect etc?
One of mine is the 218.
218+ (black) or 218j (white) Brian?
Some bits of the UI could be better but, all in all, it is pretty good in
my view.
Yes, once I had worked out what bit of what utility did what ... and
many things could be done by more that one bit ... it seemed to work.
I run PLEX on mine and it ‘feeds’ media (video and audio) to various TVs
and Wi-fi enabled radios. I used to run a Linux hosted version on an old
PC but this is part of the convenience factor I mentioned.
Ok.
snip
Based on suggestions offered by others here previously, I'm probably
going to order a Synology DS119j and duplicate the entire box across
the LAN to something (OMV probably) running on a Shuttle or RPi.
'Duplexing' (SFT III?) across two devices should give even better
availability and resilience than RAID1 in a single box? It also might
be the only way I could ensure daughter actually backs up her NAS. ;-)
The one I use in the motorhome is a 119. As you know the 119 only has one
drive so, if it fails, that is it.
But what is the MTBF on the drive versus the box itself?
You can use your approach but it it
seems like a lot of hassle.
Depending on how you manage your NAS backups, possibly?
The drives tend to be the weak spot and even
they aren’t bad.
I'd say I've had more kit go dead than drives (in my ownership). I
have a dead netbook here and a dead Shuttle PC that both have perfect
hard drives in them. ;-)
Your idea is certainly workable. Better is a matter of
opinion.
Again, depending on how you run your NAS backups? RAID in any form
isn't a backup.
While I enjoy tinkering, there are things I want to work
seamlessly in the background without needing intervention etc. The NAS is
one of those.
Likewise, and I'd suggest there is more work fitting even a single
drive in say a DS119j than plugging a USB drive into a PRi or Shuttle
.... and installing the OS still needs to be done on the Synology boxes
(and on the 2 x 4TB drives we had on the one I installed I'd say it
look longer than actually installing OMV on a Shuttle and configuring
the drive for use, albeit that it did most of it on it's own).
My 119 isn’t used for backup, well not really. It is just a media store-
essentially I copy (nearly) all of our media library on to it and it feeds
the media system in the motorhome.
Then that might be an answer to my backup question, if it's just a
copy of the main files.
Useful when in bad weather ;-)
I can think of other things the Mrs and I would do, specifically if we
were on our own. ;-)
I
recently bought Senior Management an Amazon Fire Stick ( there is some
comedy series- Mrs Mazel? - she wanted to watch) and it works beautifully
with the 4G Wi-fi, Kodi, .....
Cool.
BTW, WD seem to have lost the plot with their NAS drives.
The 'My Cloud' things?
I have one which
is fine*, it must be 5 years old at least. It is dedicated to a particular
project now. When I wanted something for the motorhome, one of those with a
larger drive, would have been ideal. Sure enough they seemed to still sell
them, minor cosmetic differences but obviously the same series it
seemed....
Ok ...
The UI was a nightmare. Once the shares were set up they would drop off the
network willy nilly, everything was geared to setting up a personal cloud.
;-(
The old version offers remote access- which I have used in the past,
although I preferred my Linux based server- but it doesn’t dominate the
operation.
I think that would be a 'handy feature' for daughter *if* it meant she
could access files from work, *without* having to install any software
at work (because she can't without IT doing it).
*World Book series or something similar. They are style to look like books.
I have seen them.
I hope to get a DS119j myself soon (I have enough Top Cashback
rewards) and already have a drive waiting to go in it. Once I'm
reasonably familiar with it myself and have tested the ar$e off it
(and a suitable backup drive / solution), I'll probably give it to
daughter. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
p.s. On the lines of 'you can manage what you can measure', I've been
briefly testing all the NAS's / FS's I have here using the little
Windows utility called 'LAN_SpeedTest' (I run an old / free version on
this XP box).
https://old.totusoft.com/downloads.html
You select a share and a test file size and it runs and gives you a
bunch of stats.
https://old.totusoft.com/lanspeed1.h..._PhotoGallery1[PhotoGallery1]/0/
Interesting to see if taking a USB3 shared drive from USB2 to 3 makes
any difference. I would be interested to hear how representative this
particular utility was compared with more sophisticated tests?