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So the server (a QNAP 4-drive NAS) in the office died. Of course I have the data (around 1-2TB) backed up so no issue there. But I'm pondering what to do for a replacement.
I think I have 3 options:
In some ways this might be the easiest solution. Buy another box, slot the existing drives into it, done. However, before it died, the dead NAS was reporting that 2 of the drives had failed. It might have been lying to me, but I can't see any way of testing that proposition without installing the drives in a new enclosure. So if I go down this route I might have to buy 2 more drives as well.
2. Buy a 2-drive NAS.
When I bought the old NAS, several years ago, I bought a 4-drive model and set it up with RAID 6 (which can tolerate 2 drive failures), for reasons which might have seemed good to me at the time, but in retrospect might not have been. If I were starting from scratch now, I wouldn't bother with RAID 6. I have an effective backup strategy, both local and online using DropBox, so even in the event of a total NAS failure we can still access the data from DropBox quite conveniently. So I think I would just use RAID 1 (i.e. mirroring), and I'd use a 2-drive NAS with drives of double the size of the old ones.
3. Go cloud-only.
This option intrigues me. I use DropBox to provide portability of some of my personal data which is available on my home PC, laptop, office PC, phone, etc. I also use DropBox for backups of the office NAS. I could imagine not bothering to replace the NAS and just having everything in the cloud, either in DropBox or something similar.
The thing is, though, accessing files from DropBox isn't quite as convenient and easy as it is from a local drive or the NAS. I can't just open them, work on them, and save them back to DropBox when I close them. They have to be downloaded first, then re-uploaded. Admittedly DropBox Sync would get round that, but it would require having a complete copy of everything on everyone's PC, and at 1-2TB that's really not practical. And DropBox wouldn't provide protection against multiple concurrent edits, which is a slight risk.
Is there a cloud storage product out there which allows me to access files as if the were local, through Windows Explorer say? Is cloud-only a viable strategy?
I think I have 3 options:
- Buy another 4-drive NAS.
- Buy a 2-drive NAS.
- Go cloud-only.
In some ways this might be the easiest solution. Buy another box, slot the existing drives into it, done. However, before it died, the dead NAS was reporting that 2 of the drives had failed. It might have been lying to me, but I can't see any way of testing that proposition without installing the drives in a new enclosure. So if I go down this route I might have to buy 2 more drives as well.
2. Buy a 2-drive NAS.
When I bought the old NAS, several years ago, I bought a 4-drive model and set it up with RAID 6 (which can tolerate 2 drive failures), for reasons which might have seemed good to me at the time, but in retrospect might not have been. If I were starting from scratch now, I wouldn't bother with RAID 6. I have an effective backup strategy, both local and online using DropBox, so even in the event of a total NAS failure we can still access the data from DropBox quite conveniently. So I think I would just use RAID 1 (i.e. mirroring), and I'd use a 2-drive NAS with drives of double the size of the old ones.
3. Go cloud-only.
This option intrigues me. I use DropBox to provide portability of some of my personal data which is available on my home PC, laptop, office PC, phone, etc. I also use DropBox for backups of the office NAS. I could imagine not bothering to replace the NAS and just having everything in the cloud, either in DropBox or something similar.
The thing is, though, accessing files from DropBox isn't quite as convenient and easy as it is from a local drive or the NAS. I can't just open them, work on them, and save them back to DropBox when I close them. They have to be downloaded first, then re-uploaded. Admittedly DropBox Sync would get round that, but it would require having a complete copy of everything on everyone's PC, and at 1-2TB that's really not practical. And DropBox wouldn't provide protection against multiple concurrent edits, which is a slight risk.
Is there a cloud storage product out there which allows me to access files as if the were local, through Windows Explorer say? Is cloud-only a viable strategy?