Can't decide NAS or time capsule

MartinH32

MartinH32

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I'm after a bit of advice. I've considered the timecapsule for mac but wondering if a NAS with raid is a better way to go for backups.
So, here is the questions:

1. What would be a good dual disk NAS to use? Speed is important!
2. I would need to upgrade my router as it's not gigabit speed. What would be a good one to use?

3. Should I do this or just go for the time capsule as I've heard different reports regarding reliability.

I use a MAcbook pro wirelessly and also have a couple of PC's which will be on the network (wired).

Budget is £300 to £350
I've looked at the Drobo but looks a little expensive!
 
okay first point, RAID mirroring is not a form of backup if its your only copy of data.

personally id say with NAS you get what you pay for, i use a synology ds1010+ and its massively expensive but its phenominal performing.

1 - synology in my opinion, ditched netgear in favour.
2 - if youre accessing the NAS via wireless gigabit isnt going to help you. but your wired desktops would benefit (providing they have gig network cards). depends what sort of data youre going to be pulling from the NAS.
3 - never used one.
 
Don't know anything about Mac stuff but I now will not use anything for backup that uses a disk format that can't be read on any computer you can connect the drive to.

I had a well maintained backup on a NAS device and the hardware went wrong but the disks in it were healthy. The only way I could have got to the data on those drives would be to buy new identical hardware so the raid parameters would have matched. Fortunately as it was a backup it didn't matter in the end but if I had needed the data I'd have been scouring ebay for a used similar unit.

I now just use another PC on the network with large NTFS drives for backup. Not a low standby power solution like a NAS device but far more reliable and recoverable. Downside is turning it on to use it and off afterwards.
 
neil_g said:
okay first point, RAID mirroring is not a form of backup if its your only copy of data.

personally id say with NAS you get what you pay for, i use a synology ds1010+ and its massively expensive but its phenominal performing.

1 - synology in my opinion, ditched netgear in favour.
2 - if youre accessing the NAS via wireless gigabit isnt going to help you. but your wired desktops would benefit (providing they have gig network cards). depends what sort of data youre going to be pulling from the NAS.
3 - never used one.
Click to expand...

This won't be my only copy of the data. The NAS / TC will be a backup of my existing data. The Synology is about double my budget unfortunatly!
 
I thought I lot of nas's format their hard drives with a linux compatiable format, I know my WD one does.
If the hardware failed you should be able to plug the hard drive directly into your computer and use a linux live cd to get access to your data.
 
studioworks said:
I thought I lot of nas's format their hard drives with a linux compatiable format, I know my WD one does.
If the hardware failed you should be able to plug the hard drive directly into your computer and use a linux live cd to get access to your data.
Click to expand...

How are you going to recover the data from a RAIDed disk plugged directly into your home PC without some fairly advanced knowledge?

Even RAID1 would require Knoppix or something similar and a rewrite of the MBR to access it. How the disk is formatted isn't an issue, as most Linux can read NTFS anyway, it's how the RAID and the boot record is configured that matters.
 
Have you thought about using Windows Home Server? I got an old P4 desktop (free from work), stuffed a couple of 1TB disks in it (£90) and bought the software (£88). So for a well under £200 (or £250 if you need to get the desktop from flea bay) I have a backup solution that also allows me to do simple file restores, bare metal restores of any failed system, gives me remote access over the internet to shared data plus remote desktop access to any PC on my network. Adding more disks is just a matter of plugging them in. It can even backup Macs. May be worth a look.
 
+1 for Synology.

There are, however, lower cost Synology NAS units that would do the job quite nicely ;)
 
DemiLion said:
How are you going to recover the data from a RAIDed disk plugged directly into your home PC without some fairly advanced knowledge?

Even RAID1 would require Knoppix or something similar and a rewrite of the MBR to access it. How the disk is formatted isn't an issue, as most Linux can read NTFS anyway, it's how the RAID and the boot record is configured that matters.
Click to expand...

I missed the bit about a RAID NAS, i was referring to the more comon single disk enclosures. I was just thinking of my NAS which is running a pretty usual version of linux, ive been able to install custom applications just by SSH into it.
 
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